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I've got a full day's work and a horse that won't quit fighting flies long enough to do it. Then an old cowhand showed me why. I run cattle. That means long days in open country — checking fence, moving pairs, doctoring, riding ground where the flies are thick as anything and there's not a lick of shade for miles. And for a couple of summers straight, I about couldn't get anything done, all on account of the flies eating my horse alive. Let me paint you the picture, because if you work off a horse you already know it. I'd be trying to push a few head across a pasture, and my horse would be stomping so hard I couldn't hold him straight. Flinging his head. Swishing that tail every direction. Kicking out at his own belly. Every time I needed him to stand and let me rope or work a gate, he was dancing around fighting bugs instead of paying attention to me. You can't drag a calf to the fire on a horse that won't stand still. You can't doctor a sick one when your horse is spinning under you. A ten-minute job would take me forty. Some days I'd come in with half my list undone, worn slap out, and madder than a wet hen — not at the horse, he couldn't help it, but at the whole rotten situation. It's hard to explain how aggravating it is to have work that needs doing and a good horse that just can't focus long enough to help you do it. And it wears on the horse too. He'd come in gaunt and cranky, rubbed raw on his belly, sores where he'd stomped and scratched. A tired, bitten-up horse can't put in a long day. So I wasn't just losing time. I was running my best using horse into the ground. So I did what everybody does. I bought fly spray. Cases of it. I've tried every brand at the co-op. The cheap stuff, the good stuff, the concentrate you mix yourself. I'd soak that horse down good before I ever saddled, and by mid-morning those flies were right back on him like I never touched him. I tried the masks, tried the sheets, but you can't work cattle all day in a fly sheet. I even mixed my own out of vinegar and whatnot. Nothing held past an hour or two, and out where I ride, an hour or two doesn't get you back to the barn. After enough summers of it, I just figured that was the deal. You work around the flies, you lose half your daylight to 'em, and you don't complain because there's nothing to be done about it. Then I was at a sale barn one afternoon and got to jawing with an old cowhand. Fella'd been horseback his whole life, thirty-some years working cattle, the real thing. His horse was tied outside, and I'll tell you what caught my eye — in the middle of a hot afternoon, that horse stood there quiet as could be. Not stomping. Not swishing. Not a fly working on him. Just resting a hind leg, waiting on his man. I asked him flat out what he was doing, because a horse that stands quiet in July is worth asking about. And he told me something I'd never heard in all my years of ranching. He said it started with his vet. Had her out to look at a horse, got to griping about the flies same as I'm telling you, and she told him she'd been reading up on certain plant oils — that there was real research showing they help keep the biting bugs off. She was straight with him that it wasn't a medicine and didn't take the place of good fly control, but she said as a side help, it was worth looking into. So he did. And here's the part that got me. He said flies don't find your horse by luck. They find him by smell. A horse throws off a scent, it drifts on the wind, and the fly reads it and comes straight to him. That's how they find one horse out in a wide-open pasture with nothing else around. Then he put it plain. Every spray I'd ever bought was made to kill or run the fly off after it landed. Not one of 'em did a thing about the scent drawing the flies in to start with. I'd been going after the fly the whole time. Nobody ever told me the trick was hiding the horse. Thirty years I'd been horseback, and I'd never once heard it put that way. Now, I'm a practical man and I don't buy pretty talk. My first thought was, plant oils, right. Sounds like something that smells nice and does nothing. I'd already wasted good money on a homemade version of that very thing. He grinned like he knew what I was thinking and said, "Don't take my word for it. Go home and look it up." So I did. And it checked out. There's a real body of research on these oils and how they keep biting bugs off. But I finally learned the one thing that explained why my own mixes never worked. It ain't about just using "plant oils." A splash of citronella won't get it done. It's the right combination of the specific oils, together, in the right amounts. One oil by itself does next to nothing. The right blend, working together, is what actually hides the horse. I'd just been dumping one thing in a jug and hoping. That was my whole trouble right there. So I went looking for something built on the right combination, not just a little citronella splashed in for the label. And I kept coming back to the same name. Renoura. Had the exact oils I'd been reading on. Citronella, litsea cubeba, clove, thyme, and more, all together in the one spray. Not one thing doing a little. All of 'em, doing the job right. For once I wasn't buying on somebody's word. I was buying on what I'd looked into myself. I put it to the test the only way that counts out here — a full day's work, in the heat, miles from the barn. First morning I sprayed my horse down and rode out, I kept waiting for him to start stomping and shaking his head like always. He never did. He stood when I needed him to stand. He worked a gate without dancing. I roped and drug calves off a horse that held steady the whole time instead of fighting bugs. I got through my whole list before dinner for the first time in I don't know how long. By the end of that first week, the welts on his belly were healing up instead of getting tore open every afternoon. He quit coming in gaunt and cranky. He had his go back. But the real difference was in the work getting done. I stopped losing half my day to a horse that couldn't focus. I stopped fighting my own mount just to do a simple job. When I needed him to stand and work, he stood and worked, because he wasn't getting eaten alive doing it. That's the whole thing, right there. A working horse you can actually work. I've got horses out in that pasture right now, deep in fly season, standing easy in the heat. And when I ride out this evening to check the far tank, my horse is gonna carry me there and back without fighting a single fly the whole way. If you make your living horseback and you've lost half your summer to a horse that can't quit stomping long enough to help you work, I'm not gonna tell you what to do. I'm just gonna tell you what that old cowhand told me. Don't take my word for it. Go look up how flies really find your horse. Look up the oils. I'll leave a link down below, if you want to see what I found.