Events
Groups
Rider Directory
Market
RideCamp
Stuff
<< 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 >>
After discussing this subject with vet staff members and other riders around
here and our old barn, I still maintain that if one MUST clip a horse for
whatever reason (here it is because the weather IS fine enough to ride all
winter but the days are too short to facilitate saatisfactory cooling and
drying out), a well-chosen blanket merely replaces the horse's natural coat.
It is important that any ol' rug not be thrown on ol' Dobbins here, and that
the blanket breathe like his coat an repel water like his coat and NOT BE PUT
ON until thoroughly cool and dry. As such, by the time we clip our elderly
and still competing mare, we have worked our way up to a medium weight
blanket that meets these specs. Now, if my mare wouldn't be removing her OWN
coat in teh AM at feedin gtime, why would I need to remove her brand new,
clean and rather costly one each day? Again, this is assuming that the
blanket being used is appropriate. At any other time of the year in southern
Cal, those cover-ups have to be removed during the day, but swapping one coat
for another at the right time just seems to be redundant to us. Unless we get
an unusually warm winter day - which we do in the early months of the year,
we don't just run out every morning and pull blankets. We never blanket
youngsters, thought, and rarely throw a covering over a hrose who is not
working hard. But for the horse who is working daily and for more than a
couple hours, keeping the coat to a minimum and keeping the horse clean saves
a multitude of hours witht he brush. We only have one hotwalker - ME! This is
our solution. Anyone else??
s
Events
Groups
Rider Directory
Market
RideCamp
Stuff