Horse care
Getting Over grooming
A professional groom and veterinary behaviorist offer solutions for the hard-to-groom horse.
BY ELIZABETH MOYER
It was a classic case of “chestnut mare, beware” for anyone approaching the red Thoroughbred mare with a curry or brush. She was a kid’s lesson horse, but it was anything but child’s play to groom her. It wasn’t a good situation for the kids, and because of her objections to grooming, the mare was in real danger of saddle sores and rub spots on her withers, recalls professional equine groom Cat Hill, co-author of World Class Grooming for Horses.
“Everyone would just sort of barely dust her off,” she says.
But thanks to some time and effort to address the situation, and finding the right tools, the mare has come around to tolerating it. And while grooming may never be on her list of favorite activities, any of the school kids can brush her now as long as they use her special grooming kit, shares Hill.
So if your horse hates being groomed, there’s hope. We’ll look at some reasons horses object to grooming and what you can do to help with the expertise of Hill and veterinarian Jenny Biehunko, DVM, of Veterinary Behavior Consultants of Alabama in Pelham, Ala., who is a resident ACVB specializing in behavioral medicine.
PHYSICAL CAUSES
While horses all have innate levels of sensitivity and individual preference in how they like to be handled and groomed, pain is the first thing to explore.
“If you have a horse that’s reactive to grooming, you certainly want to make sure there’s not a medical reason for that,” says Biehunko. “Especially if you have a horse that previously didn’t have a problem with a certain procedure and suddenly does, that’s a big red flag to me that we may have some medical issues going on.”
Hill agrees that horses that are difficult about being groomed are often trying to tell you they have an underlying pain issue somewhere in their body.