Welcome to Trainer Tuesday! Each week we ask trainers a question and gather their answers for you. These trainers have a range of experience, backgrounds, and focus points of their programs, so the answers have as much variation as you would expect and also probably much more similarity.
This week’s question posed is: How often do you full body clip your show horses and why?
Here are their answers:
“We try to clip as infrequently as possible for the health of the coat and the skin oils. However, some grow hair like mountain goats and need it often. It’s not just for show ring presentation – we take into account how much they sweat (both in practice and on show days), the temperature they’re competing in, if they are prone to skin issues that are helped if the coat is shorter and dries faster.” -Kyla Makhloghi
Read more from Kyla and listen to her on the Plaidcast here.
“Our home base is in Colorado, so we are in a colder and drier climate. The show horses wear a trace or blanket clip at home in the winter until they are getting ready to go to a show.
We went to GLEF this past summer and I underestimated the humidity. Some of the horses were full body clipped before we went and two others, who were in an acceptable coat for showing in our home climate, should have been clipped but weren’t. They are much easier to keep dry and clean when they are clipped.
In a nutshell, they are body clipped as needed for shows when my crystal ball is working!” -Shaun Clark
Read more Trainer Tuesday Responses from Shaun here.
“On average ours get clipped 3 to 4 times a year. It totally depends on the horse or pony, their age, their breeding, the time of year, how often they show and their work load. If they have cushings it’s also more often.
I had one horse for 2 years and never clipped him. I have ponies that get clipped almost every month.
If we clip a pony for Harrisburg we might also have to clip it again for Washington, because the amount of daylight changes so much those 2 weeks and their winter coat is still growing during that time. Simply put – if they are working we clip them as often as their hair grows.” -Jennifer Taylor
“It all depends on climate and how fast they grow hair back! Just have to watch, if they get too velvety or fluffy, it’s time for another clip.” -Cara Wheeler
Read more Trainer Tuesday responses from Cara here.
