Bald and Bug-eyed

Bald and Bug-Eyed

During our ten week training course, giving hair cuts to the horses was a skill we had to practice. As instructed in our training class, for each horse we had to clip its whiskers, mane, ear hair, and hooves. Our training NCO chose me to be the first to start clipping.

“You’re first. Go and get Bud from his stall and bring him over. We are going to clip the horses in this barn,” he said. “Everyone will have 30 minutes to clip their horses from head to toe. You all have seen it done earlier this week so there should be no problems. “

“Ok. No problem,” I replied and trotted off to the other barn, delighted it was Bud and not Reggie.

Bud was the oldest horse in the barn. At almost 25 years old, his skin looked like it was ready to slide off his boney frame. His skinny face made his eyes look fat and bulging. I always secretly thought that Bud’s face would resemble what a cantankerous alien would look like in a hairy brown suit.

While I went through the motions of preparing Bud for his walk over to the other barn, I started thinking about what the instructor said. Thirty minutes sounds like a pretty long time to clip a horse. Maybe he really meant “head to toe”. The damn horse is nothing but hair, a bit of skin and bones. I need to ask him again to be sure.

I tied Bud to a post in the second barn and collected the clipping kit.

“I just want to make sure, but you want me to cut everything,” I asked.

“Head to toe. Everything. You have 25 minutes now. Suggest you get going,” he responded.

“Okay,” I said.

That answer solved it and I trotted off trying to save time getting back to the horse. I was getting nervous. My time was ticking and I had the whole horse to clip. I started on Bud’s flank. I knew not to go too close to the skin, but it was hard to make measured strokes with the clippers. Bud would dance back and forth in the barn. His shoes would echo throughout the barn with every evading step he made.

The situation was getting stressful. I had sweat dripping down my face even though the interior of the barn was shaded. The industrial sized fans creating a breeze in the barn didn’t help lower the temperature outside. Clumps of Bud’s hair started to jam the clippers, which were already slightly dull. When the clippers pulled, the old horse would start maneuvering once again. What I thought to be an easy task, turned out to be a dancing nightmare. “Stay still,” I would grunt, jerking the harness attached to his head.

By the time the NCO came to see my progress, I couldn’t control much of anything with the horse. We were both exhausted. I stood there and turned off the clippers as he approached us. We stood there surrounded by a halo of Bud’s hair. Almost one whole rib cage was exposed and nearly hairless in some patches. It looked as if I took turns cutting his hair with shaving razor in some areas and a spoon in others. Not only did Bud look like a starved alien with bug eyes, he also looked retarded now.

Thirty minutes my ass. There is no way anyone can trim a whole horse up in thirty minutes, I thought to myself. I wasn’t too worried about missing my time. It would be like telling someone to make the whole day while only breathing once in a while.

“What the fuck are you doing,” cried the NCO. “What is all this. You were only supposed to trim the horse. I can’t believe this.”

“He kept moving I had no way to keep him steady. I tried some of the clipper guards, but they didn’t help,” I said.

The NCOs mouth was held ajar as he ran a hand over the area I cut. He turned to me and said, “Didn’t you watch what we cut the other day. Did you see that we only cut the hooves, mane, and the face? Where have you seen anyone cut the coat,” he asked.

I was starting to get a little frustrated. “Hey, I came back and even asked you what I had to cut in thirty minute. You told me twice, ‘head to toe’. I would have asked again for the third time, but I don’t think your answer would have changed”. By this time, Adams and Cooley had walked out of the classroom to see what was going on. They stood back, not saying much of anything, but they didn’t need to. They couldn’t contain their look of astonishment. Fuck ups like these only came around once in a while. Even though we were all still pretty green to the ways Caisson worked, they, me included at this point, knew this was bad.

“Hold on a second,” said the NCO. “I need to get someone.”

The training NCO was actually a specialist and didn’t truly have any authority outside of the three of us. He wasn’t too young, but we could all tell he got off on his authority for all of us to always address him as “Specialist”. In this case, he needed backup. What I had done needed a stronger assessment of exactly how bad I screwed up.

As soon as our training specialist left the barn, Cooley immediately rushed to my side, giving me a lopsided grin. “Kubicki, what did you do?”

Getting even more agitated by the second, all I could choke out was, “the bastard said head to toe about ten times. Both of you heard me in there ask him.”

Cooley empathized with me, where the two of us were cool with each other, Adams, was the outcast in our class. “Wow,” was all he could muster through his grin while he petted the horse I just finished abusing. I think his smile came more from the relief that it wasn’t him who screwed the horse up. He was already on the wire for being late for formation.

We didn’t say much as we watched one of the squad leaders make his way through the exercise lot with the training specialist in tow. It was one of those moments, where you know it can’t get much worse. I didn’t think I was going to get kicked out of the class, but I didn’t want to get my ass chewed either.

SSG Hildebrandt came into the barn looking for the damage I created. He slapped Bud on the his flank to get the horse to expose his other side. “Holy shit,” he laughed. “You did this,” he said. While he looked at me with a slight grin of disbelief.

“Yes Sergeant,” I replied. My anxiety began to subside.

“Good thing the specialist didn’t give you anymore time than thirty minutes,” he said.
The specialist hung back in the wings while SSG Hildebrandt counseled me on only what we trimmed on the horse. “Never cut anything else again. Do you hear me Kubicki,” he asked with a smile.

“Yes Sergeant,” I responded.

Word got around the barn quicker than a fire in a saw mill. Guys were making jokes even before the day was out. Soldiers who had been in the cemetery all day doing missions had known about my screw up even before they made it back to the barn. They were eager to check out Bud’s new haircut as soon as they cared of their horses. It was about four months before anyone could even ride Bud after his haircut. Any saddle would have caused a gall on his shaved side. It worked out well for the poor bastard in the end. I always thought he was too old to be ridden anyway.