Susan Harris’s book, Grooming to Win, has a great description of hot towelling. The key is to add the tiniest drop of shampoo in order the change the ph of the water. Otherwise, you’re turning that dirt into mud. When I hot towels, I use multiple small towels, place them over the parts of the body and press them into the coat. “Steaming” is the appropriate word, as a previous poster wrote. If you limit yourself to one towel, the process will task a long time and your water will get cold!
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Just reading this is soothing
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Thanks for posting, I’ve been reading up on ways to get horses clean without a bath since I’m about to start clipping. It’s too cold for baths, but as we all know they need to be as clean as possible for a good clip.
@EventerAJ wrote a lovely description of how to hot towel, but if you’re a visual learner here’s a nice video to show how to do it.
I’ll also use 2 buckets of water - one that’s very hot and has oil/a touch of shampoo in it, and one with warm water. I put all the cloths in the hot water and wring them out one by one when I’m ready to use them. After the towel I’m using has gotten too cold or too dirty, I put it in the warm water to rinse it out. If I cycle through all the towels and I still haven’t finished, I wring out all the dirty ones and put them back in the hot water bucket. This allows the hot water to stay cleaner for longer.
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If it’s really cold out keeping the water/towels in a cooler keeps it steamy longer. I buy the cheap dollar tree hand towels, they are the perfect size to roll up and pour water from a tea kettle over.
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In addition to vacuuming or hot toweling, if you can’t bathe before clipping use a LOT of showsheen. Like, basically “hot towel” the horse with showsheen instead of hot water. Spray with showsheen to make the coat lightly damp, and scrub it in with a clean rag. It will pick up some remaining dirt from the coat, and thoroughly cover the hair shafts with silicone to make them slick and easy to clip. Focus especially on the horse’s croup, as the top of the rump is typically the most dirty, dusty, area that dulls blades. I usually never use showsheen on the horse’s body (tails only, thankyou) but clipping is my exception.
I use showsheen even on bathed horses before clipping, I find it really helps the clippers cut through and keeps the blades cooler.
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Ooh good idea! I douse them in showsheen before I clip but I’ve never scrubbed it in like that. I bet that would make a big difference! I have the same philosophy towards showsheen as you, normally hate the stuff but it’s very useful for clipping!
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On a day-to-day basis, I use a spray solution of Vetrolin:Rubbing Alcohol:water 1:1:1 and spray that on a cactus cloth to curry and brush with that. The solution isn’t wet (the rubbing alcohol helps with that) and the Vetrolin seems to attract dirt to it. I think you can do the same with a towel, but it will be a little harder to get the deep-down dirt. You’ll feel the sprayed section of your cloth feel sticky on the coat and see it take up the dust. When it feels too smooth on the coat, switch to a new section of sprayed cloth. If you look at that smooth section, you’ll see the dirt and scurf there.
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Here is my method of the dirty ones who don’t tolerate a vacuum.
Curry with a regular curry
Take the tail brush and curry with that. It gets deep down and gets all the itchies too.
Stiff long bristled brush
Take a handful of hay and curry motion with that.
Spray horse with healthy hair care (the pink stuff diluted appropriately) and curry motion again with terry cloth shop rags. I purchased mine on Amazon. 50 rags were about 11 bucks.
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Oooof, these are great (I’ve done a less vigorous version of hot toweling in the past), but what if you have painful hand arthritis? All of this is very hard on the hands - at least if you do it properly and thoroughly enough to really get down to the skin.
(OH to be young again!)
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I have never had to do anything like this but remember an article in Practical Horseman many years ago about bathing a horse in winter. All of the hot toweling sounds familiar, but one thing I haven’t seen mentioned is using a cooler as you work your way down the horse’s back. The pictures showed a fleece or wool cooler folded up over the neck. So as you bathe sections of the horse, working front to back, you unfold the cooler so the damp sections are covered as soon as you’re done. Does that make sense?
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Yes to the fly sheet! I don’t really know how it works but it really does.
Hot toweling is great. I’ve been surprised how easy it is to get most horses to tolerate (and even enjoy) a blower, which works really well for getting the dirt and dust up from deep in a fluffy winter coat. I have an expensive blower/dryer designed for dog grooming that has worked really well. It isn’t super high velocity but it isn’t terribly loud, has different settings for heat and velocity, and is compact and light enough to pop in the car and shuttle back and forth easily.
One of the bloggers (Budget Equestrian, maybe?) had a recipe for waterless shampoo that I thought worked well, other than I didn’t follow the instructions well enough making it so it tended to block up my spray bottle nozzle. I’ve been meaning to make some more and try actually following the directions properly this time!
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Thanks everyone, really appreciate all the suggestions/advice!
I can tell you what doesn’t work— those spray on stain removers. I don’t know if there’s some trick I’m not understanding but I tried it on my mini (long coat) and my baby (short coat) and it didn’t do a darn thing on either?
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Yeah, I’ve had the same experience, what the heck? 
That’s my go-to recipe as well! Learned it from a great groom a long time ago. For the white spots, it’s Quicsilver + alcohol + water (but less than a 1:1:1 ratio).
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A great deal of elbow grease. I grew up (UK) at a time when there was a fixed rule that horses are never washed, they are groomed into shine.
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