Grooming a horse is a bonding experience. It can help improve the health of the horse’s skin and coat. In this post, you’ll discover the benefits of grooming a horse and tips to make the grooming routine more enjoyable.
Why You Should Groom A Horse
For many people, the most obvious benefit of having a horse is riding. However, horses are like cars in certain aspects. If you don’t perform regular maintenance, the performance suffers. It’s also easy to forget about the maintenance, or to grow complacent after years of good performance with little effort. When taking care of a horse, regular grooming should be part of the routine to ensure their health.
Grooming Acts as Preventive Medicine
A thorough grooming increases blood flow to horse’s skin’s surface, massages large muscle groups, and daily hoof picking keeps the feet clean and helps prevent common hoof issues such as thrush, a bacterial disease of the sole. Horses out in the wild don’t have this luxury, but they have each other, and mutual grooming takes the place of brushes and combs. When you remove a horse from its natural environment and stick it alone in a stall, you need to take on the responsibilities of herd mates for the health of the horse.
Grooming Increases the Human-Animal Bond
A good grooming session is a great opportunity to bond with your riding companion. You may have spotted that when horses are playing together, grooming each other can be a common behavior. This is because grooming is beneficial to both horses and can provide both with mutual feelings of happiness and comfort. Quiet time with just you, your horse, and a brush can communicate feelings of communal pleasantries that benefit both a horse and a rider. For those just starting a relationship with a new mount, this is a wonderful way to build a bond, and for those beginning training with a young horse, grooming can re-assure an anxious green mount.
Checking for Health Issues
Because grooming requires you to get up close and personal with a horse without scaring them away, it’s a great opportunity to check for any health issues that they may be experiencing. Many health-related conditions in horses can present symptoms that can be noticed on the skin. Injuries that they may have picked up whilst in their paddock can also be spotted during their daily grooming routine.
Grooming Helps with Horse’s Coat Health
Horses have oil glands all over their skin that secrete an oily substance called sebum. Sebum helps to coat the hair follicles and skin to keep it soft and moisturized. Regular grooming helps spread this sebum out and stimulate its production. This helps bring out horse’s coat’s natural glow. In addition, spreading out these oils can make the coat softer, help with thermoregulation, and reduce the risk of skin conditions. Regular grooming helps protect horse’s coat from conditions such as rain rot. Rain rot occurs when a horse spends too much time in a dirty, moist environment. If you exercise your horse a lot without cleaning off their sweat and dirt, it could lead to rain rot or other skin conditions.
When to Groom A Horse
Most of us diligently groom the horses before we tack up and ride. Yet, grooming a horse after the exercise is equally important. Brushing a horse’s coat mimics a natural equine behavior (mutual grooming) between horses that can induce relaxation and thus affect horse’s heart rate and causes it to lower quicker. If a horse is groomed immediately following exertion, then their heart rate should decrease at a rate faster than if they were walked after the exerting exercise. Post-exercise grooming will also help you to notice any cuts, nicks or sore muscles that your horse may have developed while being ridden. Many horses get a little itchy from the tack, grooming them thoroughly after a ride is a nice way to take care of that for your horse. Afterall, who wouldn’t enjoy a nice body massage after working out!
How Often Should I Groom A Horse?
How often you groom your horse may also depend on how your horse is stabled. If your horse lives outside in a herd environment, where they will be able to roll on the ground, brush up against trees, and benefit from mutual grooming from other horses, you may find that you only need to tend to them before a ride. In this scenario, you may need to pay most attention to the areas where the tack will sit on the horse to ensure they are comfortable. It’s also vital that you don’t overgroom your horse, especially in the winter if they aren’t clipped and spend a lot of time outside, as this can strip their coat of natural oils and reduce its waterproofing abilities.
Useful Grooming Tools
Whilst there are many different tools that you can experiment with throughout your horses’ grooming routine, the following tools are recommended:
- Hoof pick – removes dirt, debris and other items that can be lodged in the hoof.
- Curry comb – ideal for loosening and removing mud and loose hair, leaving a brilliant shine.
- Stiff body brush – removes mud, sweat, dirt and hair.
- Soft body brush – removes dust and hair to give a horse a shiny coat.
- Face brush – removes dirt and hair from a horse’s face.
- Mane & tail brush – gently detangles the mane and tail.
Be sure to also check out the following video on grooming and cleaning a horse before riding:
As you can see, grooming a horse is an important step in their care routine and can provide them with many benefits. Now, it’s up to you to develop a routine that both you and your horse can enjoy and bond over!
