December 4, 2014

Winter grooming pretty much sucks. Ponies with long hair are hard to keep clean.  They cake mud into their hair and it can be near impossible to get it out.  If you clip them you have to deal with blanketing, which can be a burden.  But it does make cleaning much easier.  It also makes it easier for someone like myself that tends to ride right before dark.  With long hair my pony gets sweaty and hot, and their hair is too thick to dry out on its own.

So I choose to clip.  Poe got his second clip of the year over the warm weekend.  I generally go for a very easy modified English hunt clip.  I do the neck, check and then a line from the wither area down to the flank area.  Sometimes Ill shorten it up and just go a ways back on the belly.  This leaves hair under the saddle, so no itchies.  but it gets the bigger sweat areas cleaned off.

Poe is a champ to clip and stands there looking like a brave statue, enjoying the attention.  Don’t let his serious expression in the photo below fool you.

I have given Simon the same, or similar clip for years.  When I clipped him in early October he got angry towards the end of the session and refused to let me finish his belly.  I tried to clip him again this past weekend but he flat out refused.  I picked the clippers up (still turned off) and he all but liquefied into the ground in fear.  I have no idea where this came from, but I decided it was not worth the fight.  I tacked him up and off we went.  When we got back he enjoyed a nice roll in some of the fresh mud.

When I was unpacking Simon, I went to put his saddle and bridle away, and when I came back out to get his breast plate he had worked his halter part way off.  Such a silly pony.