shedding

I am a longtime user of Furminators for dog and cat. I think they’re terrific at getting deep into an animal’s coats and taking care of stray hair before it ends up in my dinner. (Though let’s be honest everything in my life is covered in animal hair anyway.)

So when I came across this knockoff version of the Furminator specifically marketed for horses – and it was $5.50 on clearance at TJ Maxx – well, that was worth the price of admission.

ps packaging does not hold up to idiot dogs

The FurBuster comes in two parts: the handle and the blade itself. The blade was a bit tricky to get into the handle, but a little bit of wrestling and it clicked in. It has not even threatened to budge since then, so I think the tough part was worth it.

Does it work?

YES!

It really does. That was a not-too-hard pass on Tristan’s shoulder. It absolutely digs pretty deep and gets up quite a bit of hair.

Next question: is it worth it? Nah.

Look, it’s a great little toy. I’m not sorry I bought it to try out, and it’s definitely part of my shedding arsenal now. That being said, it does have some drawbacks, and I’m not sure it performs all that much better than a good old-fashioned shedding blade.

First drawback: it clogs up pretty quickly. Because of its design, hair gets caught in the blade and stays there. Shedding blades sort of push that hair ahead of them, and you can just keep going and going and it piles up. This gets much more hair in a single pass – but you have to manually remove the hair after each pass.

Second drawback: it’s not flexible. It does a great job on the large wide spaces – neck, shoulders, back, butt, etc. – but it’s stiff and tough to actually get any hair off the legs.

Third drawback: it’s pretty invasive. Which means Tristan loves it! My horse has never been groomed hard enough in his entire life. He loooooooves a good hard, deep curry and half falls asleep while you use this thing. I think it helps alleviate some of the itching from shedding while it pulls the hair out.

But I know that an awful lot of horses cannot handle being groomed deeply (or even at all!). This is soooooooo not the tool for those horses! They would absolutely hit the roof. It’s much more invasive than a regular shedding blade – it goes deeper, it grabs more hair, and its rigid nature means that the horse’s skin has to yield to it, unlike a shedding blade, which shapes around a horse’s curves.

So: fun purchase in the moment, not something I’m going to recommend everyone run out and buy.

First things first: Tris went outside last night! I took him to one of the small turnouts near to the barn and threw him a flake of hay. He behaved beautifully, just munched away happily. He went on a bit of a walkabout in search of a puddle to drink from, but that was it.

Unfortunately, the mud/puddle situation is such that I don’t think he can go on more frequent turnout until he is more healed or it’s drier. His boots are too porous. They are really meant for stall rest. So he will get occasional, supervised outings but mostly stick to handwalking.

In the good news department, he has finally started shedding! I spent a whole currying away while he was eating his hay. Spring is on its way!

Category: shedding

Product Review: Bamboo FurBuster for Horses

One Less Worry