Winter, for a lot of us, is a slow time when it comes to riding and training our horses. The days are shorter and the weather is colder, making it challenging for us to put in the horse hours that we would like to. Many equestrians, including myself, choose to give our horses a break from training and working during these dark months. It’s a time for the horses to decompress and spend their energy keeping themselves warm and hanging out with their pasture mates. Despite this recess from warm days and motivated training goals, our bond with our horses can still remain strong as we look towards the spring. The simplest and quickest way to maintain this bond? Grooming.

You Scratch My Back, I'll Scratch Yours

At their nature, horses are allogroomers, meaning they partake in mutually beneficial grooming behavior with their pasture or herd mates. This commonly looks like horses scratching each other's withers, or in the warmer months, when horses stand together, nose-to-tail, and gently swat the flies off the other horse’s face. As caretakers, we can incorporate ourselves into this natural tendency by grooming our horses. Not only will grooming in the winter strengthen your bond with your horse, but it will provide several other benefits to your horse as well.

A horse will shed its summer coat as winter month’s approach and grow in a thick and healthy winter coat, assuming their nutritional needs are being met. This winter coat has unique properties that help keep the horse insulated and protected from the elements. Grooming this coat, both in the summer as well as the winter, will keep the coat functioning as it should. When we use a curry brush, we stimulate the oil glands in the coat’s hair follicle, which then secretes oil onto the hair. This oil has antimicrobial and anti-fungal properties to it, along with being water repellent. All of this helps keep the horse dry, insulated, and comfortable. 

I prefer to use a metal curry on winter coats over the muscular areas of the horse, and a rubber curry on the legs where there is no muscle. The metal curry works great to get in deeper to a thicker coat and stimulate the hair follicles. Horses that are receptive to this grooming activity might even start scratching you back in a form of “returning the favor”!

Keeping an eye on your horse's health

Not only will grooming your horse in the winter help keep their coat healthy, but it will also give you a hands-on view of how the horse is doing overall. Brushing your horse a few times a week (assuming you’re not actively riding) will let you find cuts and scrapes as they happen so that you can address those issues accordingly and help prevent the injury from getting infected or worse. Horses who develop dull coats may have deficiencies in their diet- catching this early on will help prevent weight loss and behavioral issues in the long run. 

While you’re grooming your horse, you can add in some belly scratches, or belly lifts, to your grooming process. This act of scratching the underside of your horse’s belly, with medium pressure, not only feels good to the horse, but actually provides a wonderful topline stretch for them. When the belly is scratched, the horse activates the abdominal muscles and lifts the topline, allowing for the spine to decompress to a certain degree. Some horses will respond more than others to this activity, but every horse can benefit from this simple activity, and every human-horse bond will strengthen. 

If you choose to blanket your horse, you need to make grooming a couple times a week a priority in your schedule. Blankets can be a great tool at helping our horses out, but can also be a source of coat issues if moisture is trapped between the blanket and the horse. Rain Rot is a bacterial infection that affects the hair follicles and eventually causes hair to fall out. This can be a very uncomfortable situation for the horse and will delay your spring riding plans until the infection has subsided. Frequently removing blankets and grooming your horse will allow the blankets to dry out, stimulate the horse’s coat, and hopefully prevent rain rot from occurring. 

Nothing cures the winter blues quite like a horse hug

Another way to bond with your horse during the winter months? Simply give them a hug. Wrap your arms around your horse, let your hands get warm from their body heat, and bury your head into their coat. Breath in the smell of your horse and let the magic of their scent bring you peace and a sense of belonging.