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Hi Kat and ridecamper,
there are a few things I disagree on:
>Horses in Southern California (unless we are talking about in the
>mountains where it snows), do not need to be blanketed
Exactly, southern California is a great place to live and ride during the
winter...
(acutally, I am of
>the opinion that the only horse that might "need" to be blanketed is one
>that lives outside with absolutely no shelter from the wind or the
>rain/snow--otherwise, the one that they grow is perfectly adequate for
>keeping them warm...but that is beside the point).
As long as horses live outdoor and just hang out there with as much running
around as they feel comfortable with, they definately need no blankets.
Nature takes care of the problem, most of the time even without shelter or
anything. You might have seen horses standing right next to their shelter
in heavy rain, who knows why?!!
>Additionally, I cannot recommend clipping a Southern Californian horse.
I agree on this point, there should be no need.
>Clipping will ruin your horse's natural coat, and it will take years for
>the coat to recover (just like shaving your legs makes the hair on your
>legs grow back faster and courser...the more often you shave, the more
>often you have to shave).
I haven't seen this phenomenon yet in all those years of being around
cliped horses. As you mention later on, they shed in the springtime and
loose most of the cliped hair anyway. Beginning of the spring you hardly
see any of the "clipping-style" you might have created and in the
summer-time your horse's fur is as great as it used to be. You will not see
the cliped parts revealing with kind of broken or cut hair or anything.
Shaving your own legs is a little different, you usally don't shed, do you?
>I have found that there is no Arabian (or Thoroughbred...which is what I
>have got) grows a long enough coat in the Southern California wintertime
>that it needs to be clipped at all...even if you keep your horse in
>regular work.
>
>It just doesn't get that cold here.
Right!
>I have competed through the winter with my horse's "winter" coat. I takes
>a little longer to dry out, but I have found that if you keep the horse in
>regular training, they do just fine wearing their winter coat all winter
>and shedding it out naturally in the spring.
The problem starts if you live in an area, where horses grow winter-furs as
thick as polar bears. You cannot continue riding at a normal schedule,
because they sweat harder during the training-session and it takes longer
than an hour to get them to dry. The decision is, do you really want to do
"hard" training and is the clipping worth it all the trouble with different
blankets, checking out the horse a couple of times during the day. I
decided to clip, because we did dressage-training nearly 5 days a week and
it is much more dangerous to sit in a cold, windy stall after the training
with a sweaty, long-fured horse and wait for more than an hour to get it to
dry <with polar-fleece blanket on>. Everybody has to make the decision
whether it is necessary to clip, taking the thickness of the fur, the
circumstances of boarding and the needs of training into consideration.
Just imagine yourself after jogging, sweaty in a windy stall......you also
might want to dress lighter during jogging and put on something nice and
warm ASAP after you cooled off.
These are the cold, icey winters I'm talking about, of course!!!!!
If your horse has already had its natural coat ruined by clipping,
>this may be something that you will have to do forever....or go through
>the years that it will take for the coat to recover.
No, this is not true. You can make the decision of clipping or not clipping
every year in fall. You will never ruin the fur, because it sheds! No years
of recovery thanks God!!
Plus we have seen that performance in some horses can be better, clipped at
the most sweaty areas, they seem to be more willing to work, more lively....
Allright, hope this is not going too far now and boring the rest of the
list. It is just that there are other ways of ruining a horse's coat...
Katja
with her once-in-a-lifetime horse waiting in Germany
--MimeMultipartBoundary--
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