TBH if the trainer is insistent on clipping, it might be worth using stocks with a combo of drugs to keep everyone safe.
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Maybe I’m just used to horses here in the bowels of heat and humidity in the southeastern US. None of the ones I know have enough of a coat to clip. They still sweat a ton just standing around, but they’d do that if they had zero hair, I’m pretty sure. The only thing that helps is shade, fans, and hosing down.
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Even when I lived in N. Calif my horses ( and all others at the BB) shed out slick. A horse in work sweats even in that lower temp, non humid climate. If this TB is objecting that violently to being clipped then I see no good reason to force or drug him to the hilt.
Maybe the owner needs to look into why he is hairy enough to even need body clipping in the Summer?
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The lights on all of the time doesn’t work that great, anyway.
I have to keep a light on at night to deal with separation anxiety from one of mine and they all seem to get pretty normal coats.
How is he to groom? I ask because my epm mare’s polyneuritis symptom was extreme irritability to being curried on her back and sides. She was fine to ride and never neurological, but treatment with oragen and lavamisol helped tremendously. I also recently discovered that low dose of equiox makes her more comfortable to be curried. Maybe do a anti inflammatory trial in addition to sedation and see what happens.
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Lights =/= regular led or fluorescent lights.
They need to trick the brain into believing it’s UV light. They don’t need to be on all the time, just as long as the longest summer day.
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I boarded for years at a barn which had lights on timers, due to the fact that multiple boarders (including the barn owners) showed. My horses have always been of the relatively heavy winter coat type, but they had significantly lighter winter coats during this time. I boarded six horses over the years, up to four or five at a time, so pretty consistent results.
This was without my horses receiving any blanketing, whatsoever, although the serious show people blanketed often and heavily (with hoods, too), in a relatively mild winter climate with year-round turn-out possible.
When we built our barn, I considered having the electrician put lights on a timer, for those much lighter winter coats, but decided I’d rather have the horses turned out the extra time instead of being in under the lights.
This article has some tips:
If it’s noise, has the trainer tried a hair dryer? Tho, the time to start that is in the winter.
Get horse sweaty on a cold day, and use the hair dryer to warm him up. Some horses get real cozy with noise after that. She’s probably already tried it tho.
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Not a cheap option, but a very good option if you can’t use lights. https://equilume.com/lightmask/
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What a fascinating idea!
We boarded our dressage horses at a paint/QH barn while we were in FL one winter. Not that I advocate or understand this in the least but they injected their halter horses with some sort of copper compound to, as they said, “blow their coat”. Perhaps this would be the one instance where I could see trying this.
Maybe some QH people know what they were doing and could advise?
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Arsenic. It’s arsenic that will “blow” a coat.
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Yup, Dr Google agrees. The trade name I saw was Jurocyl. It wasn’t clear from a quick search whether it’s available in the US.
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Good grief, arensic? I think we will not do that, even if googling says safe in small doses.
I think I remember reading that arsenic was used by old-timey unscrupulous horse dealers to make a horse’s coat shiny. Too bad his liver was probably shot.
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Yes, I knew people who used aresenic as recently as 25 years ago. It was surprisingly common. I stopped helping people who showed at breed shows shortly thereafter and never heard about it again until this thread.
That would actually be caco copper they were likely using, it contains arsenic. Heard about that in the 80’s. One idiot at the local STB track was using it as a “pre-race” to build his horses blood up; which it is supposed to be good for in the proper dosage, ended up with one of his horses testing with so much arsenic in its sample, it should have been dead. His fine and suspension put him out of the business thankfully. I think he’s driving a dump truck now.
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