I know I should wait till the caffeine kicks in to check my messages. Maybe some things are best discovered in a semi-awake haze.

It was a message on Facebook from a well-meaning friend. That's where it usually starts, doesn't it? Someone well-meaning? Seems she had a friend for whom she put some horse ads on Craigslist. She wasn't a horse person. Apparently the horse-owning friend wasn't a Craigslist person.

Could I take a look at the ads for her?

You know, kudos to my non-horsey friend for caring what the ads looked like. They were photographed in a paddock near the barn. Ever seen the series on Discovery (I think) called Life After People?....."Two years after people, the infrastructure begins to collapse. Fences, once solid, begin to sag and fall down. Rats, with no natural predators, grow to the size of dogs and take over...." Okay, I'm joking about the rats, but the background in the photos had a definite Life After People (stopped giving a shit) vibe to them. Creepy, cluttered, and gloomy.

The horses themselves were gawky-looking two year olds whose whites needed whitening and whose manes needed pulling, combing, or probably a de-burring. All had the ubiquitous grungy, bleached in the sun nylon halter.

I told my friend the horses needed to be cleaned up, trimmed up, and photographed in nicer halters. I spared any comment on their conformation and emphasized that the owner should put a metric fuckton of show sheen on them and photograph them against a more scenic background.

I didn't go in for the online dating comparison, but if I did I would have said: "Think of them as trying to land dates so that they can attract the best possible partner, in order to marry and not have to leave the country!" Which is a really cute comparison but not at all the case here.

....Oh wait.