It can be a blog hop or not, you do you, but I thought it’s a topic that everyone has opinions and their own personal variations on: bathing your horse.
Do you bathe regularly, or only before shows?
What’s your temperature cutoff?
Any favorite gadgets or shampoos?
Any other strong opinions?
I bathe Tristan always before shows, weather permitting, and maybe a handful of other times during the summer. I’m pretty neurotic about temperatures – below 70 feels a bit too cold for me for a bath just for fun – so it’s become an activity that we can do when it’s too hot to ride too much, but I want to get some interaction with him.
He would rather I not. He’s never liked water. He stops a good 20′ away from the wash stall and glares at me, and dances the whole time. You can take the mustang out of the desert, but…
Important note here: I sponge or hose him off if he gets at all sweaty during work. So by bathtime I mean a full-body shampoo plus rinse.
I do his mane and tail maybe every other time – shampoo and leave-in conditioner. He’s got pretty thick, full hair in both spots, and they’re both salt-and-pepper so they don’t show dirt too much.
I use either a jelly curry comb (the plastic mitt ones that have little spikes on one side and bigger spikes on the other) or this fun hand mitt thing that I got from my free Saddlebox a while ago.
I don’t know that I have a favorite shampoo, I’ll be honest. I use whatever I have on hand. Right now, that’s fancy Sore No More shampoo because I got it on a killer clearance deal at a tent sale, but in the past I’ve used just cheap human shampoo. I do keep a bottle of Farnham’s Aloedine on hand for when his skin gets a little funky – when he gets hives, for example, he gets bathed in that. Same for conditioner; right now I’m just using cheap Suave stuff. I’m lucky in that I don’t have to get too fancy for him, usually.
I use a sponge sometimes, for his face, and like the small-size curved rubber sweat scraper I bought on impulse several years ago, because I can work it into crevices and down his legs, unlike a flat sweat scraper or the larger rubber ones.
I also have that great carrying case that as you can see used to be in a hospital. Genuinely no idea how I got it. Probably my mother.
So, anyone else want to share?
beljoeor.com 
How fun! I’ll do it as a blog hop later this week, but I’m an absolute bathing minimalist. I rinse him off after every ride in the summer, but only use soap in the week before the show, and almost never on his mane. Unfortunately for Connor, he has a multi-step bath in order to make his flaxen as least yellow as possible, which is a bit of a losing battle.
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Other flaxen horses in our barn have complicated bathing regimens, too. The roan hides an awful lot, so I get away with more than I should…!
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Bathing is probably super regional, I kinda chuckled when I read you don’t bathe below 70. In California I shower horses off at much cooler temps. I also used to bathe (with soap) way more before our continued and prolonged drought restrictions.
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It probably is! I should have maybe clarified that I usually bathe in the afternoon/late evening, and 70 degrees for us means it will probably get into the 40s overnight AND that our water (which is from a well) is quite cold. If I had warm water and assurances that the temperature would hold. I’d probably bathe at colder temps.
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Ooof yes, we don’t get that cold at night! And if I bathe in the winter we have coolers and I’ll usually handwalk until the horse is dry. Not everywhere here has warm water, I’ve been only at a few barns and it is SUCH a luxury. I think I may invest in one of those heating irons at some point, though they kinda scare me but they scare me enough that I won’t leave it unattended lol
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I love this idea! I’ll be joining the blog hop this week. I always think a horsey bath looks fun to do, and in the end I just feel wet, stinky, and tired.
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