How to Bathe a Horse (Step-By-Step Guide)

hey everyone so today i'm going to show you how to give your horse a bath so at the time we're filming this video we're almost at 5 000 subscribers so i just want to thank you guys so much for supporting us and watching our videos why don't you leave a comment down below of the type of videos you would like to see us do in the future and if you haven't already please give this video a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel for more weekly horse videos so before we give the horse a bath let's actually go over the supplies you'll need so to start out you're gonna need a bucket and i just got my lovely blue turquoise bucket here the next thing i have is obviously my horse shampoo and i just use mane and tail you see this and then i also use a sponge so i'm gonna use a sponge on more sensitive areas of the horse instead of the scrub brush and i'm also gonna use a scrub brush and this is to really work the dirt out of the horse's coat and lastly you're going to need a hose to spray off your horse so the first thing i'm going to do is put my shampoo in this bucket here and that way it's just easy to absorb it into the sponge and then put it on the horse and scrub them so i will put this off to the side for now so the next thing i'm going to do is hose my horse off and get them all nice and wet so then i can give them a bath so i'll turn on the water here and i don't want it shooting out so hard so i can go for a lighter setting like that that's nice so what i'm going to do to get my horse wet is i'm first going to start at their feet and this is just going to let him know that the water is coming up his butt and it's also gonna let him get used to the temperature of the water so if the water is a little bit more cold this is gonna help him get used to it so it's not such a shock when i spray it on tucker's a dancer he likes to dance around with water okay since i've hosed this side off i'm going to move on to the next side and get him all wet over there too so now that i've got tucker all wet what i'm going to do is i'm first going to wash his face before i get the rest of his body and this way we'll just get this out of the way so a lot of horses do not like their face washed off so i'm going to show you a few options you can use um to help wash their face off and get them used to water on their face because i think that's what the horses don't like so i will go ahead and show you guys so one way you can get your horse's head wet is by just turning on your hose like a really low water pressure and this is just more inviting to them it's not going to be so rough on their face compared if you're just spraying them full blast something you can do is most horses will play in the water with their nose so i'll just let him play with it so he can get used to it on his face and tucker is one where he does like to play with it look at him but then i can start working just under his chin and it's that light pressure so he's going to be more accepting of it and i'm just and it may throw her head up but you just want to be careful and gentle if you're doing this and your horse completely freaks out just release the pressure by moving the water back down to a place they're comfortable so if your horse is comfortable with the water on their nose then you can move it back there so if i start working up and he starts freaking out i'll just move the water back down to where he's comfortable and i'll just go from there so another method you can use to wet down your horse's face is to dampen a sponge and then i can just wipe his face with it good boy you know it's gentle but i can also apply the water to his head and i can get this forelock and around his eyes good boy so when it comes actually washing the horse's face i'm actually going to put the shampoo in my hands and that's just because it's a little bit more gentle and if the horse is used to you petting their face then they shouldn't have a problem with you just petting them with shampoo in your hand and get your face all nice and clean i'll clean this star because i can tell it's dirty you can see dirt in it so the biggest thing to remember when you're washing a face is just avoid getting shampoo in the horse's eyes and you can use like baby shampoo if you want to be extra careful and baby shampoo's a little bit more sensitive so if they do get it in their eyes it's not going to be as bad so now i'm going to rinse this face off and i'm just going to do it the exact same way that i got it wet i'll just start toward the mouth work my way up one thing you can do to get the forelock all washed out once they're shampooing it i pull it behind the horse's ear and i'll go from here and this way the shampoo can't run into their eyes and so i'll just wet it from up here good boy you're being so good yeah so if your horse does do better with the sponge that's another thing to consider you can just wet your sponge again and just kind of encourage the shampoo off the face it may take a little longer but you'll get to the same place eventually so now i'm going to wash the rest of tucker and what i'm going to do is i'm going to take my sponge and absorb my shampoo water i'm going to use this to transport the shampoo over to him and then i'll take my scrubby and scrub it in these aren't actually made to put your fingers through but my hand is small enough that i can so what i do i start at the highest point possible on the horse so start the horse's neck and i'll just get that shampoo everywhere and the reason i like to start there is because it allows the shampoo to run down the horse so i don't waste shampoo and i'll just use my scrubby to scrub out all the dirt so when i do the mane i actually will put the shampoo in my hand and then i'll go like this and this is just to me the most effective way to get the mane clean compared to trying to scrub it and i can just scrub scrub scrub you like that don't you so when i do the horse's legs i'm just gonna use my sponge because it's a lot softer compared to the scrubby and since the legs are a more sensitive part of the horse i want to be as gentle as i can and i can just wipe them off really well you want to pay attention to if your horse has feathers like this even that you really get these clean these feathers are great for holding in moisture to your horse's legs so it can cause some skin issues under there so if you have a draft horse that has feathers that's one thing you have to be really aware of so i like to really scrub right there behind my horse's pasterns just to get that nice and clean because that's the area of the leg that's in the mud and the dirt the most [Applause] so another area you may just want to use a sponge on is their underbelly and that's because this is another area that's a little bit more sensitive and so i can just use my sponge to wash back here [Music] so when you go to wash the hind end it's important to always remember to stay to the side of the horse for obvious reasons you don't want to get kicked you know i want to make sure butt cheeks are clean and all that so i can just scrub back here and always be careful if you're not comfortable or you don't know the horse that well because who knows how they're going to react so now i'm going to wash the tail and i'm going to show you guys a really easy way to do this so if you may have noticed when i sprayed him off in the beginning i didn't spray his tail i didn't wet it or anything because what i'm going to do is i'll pull his tail over here because like i said you want to stand inside i'm going to put it in my bucket that still has water and soap and shampoo in it and i can stuff it in there i'm gonna let it absorb all that shampoo that's left oh you're all right buddy there now i got a nice shampoo tail and i can kind of pull the tail up so i can get the rest of the tail and he's not like that and i just want to make sure it's all lathered up and getting clean so i just got to be sure to spray off his tail when i hose him off so i can get all this shampoo out so now that he's been shampooed and all cleaned now it's time to hose off the shampoo and this is because if the shampoo dries in the coat it can look nasty and it can also cause their skin to dry out so i'm going to hose them off and i want to make sure i get the mane because the mane is still all sudsy all over his body and his tail because we washed his tail oh look how clean you smell clean too so now that our horse is completely bathed what i'm going to do is i'm going to use this tool called a squeegee to remove all the excess water off of him the reason you want to do this is because if it's really hot out and you just turn your horse out and they have all this water on them the water can actually make them retain heat and it can cause them to overheat and so i'm just gonna use this thing to remove the water and it's gonna help them dry faster what it feels like you're doing is just scraping your horse off but you'll see all the extra water that's coming off of him so even though i have squeegeed him off he's still wet so if you're bathing your horse and it's a little bit more nippy out or it's cold one thing you'll want to do is put a fleece over them a fleece is just a fleece blanket and it helps keep them warm as they dry otherwise if it's cold out the horse may get chilled but right now it's pretty comfortable temperature out it's about 75 so i'm just gonna let him air dry and as i do that what i'm gonna do is brush out his mane and tail and make him look all pretty okay so i've moved tucker to the aisle so he can get the breeze that goes in and out and dry off what i'm gonna do i have my detangler here i'm gonna brush out his mane and tail so they are not snarly and i'm also gonna spray this on his coat at the end just to give him a nice shine and his cut will be silky smooth yes it will but i'll start with his main entail for now so real quick i am going to put a link in the description to all the products we've used today so if you'd like to purchase some of these products you can check out those links in the description so now that i've spread him off and everything i'm just gonna brush and you'll notice the detangler i use cowboy magic we're not sponsored by them or anything but their product is really good i noticed if you use it it does make their coat really soft and it does make it super easy to brush out your mane and tail so i'm going to show you all my technique for brushing out the tail so as you notice i'm standing next to the horse's rump and i'm just going to pull the tail over but the best thing to do i notice is like just grab the tail at the bottom and start there otherwise if you try to just brush it it's going to be way too hard so i put the detangler in and it's a lot easier to brush and as i start getting my brush through there more easily i'll move my hand up so it may sound like the tail is snarly which it is but this is nothing compared to if you don't use the detangler and if you're also someone who is focusing on like growing out your horse's tail you can use just a hard brush like a body brush and that will be a little bit more gentler on the tail finished product folks so here are some things to consider when it comes to bathing your horse if you've just got a new horse and you don't know much about it you may want to be a little bit more cautious when you go to hose them off the first time so you may want to have someone hold the horse instead of tying them up just in case the horse does freak out it's less likely that they'll hurt themselves if someone's holding them compared to if they're tied up or something like that another thing to note is you should have an experienced horse person with you if you're gonna bathe your horse for the first time and you're not sure how they're gonna react and that person will be able to guide you through the situation and help you out if there is anything that you do need someone to help you with so if you do have a horse that has a problem with water we have a video on working with spooky horses or horses that need to be desensitized so i will put the link in the description to that video and if you haven't already please subscribe to our channel and like this video for more weekly horse videos [Music] bye

Channel: Equine Helper

Views: 141,096

Keywords: How to bathe a horse, How to give a horse a bath

Id: DU_0a89KwHw

Length: 12min 44sec (764 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 07 2020