How to Groom a Horse

Grooming a horse requires using a variety of brushes to loosen the dirt out of the fur, smooth down the hair and polish the coat to a natural shine. Keep a horse properly groomed from head to hoof with advice from a riding instructor in this video on equestrian living.

One of the most important health needs of your horse is going to be good adequate grooming. We can keep it very simple though with the use of some basic supplies. I always like to start out with a rubber curry comb, fits neatly in my hand securely. And it's what we use to loosen any of the hardened dirt. A lot of the hair will come out as well. We go in a vigorous circular motion. The horse doesn't usually mind if we put a little bit of old fashion elbow grease I call it. In other words don't be afraid to get a little bit aggressive with your circling motion. It's somewhat massaging as well as it helps clean out that dirt. Then we want to follow it with what we would call a stiff dandy brush or body brush. Again I like the ones with the straps on my hand; it helps me in keeping that brush secure. Now I'll go over the area I've done with the curry comb but in the direction of the hair coat, with long kind of swift motions. We're trying to get all that loosened dirt and hair out of the horse's body and start to bring him to that sort of lustrous shine. Now my horse has taken on his winter hair coat already so we may not see the shine that we're hoping for. But our next step would be to take what we call a soft brush. This one having soft bristles you can go over that same area and that will help then to bring out the natural oils of the horse, and hopefully bring him to that more lustrous shine that we all like to see. Importantly though is just making sure we do this on a regular basis because their skin like ours is the most important thing that they have as a defense against their environments. Of course we all like to have a pretty mane and tail. So we want to find something that's going to be soft on the horse that would take out fewer strands so we can keep that fashionable thick mane and tail. I like to use just a simple human brush. To me those work the best. At times maybe a little fragile and we have to replace them. Then we start at the bottom and work our way up as the snarls untangle. Certainly our goal would be then this long mane would be free of snarls and pretty. We'd also then go to the tail with a similar idea but we'd stand off to the side as we started from the bottom and work our way up. Your fingers can also be a really good way to use what you have in thinning out those snarls. Last but not least of course would be hoof care. And we could go into great detail but we all want to have a hoof pick of some type. These have brushes to also clean any debris off the hoof itself. But these are actually a bit sturdier, sometimes I need these if we have hard packed mud or rocks. So you have several types of hoof picks. I like the sturdy ones when necessary. With that you have a few additional tools. If we were to have hosed him off and needed something we call a sweat scraper. We like to take off excess water so that it doesn't pool and create areas for bacteria to grow. And if he were really after a muddy event outside we might have to use a shedding blade. Those are kind of specialty tools, where our basic grooming should usually, usually keep it with a rubber curry, a hard dandy brush followed by a soft brush and then a mane and tail, and a hoof pick and that will take care of that horse, and keep him healthy for you.