When it comes to washing horses, anything that can make the task easier and with better results is an absolute essential in my book, you know, cause you get just as soaked as the horses and all that scrubbing can be hard work. That is why I have to share with you this wonder tool!
They're the Hands On grooming gloves and they are incredible. They can also be used in a number of ways when grooming which I'll go into later.
These little beauties have rubber spikes and raised rubber lumps that act to massage the skin and lift the dirt to the surface of the coat. Here you can see that they're really collected that dirt on the gloves, so they're extremely good to use before brushing. Read on for how we have found they work best!
The best use I've found for them is really scrubbing out the dead skin, dirt and dust from the horse or ponies coat when wet bathing them.
In the winter, as I am certain many horse and ponies will do is roll and wallow in the mud as much as possible, so if you want to clean them up and washed them with the Hands On grooming gloves, it makes getting down through the coat and lifting away the dirt and debris much much easier.
We've found these especially helpful with our hairy Shetland pony Millie as under her thick winter coat she has a lot of dandruff and dusty oily build up, which is great for keeping her warm in the winter but come spring when she starts shedding her winter coat it does make her very hot.
The Hands On gloves are super easy to use and well thought out in design. Simply undo the velcro wrist strap, slip your hand in and secure on quite tightly round the wrist with the velcro. We do advise they be done quite tightly so when rubbing the coat your gloves won't slip off your hands!
Here is Millie mid bath and you can see how much brown dirt is coming out just by looking at the colour of the soap suds.
Another use is when horses are shedding their winter coat there are lot's of tools around to aid with removing it and we use both the Hands On gloves as well as the Equigroomer to really get it that winter coat out without removing the new summer coat. Simply put on the gloves are normal and run your hands through the coat; we find that doing so in circular motions is a great way to go against the hair and easily remove it! The rubber lumps and bumps will grab the hair from the root and really lift it out and away, making the whole process much quicker. We then usually run a Equigroomer over the remaining hard to remove thick winter hair to really get the coat out.
A final option we've found to be a great use for these gloves is when grooming your horse regularly, pop the gloves on and rub your fingers through the coat, quite hard against the skin, to bring the dead skin and dust to the surface. Then use a long bristled body brush to flick the dirt and dead skin off the coat. The gloves work must better at getting under the coat much better than bristles can! Then you should be left with a nice shiny dust free horse!
They can be purchased from Smart Grooming for £19.95 or Horsehealth.co.uk
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