How to groom a horse

There are some benefits to grooming a horse. First off it’s a great time to bond with your horse between horseback riding lessons, secondly your horse looks obviously really good when you’re done grooming her. It’s a great way to be able to check for wounds or injuries on your horse because usually you won’t be able to see it from the surface but you can feel it when you’re grooming them.

Also when you groom your horse there’s this oil in their coat called sebum and so when you groom them and distribute the oil throughout the coat sebum waterproofs as well as shines your horse’s coat which is really good for your horse.

Grooming your horse also helps improve their circulation.

To start off with grooming your horse you can use a curry comb. There are different types of curry combs. The first one is fine curry comb such as Oster Fine Curry for sensitive areas on the horse’s body or similar. The fine curry comb has very soft bristles, they’re bendable. This comb is for sensitive horse’s skin. You can use fine curry comb on such sensitive spots as your horse’s belly, their legs and face.

The second curry comb some people use is Jelly scrubber. On one side there’s a soft rubber bristles and on another side it has these hard little knobby things. This is not my favorite but I have it in my collection and use it sometimes.

The third type is actually a very common curry comb. You put your hand in there and it has oval shape with little rows of bristles.

I usually use curry comb in a circular motion on my horse’s body. It is best if you use the curry comb in a counter clockwise circular motion instead of clockwise because it just seems to get the dirt out better.

You can use the curry comb on your horse’s neck, body, and hindquarters.

After the curry comb I use the dandy brush or a hard bristle brush. So this brush is pretty much hard bristles. This brush is used to get off the larger particles of dirt after you finish currying your horse.

The dandy brush is supposed to brush away the bigger particles of dirt that the curry brought to the surface. Use swift short strokes to really push the dirt out.

After you’re done using the Dandy brush grab a body brush. The regular body brush has a little bit softer bristles than the Dandy brush but not quite like a soft brush. I recommend getting your brush with soft grip because it’s not only fun to hold but the bristles are quite soft but not too soft so you can use it on your horse’s legs as well.

The next brush I use is the soft brush. This brush you can use on your horse’s face if you don’t have a separate face brush. This brush has such fine bristles that it’s used to get like super almost microscopic particles out of your horse’s coat.

I have to mention another useful comb which is a metal curry comb. You can run it on the bristles of your soft brush to get the dirt out. And it cleans it off.

The next thing you wanna do is to clean your horse’s face. You can use a face brush by Wahl or similar brush with soft bristles.

To finish up her coat I take an old t-shirt and dip it in water, wring it out and go over her whole body with it. This helps get all the dust that’s been left behind or anything like that out of her coat. And also it makes it look really shiny.

Before I move on to her hooves, her mane and tale, I usually spray off her body with absorbing Ultra shield red.

After I spray her off I’m gonna pick  up her feet. There’s pretty much like two different hoof pick options: vinyl hoof pick which costs like 98 cents in a catalog and hoof pick with the handle. It has a tough picker and also a small brush. I recommend getting this one because it is more effective than the first one.

So to ask for your horse’s foot you’re just going to run your hand down their leg and gently squeeze just above the hoof. If you’re not having a success  though with picking up your leg there’s chestnut (also known as a night eye) on her leg. You just gently squeeze on it and their reflexes lift their foot up.

Take your hoof pick and brush it out and pick along the side. You want to avoid a sensitive part  of the hoof like a v shape in the middle of the hoof. Go down the corner like the edges of the v shape (called a frog), and pick on the bars.

It’s really important to pick out your horse’s feet at least once a day because if you ignore their feet they can grow a bacterial infection called thrush which can cause rotting odor emanating from the underside of a hoof. The responsible bacterium, Spherophorus neaophorus, eats away at the tissues of the frog, leaving a blackish ooze on the surface.

So take care of your horse’s feet and the horse’s feet will take care of you.

The next step is to take the D-Tangler or similar product which is basically the care for your horse’s mane and tail with conditioning spray for a smooth, shiny tangle-free finish, and spread it all over her mane.

Then I just take my Oster Equine Care Series brush out and gently comb out her mane starting at the tips and make your way up to the root.

So I hope now you know the basics of how to groom your horse. As you can see it’s not hard and everyone can do it.