Bath Time!
Everyone loves a clean horse – they smell nice, they look great, and on a hot summer’s day its fun for both you and your horse. But when should your really bathe your horse? And how can you do it safely, and without a lot of expensive products and chemicals that can potentially harm the environment?
Horses really don’t need baths to stay clean. Sure, they get dusty and muddy, but rolling around in the dirt is part of a natural process that keeps the horse’s coat smooth and his skin healthy. For most horses, a thorough brushing is all that is needed to get the worst of the dirt out, and a brisk brushing – with plenty of elbow grease - is the best thing you can do to bring a shine to your horse’s coat.
That said, there are times when a bath makes sense. If your horse has a medical condition, such as scurf, lice, or another infection, washing with iodine based shampoos or medical preparations containing fungicide or pesticide may be required. In these cases, talk to your vet about what your horse needs, including how often to bathe him and for how long. Injuries too may need cleaning out with a medicated shampoo or soap. These instances are most often occasional, and once the condition or injury has cleared up, bathing should no longer be necessary.
Many owners like to bathe their horses before a show. If your horse has a lot of white, or is very dusty, then a bath can help to get out stubborn stains or dust buried deep in the coat. However, bathing with shampoos strips the coat of its natural oils, and these oils are what gives the coat its shine. If you plan to show, and want to bathe your horse, make sure you do it at least three or four days in advance, and you get plenty of brushing in afterwards to stimulate the skin to produced those shine-inducing oils!
There are alternatives to bathing for show horses too. Investing in a stable vacuum is a great idea, especially if you have several show horses in your stable. A horse vacuum gets out all that stubborn dust, and most horses quickly learn to enjoy the way it feels too. Best of all, with a vacuum you avoid wasting water and using lots of harsh detergents. Even if you don’t have a vacuum, ask yourself if you really need to bathe your whole horse – often a ‘spot wash’ of stubborn stains and a good scrub of white tails is all that is needed to be show-ring ready, unless you are competing at the very highest levels.
Plain water rinsing is a good option too for day-to-day washing, instead of an all-out bath. In winter, rinsing wet mud from your horse’s legs is a quick alternative to waiting for it to dry so you can brush it away, but make sure you also dry your horse’s legs thoroughly. Water trapped in the heels can lead to painful cracks and infections. After a hard ride in hot weather, hosing off a sweaty horse helps to remove the salt from the sweat, and is refreshing to the horse too. Unlike a full bath, plain water from the hose won’t strip away the natural oils the coat needs to stay shiny and protect the skin. If you ride endurance horses, or have a horse prone to girth galls and other skin sores, a sponge down of the girth area with some warm water mixed with Epsom salts can help to toughen up the skin and prevent new sores.
If you decide you really need to bathe, what’s the best way to do it? First of all, use a bucket instead of a hose. No matter how efficient you are, you’ll use less water with buckets. If you fill the buckets before you need them, and set them out in the sun, you’ll also take the chill off and make the water temperature more comfortable for your horse. In any case, avoid whole-body baths if the temperature is below 65 degrees, unless the bath is absolutely necessary, and make sure you have a wool or cotton blanket ready to keep your horse warm afterward. Putting an anti-sweat sheet under the rug will create pockets of trapped air, which not only keeps your horse warmer but also speeds up the drying process too.
Invest in a good, big sponges, and get them good and wet. You don’t need to dampen the horse first, just mix the shampoo into the bucket, and soak your sponge. Try to avoid dabbing at your horse; use a dripping sponge so you don’t have to scrub – scrubbing will break and damage the hairs, making a shine more difficult, and can also irritate the skin underneath. Avoid getting water into your horse’s ears; when you wash his face, use a drier sponge, and stay away from the top of his head. Finish by dunking his tail onto the bucket, and then scrubbing the tail hairs with your hands to remove any persistent stains.
Once your horse is good and soapy, replace your buckets with clean water and rinse out your sponges. Use soaked sponges to rinse your horse off, making sure not to forget he sensitive areas like behind the elbows and under the jaw. Now make sure your horse is blanketed, or if stabled that he is kept out of drafts until he is fully dry. Smooth the damp coat down with a towel to encourage the hairs to lie flat. You can walk your horse until he dries out, or leave him tied up with a hay net to nibble on. If you but your horse back n his stable, or out in the fields while he is still wet, you can guarantee that the first thing he will do is roll!
What kind of shampoo should you use? There are countless horse shampoos on the market, and many make some pretty impressive claims about their ability to enhance coat colors or remove stains. The fact is though, you really don’t need to spend a lot on horse shampoo, and many of these products contain a lot of harsh detergents that are bad for your horse’s skin, and harmful to the environment. In almost every case, a baby shampoo- one for human babies that is – is very effective and will get your horse clean. Other mild shampoos for people work just as well; Ivory for example, and if you don’t need to see bubbles then warm water with baking soda makes a mild but effective shampoo. Best of all, with these simple products, you can be confident that when you tip out your buckets you aren’t putting lots of dangerous detergents into the environment!
So save your money and avoid the expensive equine products. If you have stubborn stains to remove, try rubbing them with half a lemon – that removes most grass and manure stains – and rinsing afterwards. Scrubbing white tails with a paste of baking soda and water can get most dingy tails sparkling white again. And if you really can’t get out a stubborn spot on a white coat, a little dusting with baby powder right before you go into the show ring can hide a mark temporarily on white legs or coats!
