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

hey everyone today I wanted to walk you through the process of grooming a horse so whether you're a beginner and you need to know how to do this or if you're just looking for a basic daily grooming routine this video will help answer your questions as always make sure you like this video and subscribe to our channel for more weekly horse videos so I like to think of Tucker as a neat-freak he's always super nice he doesn't like to roll a lot but even though his coat looks great I'll just show you exactly what I do with him on a daily basis just to help keep him clean okay so real quick as I go to get my brushes let's talk about some of the benefits of grooming your horse so one benefit of grooming your horse is that it helps desensitize your horse to human touch and it also allows you personal and quality time with your horse to get to know them better by anyway so if you have a young horse or a horse that came maybe not from the best situation grooming your horse just allows your horse to learn that human touch is good and it's gonna feel good and gentle rather than being rough so this is also a great thing to do if you have like foals or young horses you can do this with them to just help them get used to that touch and being touched everywhere that you know otherwise of course may not be comfortable with so for example I have an equine massage therapist for those of you who didn't know and I've learned that there are a lot of places that horses don't actually like to be touched usually it's like down by their genitals or in the inside of their leg right here and so if you have a horse that's not used to that and then you suddenly go to massage them or touch them or groom them you might get kicked which no one wants to do and so just getting them used to that touch so you can touch them everywhere and you can be confident that they're not gonna wall up you or bite you so another great benefit for grooming your horse regularly is that it allows you to inspect them for injuries or maybe soreness they're experiencing the last thing I want to do is get on my horse have a sore back and they buck me off no one wants to do that right and last but not least grooming your horse makes them look good Tiger has a lot of ladies to impress you know so it's up to me to make him look fabulous for them ain't that right buddy so now it's time to get into the basic steps for our grooming routine so the first and obvious step is to secure your horse I don't like my horses walking away when I'm grooming them or trying to do something so I'm gonna secure them to make sure that they'll stay still and I can do what I can do horse will just stand there nice so I have Tucker in the cross ties today you can also tie your horse up you can Brown ties your horse Brown ties or you can just hold the rope and have them stand there riding do that so once your horse is secure the next thing you're gonna want to do is start with the currycomb so this here is a curry comb as you can see it kind of looks like a circle here's another thing you can use as a curry comb and you can notice that the little teeth are just a little different some horses have sensitive skin and so you're gonna want to find a curry comb that has smaller teeth for them Tucker here he has pretty thick skin but I one time had a Paint who had like pink white skin and she needed a very soft sensitive curry comb so I would use something like this so I'm gonna use my curry comb to break up any mud patches my horse may have and also to bring to the surface any dirt that may be lying underneath their coat and so I can use it in a circular motion like this and I can press pretty good and hard to bring that dirt up you don't want to be you know brush your really soft or you're not gonna get that dirt you want to use a good and strong pressure and see he's chewing so he likes it but this could also help notify you if you're using this pressure and there's a spot that your horse is sensitive and may be sore this could help you know that they are sore because they'll react to it so you can use your quarry comb all over the horse's body from their neck to there but since it does have these thicker teeth you may want to stray away from the legs and the horse's face just because those are more sensitive areas and you know want to use those big teeth of the brush on those areas so we've used the curry comb to bring the dirt to the surface so now we're going to use the hard brush to sweep the dirt away so this brush is called a hard brush because the bristles are kind of rigid and hard so if you were to brush your arm it kind of scratches you and it's kind of uncomfortable and so this is a hard brush there's also a soft brush and they look the exact same so it's important to know the difference but you're gonna use the hard brush right after use the curry comb and that's what I'm gonna do right now so you should think of the hard brush is kind of like a broom because these bristles they remind me of a broom so when you use it you know you're sweeping that dirt away but you're also gonna wanna brush in the direction of the hair to properly remove that dirt so if you look at a Tucker closely you can see that the hair is lying this way so I'm gonna sweep the way in the hair so when you're using the hard brush you can use it all over the horse's body you know as you use the curry comb but you know these bristles can be a little uncomfortable like I said when I go like this it does scratch me so you aren't gonna want to stay away from sensitive areas on your horse back by the genitals or maybe their lower leg even their face if they're really sensitive sometimes I will use this brush if they have mud on their legs I'll just use this to D clump the mud because it's a little bit more softer than the curry comb but always be looking at your horses reaction to determine where you should be using it you know I don't want to use it if they're gonna be uncomfortable next up we're ready for our soft brush so as you can see this looks just like a hard brush the only difference is when you run your hand on it it's a lot softer and these bristles move a lot easier so that's why it's called a soft brush okay so a soft brush can actually be used on the more sensitive areas of your horse and the soft brush is just simply used to remove any remaining dirt that may be on your horse once you use a hard brush so just like the hard brush you're gonna brush in the way of the hair whether you're brushing the legs because you can use this on the more sensitive areas or the coat or even the horse's face yeah and you like this don't you brush right in between your giant white troop part there yeah so the next thing I'm going to do once my horse is groomed is I'm gonna use a hoof pick to pick out their hooves see if you're trying to pick out your courses those at least once a day if you can this just helps remove any debris that may cause them discomfort and also just helps get that gunk out of their homes that could create a bacterial infection or a fungal infection so I'm gonna pick out his hose right now so when you go to pick out your horses hose can I help you are you gonna pick out your horses hose you want to make sure you're standing next to the leg you're picking out you don't want to stand in front of it you don't want to stand behind it because you don't want to get kicked so make sure you stand beside it and then I'm gonna take my hand and just run it down his leg to ask him to pick up his hose and let him know that that's my intention and just to let him get used to that touch on his legs so I'm gonna run my hand down and then when I get to about here I can pinch you can feel that there's like a tendon right here you can pinch them between there or you can pull up on their feathers that they have or the fetlock so I'm gonna pull on this bit lock because he has a lot of feathers there picks up his hook so I'm gonna hold the hook with my hand that's closest to the horse and then to pick out the hooks the best place to start is at the corner of the heel so you can see you can start it both of these corners here and there's a groove right here that allows you to dig nice and deep in there to get the dirt out and then you're just gonna want to be careful of this triangle here this is the Frog and it's a vital part of the hook so make sure you do not go digging into that but I'll just start here I'm digging to this group so now that I pick this out a little bit you can see these grooves a lot more clearly so now I'm just gonna run my hoof pick along the edge of their hoof just to remove any dirt from around here because believe it or not but the dirt can actually get grown into the horses hooves so if your horse likes to pull their cubs away one thing you can try is to when they go to pull dip their toe up and that kind of takes that power away from them the reason you want to be able to keep them from kicking their leg away from you is that once they learn they can do it once they're gonna try and keep doing it over and over again so once I'm cleaning out the horses I'm gonna put the hook down gently just so that the horse doesn't stomp forget bruises on his feet and I want them to learn that it's up to me to put the hook down not then so there you go buddy so if you want a more in-depth look at cleaning the horses hose I made a whole video about it you can check it out and I'll put the link in the description oh you're gonna eat that one too I don't think you'd like to eat this okay so the last brush I'm gonna use today is the main and tail brush I'm gonna use this to brush out my horse's mane and tail so this isn't something I included my daily grooming routine just because if you brush your horse's mane ur tail too much you can thin it out but I do do this probably twice a month or once a month just to make sure there's no dreadlocks for me and my horse's mane and tail are staying nice and clean and untangled so if you're working on growing out your horse's mane or tail you may want to use a hard brush to do that and Tucker wants to eat this and the only reason you do this is a hard brush it is a little gentler on the hair and it won't rip it out like this brush well so I'm just going to start on his Mane then I'll start at his withers and it makes pretty easy to brush right now because I have it pulled so it's pin and it's short so I can just do this really quick just brush that layer oh look at him boy good boy so now I'm gonna work on Tucker's tail here just like quick now when you work on the tail anytime you don't want to stand directly behind the horse you want to stand to the side so beside his leg right here for the obvious reason so they can't just evolve you what I'm gonna do I have my cowboy magic which is a detangler here I'm just going to spray this tail because I know it's going to be tingly and this will help untangle it so what I'm ready to brush the tail what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna grab it and I'm gonna pull it to me some to the side pull the tail to the side and then I'll just start at the bottom because that's where it's gonna be the easiest and the least untangled and as I untangle the hair I'll just work my way up the tail and cap my magic makes it so much easier he's like I'm gonna have this done in a walk voila beautiful gorgeous I wish my hair was that easy to brush so now that we've covered the basics of grooming I'm gonna walk you through some safety tips to remember when it comes to brushing your horse so in the summer we love to use fly spray on our horses to keep those pests away one thing to remember is that you're gonna want to start using the fly spray at your horse's hoof or the bottom of their leg and slowly work up and this is just because if the horse is uncomfortable and has never been sprayed you're gonna know that they're uncomfortable rather than just spraying and having them freak out and put you in danger so I'm just going to start at the bottom of his leg and gradually work up and tucker is really good with the fly spray so the next tip I want to cover when it comes to safety when grooming your horse is when you go to walk behind them always remember to touch them and let them know you're back here and also to walk close behind them and this is just to help protect you if the horse is to kick so if you're standing close to them and they kick they can't really get power behind that backward motion but if you're standing far away and they kick you're gonna get hurt so just remember let them know you're there but close behind them and you should be okay the last tip is for those of you who are working with the horse you may not know or that you're not really comfortable around if you're scared of that I'm kicking you or going at you while you can do is put your hand in the middle of their leg this will help the muscle keep from contracting and so they can't get a good powerful kick at you so if I'm working with the shoulder I can put my fist right here and if I'm working with the hind end I can put my fist right here and this way I just kind of have leverage on their legs if I need it and it can also help keep that muscle from contracting like it needs to to kick if this video was helpful for you do us a favor and hit the like button and then go subscribe to our Channel and if you all have stuff that you like to include in your daily grooming routine that I didn't mention comment down below I would love to try it stay tuned for more weekly horse videos [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Equine Helper

Views: 151,258

Keywords: How to Groom a Horse

Id: Plb64MqF0Ks

Length: 12min 10sec (730 seconds)

Published: Mon May 25 2020