Cob Jockey

The only thing that bothered me about the Welsh show this year was how late in the year it is. Normally we hold them in August or September when the babies look good and everyone is sleek and shiny.

This year, we held it in mid-October, which meant I couldn't clip my boy until after the show, meaning we were 2-3 weeks later than I'd normally clip - and in a very warm autumn, that was not fun for either of us. I truly felt bad for making him uncomfortable in the name of a horse show - and I'm grateful that we don't ever plan on having this show this late again.

Lisa and I sharing a quiet moment at the show

Since he was all clean and bathed from the show, when I got him home on Sunday, I didn't even park the trailer before I started buzzing him. He literally went straight from the trailer (it's a less than 30 minute ride, don't feel too bad for him!) to the crossties.

Armed with brand new blades on my Lister Stars for the first time in...a long time...I proceeded to bang out one of the quickest and best clips of my life.

24 hours after clipping, and no filter - he is just that shiny

I had used Equifuse Rehydrinse on him on Thursday, and between that and the Omega Horseshine that he's been on for I think three or four coat cycles continuously now, he just has that effortless inside-out shine. I mean, the picture above was after a full day of turnout on Monday. Also can't hurt that he definitely doesn't have ulcers right now!

Mmmm dapples

I had to knock that clip out quickly and start packing, because one day after he got home from the Welsh show, he was heading to Cincinnati for flying changes boot camp!

As usual, Mary Wanless was amazing.  And as usual, it's going to take me some time to process and sort through my thoughts.  So in the meantime...

I made it, guys.  I made it without clipping until the third week of October.  The last two years I've had to clip the first week of October due to summer hanging on indefinitely.  Not so this year.  We've had a more or less normal fall, aside from being stupendously dry.






I waffled a LOT about how to clip him this year.  I've been having these nagging thoughts about clipping - about how I can't find hardly any published research on it, about how all of our current clipping styles are based on how people used horses 150 years ago and not actual science, about how there might be a better way to clip that looks weird but is better for the horse that we just don't know about yet.

In the end though, I A) couldn't find any research, B) didn't want to swim upstream, and C) concede that I'll be riding for more people than just my own trainer this winter and he should probably look socially acceptable.  Plus D), he's never had a problem with his hunter clip, even down to -12 F.  So I did my usual.

"You have no imagination, lady"

One thing I did differently - I wet clipped.  I've done this once before as an experiment and the results were good.  This time, I wet clipped because I clipped on a weeknight and I didn't have time to let him dry between the bath and the clip.  When you wet clip, you clip with them REALLY wet, like, just a step above soaking wet.

Them dapples

Pros of Wet Clipping

• The whole process start-to-finish takes about an hour less because you skip that whole "drying" part
• The hair doesn't blow around and doesn't get on you quite as much
• It seems to leave less lines?  The two times I've done it it's been with blades that had a few clips on them, and it still came out looking great.  YMMV.
• My Lister Star blades don't get hot at all with wet clipping.  Just warm.

Cons of Wet Clipping

• What hair does get on you is NEVER COMING OFF.  IT IS PLASTERED TO YOUR BODY.  But it's also less itchy.  Until it dries.  And then it's normal itchy.
• What hair lands on the floor is going to be next to impossible to sweep up
• Your clippers need to be powerful and sharp
• It needs to be warm enough that your horse doesn't die of exposure while you do it
• It's less satisfying.  Hear me out.  I find dry clipping oddly fascinating and soothing, the way the hair tumbles away beneath the blades.  I don't get that satisfaction from wet clipping.

Looks like a lot less hair when it's wet

You may think I don't prefer wet clipping since the cons list is longer, but overall, I think I prefer it.  You can't go wrong with either method, but wet clipping is so much faster, and my time is scarcer and scarcer with each passing clipping season.  It took me 90 minutes from pulling up to the barn to being done with clipping, and that included a full shampoo + rinse + condition + rinse.

Anyone ever tried wet clipping before?

I'm not sure what I did to cause this, but damn if my third (and last, please please please) clip this year wasn't my best ever:

I mean, that's just a good looking butt in general, if we're being honest.

A suspicious lack of clipper tracks

Third clip on those blades too.  Huh.  Maybe I will do wet clipping again in the future after all...

When I started full clipping Connor years ago, I usually did the first clip around October 15.  That seemed to be about when we had one final nice warm day before the forecast turned sharply colder, and it was the longest I could hold out before cooling him out after rides started taking forevvvvver.

But the past couple years...

#thanksglobalwarming

We just came off of our hottest and most humid October weekend in history, and that's becoming more the norm than the exception.  Connor's genetics did not prepare him for that, and I felt so bad for the little guy sweating just standing around that I went ahead and clipped last weekend.


I mean...at least he dries fast when it's pushing 90 and windy right?


I tossed around the idea of doing a blanket clip this year, but decided against it.  There's a chance we'll be doing some indoor schooling shows this winter, and we know we can keep him comfortable with a full clip even in the most brutal of winters, so there's really no reason to change it.

He genuinely already had a lot of coat going.

Connor's got a good sense of humor about just about everything, but after a bath, clipping and standing for brushing MTG into his tail, he was d-o-n-e with my reindeer games:

"...can I be done now?"

And since he'll be wearing at least a sheet by the end of the week...


...I went ahead and started his winter MTG routine.  Every winter he rubs the top of his tail on his blankets, but last winter I applied MTG to his tailbone and brushed it through his tail every 2-4 weeks.  It was the first winter he didn't rub his tail, so we're continuing that successful experiment this year.

And it doesn't look long in person but after seeing this picture I will probably be trimming it shorter this week too!

Anyone else clipping already?  Planning on a different clip this year?  What's some of your other winter horse grooming prep?

Of course 'significant' is relative.  Connor's full winter coat looks like this (if I let it grow out, which I do NOT do anymore!):

Yakity Yak!  Too bad we didn't get anything for scale in this photo, each one of these belly hairs was 3-ish inches long.

For comparison, the below photo was taken two weeks ago today.  He is just racing right into winter.


All the reminders that I'm about a month away from clipping 😭

Much to Connor's Aunt Mary's chagrin, I am not the World's Greatest Groom.  Mary likes to keep her horses "a bath away from the hunter ring" and pretends to be mortified by Connor's feathers on a semi-regular basis.

Two years ago

But Mary's going to start being proud of me now.  I have a copy of Emma Ford's grooming book on order, and I also clipped for a third time last weekend, which I've never done before.

"...this again?"

I did it because the clinic will coincide with peak fugly coat time.  His summer coat won't have visibly come in yet, his winter clip is still obvious, and the grey guard hairs stand out like crazy.

Sexy grey hairs

With a little encouragement from some awesome bloggers, I committed to the third clip.  I'm glad I did.  This was about the latest I could do it and not significantly affect the summer coat, so I got on it.

Before

After

I...loved it.  I might be doing this every year.
This clip actually turned out the best out of all my clips this year, which is weird because he hasn't had a bath since October and it's the same two sets of blades I've been using all year.  The only thing I did differently was soak him in Vetrolin Shine Spray before I started.

NOW STAY THIS WAY!

My trainer agreed, and in her very British way, said, "This clip looks a lot better than your last clip."  Which translated means "Your last clip looked terrible and secretly drove me crazy but I didn't say anything."  I just laughed.  This is how we roll.  Outside the barn, we're great friends.  Inside the barn, I both try to be the easiest boarder ever and also push her buttons sometimes.  Life's about balance, right?

Everything turned out great, except when my trainer walked by with hay when I was doing detail work with my little clippers and he slung his head around and gave himself that beautiful black clipper mark.  It adds character?

I had headed out to ride on Friday night after CrossFit, but then I found out our arena looks like this right now:






Don't get me wrong I am NOT complaining!  They're excavating the shifty sand footing to the base, leveling and compacting the base to get rid of some low spots, and mixing the sand with a footing additive to make it more stable. 

I am DELIGHTED that they're fixing it, but with it being dark out, it did mean no riding.  So:





As usual, one month after clipping him the first time, lessons were leaving him like this:

And this:




And this:

Also lessons are leaving him very tired.  It's tough to carry your own head.

So it was time.  My second clip of the year is always lower quality than the first.  For the first, he's always bathed and I use newly sharpened blades.  For the second, I'm like, "Ehhhh....it grows back fast.  Let's just get this hair off."









Poor guy.

Anyway, it's done.  And he grew this much hair in a month:





I've seen his full winter coat before, I know how thick it gets, but it still amazes me just how much hair this pony produces:


Glad that's over with!

I've been trying to hold off on clipping for so long.  Normally I clip after October 15th, and while I'm still the first to go every year in my barn, at least that usually gets us to where he can wear a sheet 24/7 and not need a million blanket changes.

Not this year.


That's the forecast for October 13, 14 and 15.  Wow.

Last Saturday I woke up to sunny skies, a high in the 80's and a stiff breeze - aka, weather that would dry my Yak super fast after the bath I'd give him before I clipped.  And I looked at the forecast - more 80's for the foreseeable future (CRAZY).  And my decision was made.

Drying after his bath

With two sets of blades freshly sharpened by my local clipper guy, it took me less than 45 minutes to give him his first (and not last) buzz of the year.



He's a lot darker under there this year as a result of being on night turnout all summer.  And my favorite part of clipping him: the dapples.


Now I'll feel a lot better about riding him in this heat.

I knew what I was signing myself up for when I gave Connor the fastest Irish clip in history before my lesson a week ago Thursday.  I knew I'd have to reclip the whole horse in order to give him his second and (hopefully...) final full clip of the year.

Yup.

I'm getting pretty fast at clipping in general.  I'm not good at it - that's the point of a full clip (read: don't have to do straight lines) on a horse that grows hair faster than anything else in the barn.  But I'm fast, and reasonably good at minimizing lines these days.


Anyone else on their 2nd or 3rd clip of the winter?