I’m still waiting on electric and running water in my new barn, which will have a wash stall with instant hot water and a radiant overhead heater.
In the meantime, how does one wash a horse for clipping without warm,running water?
I’m thinking a sponge bath with warm water from the house. Hoping I get a nice weekend to trace clip my driving pony.
I use a cheap Dovers anti-sweat cotton sheet with a fleece cooler on top,if it’s pretty chilly. Just one or the other if it’s not. I like the cheap anti swear because I can load horse in the trailer if needed with it,since it’s basically a cotton blanket with all the same straps.
Sometimes after hunting,I’ve loaded my horse in the trailer for shelter from the wind while we have our hunt breakfast.
I always clip any horse that will be getting a lot of sweaty riding/driving in the winter.
Re: Irish Knits/Weave, I love my Baker Irish Knit. I also have the old-timely big hole sheet. Love those. In really cold temps, I put my Baker Irish knit under my thick Horseware cooler. This year I’ve done a reverse trace clip, though, because I need to speed up the cooling process.
As for those sweaty spots, I love a cactus cloth. Nothing beats it.
What’s a reverse trace clip? I’m clipping the pony this weekend,was looking at various patterns since I don’t want a full clip.
[QUOTE=DMK;8390040]
well… I did order the turbo cooler (with the neck cover) and with an n=2, it may replace my go to of an irish knit+wool cooler (I’ve had both the big hole kind and the normal 90’s vintage - in my experience, 100% cotton+holes+wool is the magical combination).
The only caveat is it ain’t truly cold yet and more importantly, horse is not yet clipped. But if anything, clipping is only going to improve on drying speed and the neck cover is totally a win.[/QUOTE]
Fair enough. I’ll be psyched to see how some new-fangled fabric and a neck-a-ma-bob stand up to cotton+holes+wool.
[QUOTE=roamingnome;8390164]
They’re called Kingshead? Wonder why no one makes them anymore… (hint hint to any one more skilled than I at crafty-things!)[/QUOTE]
Katrina Coldren at The Clothes Horse called the Big-Ass-Holes cooler I had, a Kingshead. I’d consider her an authority figure on horse blankets. And she says that the all-important fish-net material is no longer made.
[QUOTE=roamingnome;8390156]
DMK- so you like the terry so far?[/QUOTE]
It’s actually not terry (I bought the centaur turbo dry). It’s not polar fleece either. For lack of any better comparison, it’s a smooth fabric sort of like some of the athletic material - maybe the kind you see on the lightweight jackets, not the short sleeve shirt.
I actually have a giant terry/towel cooler from years ago. Wilson’s (the original) made them briefly. It’s not as awesome as you might think. Sure it wicks off moisture, but then it is more like wearing a wet towel, and it was heavy like a wet towel (and took forever to dry like a wet towel, and dear heavens, if you threw it in a pile in the corner of your tack room… well you get the drift!)
So I can’t quite part with it, but I took it home for off season storage a few years ago and it never quite made it back out to the barn. For me, that’s always the sign of Really Useful. I REMEMBER to dig it out of the blanket box(es) in the garage.
[QUOTE=Doctracy;8390631]
I’m still waiting on electric and running water in my new barn, which will have a wash stall with instant hot water and a radiant overhead heater.
In the meantime, how does one wash a horse for clipping without warm,running water?
I’m thinking a sponge bath with warm water from the house. Hoping I get a nice weekend to trace clip my driving pony.
I use a cheap Dovers anti-sweat cotton sheet with a fleece cooler on top,if it’s pretty chilly. Just one or the other if it’s not. I like the cheap anti swear because I can load horse in the trailer if needed with it,since it’s basically a cotton blanket with all the same straps.
Sometimes after hunting,I’ve loaded my horse in the trailer for shelter from the wind while we have our hunt breakfast.
I always clip any horse that will be getting a lot of sweaty riding/driving in the winter.[/QUOTE]
Doctracy,
Is your house close enough that you could you run an extension cord? In the winter if I can not bathe, I will do a leg bath (just wash and towel dry legs) and then vacuum them really well and spray with show sheen.
You can do the sponge bath. But given the location of a trace clip, you might be able to just shampoo the parts of the horse you’ll clip and use cold water. After all, what you really need is the coat very clean where you’ll clip… and that doesn’t involve getting the whole horse soaking wet if you’ll do a trace clip.
Doc, I said reverse trace when I really meant reverse blanket. Starting at the mane, halfway up the neck, imagine drawing a sweeping line down across the shoulder, through the point of the elbow, straight across the lower part of the belly back to where the hindquarters meet the hind legs. Everything above the line is clipped, everything below the line is left fuzzy. My horses have access to the barn, but generally live outside. Therefore I like to keep the “exposed” parts fuzzy (belly, underside and top half of neck, chest where neck cover and chest buckles leave area exposed).
I, too, love the old irish knit/wool over the top, and I have a cooler that has both in one that I love when it’s really cold. That said, toweling first helps a lot, then cooler(s), then if you’re in a hurry, use a hair dryer on wet sections while cooler(s) are covering the others.
[QUOTE=Mardi;8371141]
This may be old school…a rub down with towels to get the moisture off and hair fluffed so air can circulate to the wet skin works great. They’ll dry fast, and appreciate the body massage at the same time. Keep the blanket(s) covering the part of the horse you’re not working on so the body stays warm.[/QUOTE]
That is old skool.
And a couple of additions help, too:
-
Cactus Cloth instead of a towel.
-
Mix up liniment, rubbing alcohol and water in equal proportions. Put that in a travel-size lotion bottle with a spout top. Sprinkle that mixture on your cactus clotha and rub with that. Dirt and scurf sticks to the liniment/alcohol mixture and you didn’t add more moisture to your horse’s coat.
Nota bene: I try to let horses roll after work if I can. That lets them manage their own body and the dirt does a bit of the work in drying them off/ruffing up the coat. But the rolling opportunity does mean that you need something like the cactus cloth/dry liniment magnet to pull the dirt out of the coat before you re-blanket at the end.
I find that for horses who don’t get clipped or bathed all winter and work hard (and have HOs who don’t do laundry often enough), they can start to stink. Keeping up on them with the cactus cloth/dry liniment thing keeps them reasonably clean.
