The Importance of Grooming Your Horse

Grooming your horse is more than a routine task to keep your horse looking and smelling clean. It’s an integral part of taking care of your horse’s health. It serves multiple purposes and helps to avoid several different health situations. If you’ve ever wondered why you need to groom your horse, we at Gladiator Equine will explain. 

What is Grooming?

Some people don’t realize how much the term “horse grooming” actually entails. It’s more than just brushing their fur and mane. It includes the process of cleaning, caring for, and maintaining a horse’s skin, coat, hooves, mane, and tail. 

Because it is so extensive, it commonly requires specific tools. These include brushes of varying stiffness, a hoof pick, separate mane and tail combs, and grooming mitts or cloths to protect your hands.

The Health Benefits of Grooming Your Horse

Grooming a horse is not just about keeping the animal clean and presentable. It also has several health benefits for the horse such as:

• Skin Health: Regular grooming helps to remove dirt, dandruff, and dead skin cells from your horse’s coat.
• Blood Circulation: The brushing action stimulates blood flow to the horse’s skin surface.
• Parasite Control: Ticks and flies will hide in your horse’s coat, so combing through them will help you find and remove them. 
• Early Detection of Illness or Injury: You can find signs of cuts, swelling, overheating, and tenderness.
• Promotes Healthy Hooves: To clean a horse’s hooves, you need to remove rocks, sticks, and other debris that could cause injury or infection. 
• Digestive Health: Grooming, particularly brushing along the horse’s stomach and sides, can stimulate movement in the horse’s intestines, aiding digestion and potentially helping to prevent colic.

The Risks of Not Grooming Your Horse

Grooming your horse isn’t something you can choose to do. Your horse will incur risks if it is not regularly groomed. Here are some of the potential issues:

• Skin Irritation and Infections: Dirt, dust, and dead skin can accumulate on your horse’s coat. Just like with people, it can cause skin irritation – which will distract the horse – and potentially lead to bacterial or fungal infections.
• Parasite Infection: Failing to keep up with grooming can allow for ticks and fleas to infest your horse’s coat, allowing them to become sick and potentially terminally ill.
• Hoof Issues: Without regular hoof cleaning, debris can accumulate and cause foot diseases, injuries, or infections. This can cause your horse long-lasting pain and discomfort, potentially even warping the physical appearance and stability of the hoof. 

Regular grooming is essential for maintaining your horse’s health and well-being. Failing to do so can increase the risk of various health problems, emphasizing the importance of incorporating grooming into your routine horse care.

How Can Gladiator Equine Help?

That being said, you can’t always stop every injury or illness. Some of these can require surgery to fix, while others only require rest for your horse. In many cases, a horse can reduce its recovery time with the help of a recovery device from Gladiator Equine. 

Our devices can improve the horse’s ability to heal and obey commands through the use of Far Infrared technology. First, they stimulate cells in the horse’s body and their ability to move through blood, enabling your horse’s body to heal itself.

They also emit photons that stimulate the cerebellum, which in turn affects the body-to-brain messaging. This relaxes the proprioceptive neck muscles where they connect to the skull and helps a horse be more receptive to commands.

Contact the Experts at Gladiator Equine For Healing Devices After Grooming Your Horse

Horse grooming is not merely a cosmetic routine but an integral aspect of horse care that significantly contributes to the animal’s health and well-being. It is not something you can skip out on. Neglecting this vital practice can lead to numerous health problems. 

If your horse still needs help recovering from an infection, injury, disease, or surgery, our devices may be able to help. For more information, contact Gladiator Equine.