Horse Grooming - Reasons For Grooming

Reasons For Grooming

Horsemen agree that grooming is an important part of horse care, and proper grooming is essential for horses that are used in competition. Most recommend grooming a horse daily, although this is not always possible. However, regular grooming helps to ensure the horse is healthy and comfortable. At a minimum, horses are generally groomed before being worked, and are usually groomed and cleaned up after a workout as well.

The main reasons for daily grooming include:

  • improved health of the skin and coat
  • decreases the chance of various health problems such as thrush, scratches, and other skin problems
  • cleans the horse, so chafing does not occur under areas of tack
  • gives the groom a chance to check the horse's health, such as looking for cuts, heat, swelling, lameness, a change in temperament (such as depression) which could indicate the horse is sick, and look to see if the horse has loose or missing horseshoes
  • helps to form a relationship between horse and handler, which can carry over to other handling duties and riding

Horse showmanship is a horse show class that considers quality of grooming for as much as 40% of the total score.

Read more about this topic:  Horse Grooming

Famous quotes containing the words reasons for, reasons and/or grooming:

    There may be other reasons for a man’s not speaking in publick than want of resolution: he may have nothing to say.
    Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)

    ... to a poet, the human community is like the community of birds to a bird, singing to each other. Love is one of the reasons we are singing to one another, love of language itself, love of sound, love of singing itself, and love of the other birds.
    Sharon Olds (b. 1942)

    Cats are the ultimate narcissists. You can tell this because of all the time they spend on personal grooming. Dogs aren’t like this. A dog’s idea of personal grooming is to roll in a dead fish. Dogs spend their time thinking about doing good deeds for their masters, or sleeping.
    James Gorman (b. 1949)