The Clipper Project

There are two things that Surya truly hates in this world: shots, and clippers. Due to patience, treats, and stubbornness bordering on pathological obsession (I literally dreamed about it a couple of weeks ago), she learned to accept the clippers.

I started by rubbing the clippers over her while feeding her treats. She did not care in any way. The snorting and eye rolling started when I ran the blade through her hair and she discovered it was a bit poky. However, after twenty minutes of bribery, she accepted the new development. The next day, I turned the clippers on and convinced her to not run away from the sound with apples (her absolute favorite treat). By the end of half an hour, she would get her nose as close as six inches for a bite of apple. I decided, however, that having her face them head-on would prove more difficult than sneaking them up on her. The next time I went to the barn, I rubbed the clippers on her, turned them on for less than a second, fed her treats, and continued touching her with them. Snorting occurred, but no running. At the very end of the session, I turned them on and shaved off a 1 inch square of hair! I turned them off immediately, fed her an entire apple, and returned her to her stall.

A couple of days later, I again went through the same process, and achieved some hair removal at the end for a total of five inches of clipped wonder on her left side. I managed to clip her belly (badly) and sides (badly) in time for the show two weeks ago. She looked like she had mange, but I didn’t care because I was so pleased with our progress!

Last weekend, my ARF and one of the women who works at the barn helped me finish the job. And by helped, I mean I held Surya’s head and fed her a constant supply of treats while my ARF did the work operating the clippers. Surya stood quietly, though shiftily, until about halfway through the process when she decided that having a continuous stream of horse treats and grain was not enough, but that she wanted the stockpile ALL AT ONCE IMMEDIATELY and tried to barrel past me to achieve those ends. We established that was not on the menu (literally, get it? hha) and resumed with our initial set-up.

Once we were done with everything except the underside of her neck, we paused to evaluate and discuss how to convince her to let us get that close to her head. Smart Barn Woman tired of the discussion, picked up the bucket of grain I had been taking handfuls from, and shoved it up Surya’s nose. She snorted in surprise as her snout up to just below her eyes was suddenly encased in plastic, but then dug in with gusto. Smart Barn Woman immediately lifted the bucket high into the air to expose Surya’s throat, and said “Go quick before she runs out of grain!” ARF quickly ran the clippers up her throat. Surya rolled her eyes to freak out at the clippers as her nose made chomping noises fuckfuckfuckwhatthehellareyoudoingstopitohbutthisgrainisSOGOODICAN’TSTOP. ARF finished clipping the underside of her neck at about the same moment Surya finished the grain and flipped the bucket into the air as she decided to object, and then we all collapsed on the floor holding our stomachs in laughter.



Surya, clipped and full of grain.