Every horse, whether ridden or not, needs to be groomed. Grooming eliminates dirt, debris, and insects from your horse’s coat, mane, and tail and also provides insight into your horse's health. Regular grooming provides a baseline for a horse owner: you know exactly how your horse should feel from nose to hoof. With regular grooming, you notice any new knots, bumps, scrapes, or cuts that need to be addressed. In addition, you also find heat or sore spots faster than if grooming was an occasional event.
Along with ensuring your horse is healthy and clean, grooming is an excellent way to bond and communicate with your horse. By brushing, running your hands over them, and talking to them, they also get to know you. They get used to your voice, learn the feel of your hands, and look forward to your time together. Think of it like going to dinner with a friend. It is a time to catch up, learn, and spend time with each other. After all, every great relationship needs that one-on-one time, right?
Many different types of grooming tools can add luster and shine to your horse's coat, mane, and tail, making grooming an easy and enjoyable process for you and your horse.
The Basics of Grooming Your Horse
Grooming your horse can be as easy or as complicated as you would like, depending on your horse and what your horse will be doing after grooming. The basic grooming session is as follows:
Tie up your horse. Whether you put them in the wash rack or the aisle, keep your horse tethered with crossties. A wandering grooming session is not relaxing!
Start with a curry comb. A curry comb removes dirt and dander from a horse's skin while distributing the oils throughout the coat. Brushing helps stimulate blood flow to the skin, keeping the skin healthy.
Switch to a dandy brush next. Dandy brushes, or hard brushes, capture the loose hair and dirt brought out of the coat from the curry comb and are brushed off your horse with quick swipes.
Finish brushing with a soft body brush. Soft brushes are great for polishing your horse’s coat to add shine while also getting those last few specks of dirt off your horse. This brush is also perfect around the face and for sensitive horses that do not respond well to a dandy brush.
Run your hands along your horse’s body. After a good brushing, follow up the brush with your hands, feel all along your horse’s body and legs, and check for pain, swelling, or injury.
Pick their hooves. A clean coat is nothing without clean feet! Using a hoof pick, pick up your horse’s feet hoof by hoof and clean away the mud and dirt from around the frog. If your horse wears shoes, run the pick gently around the edge of the shoe to remove loose stones or rocks that might have wedged underneath. Check your horse’s feet after they are clean for injury.
Clean their face. If you haven’t already brushed their face with the soft brush, run a damp washcloth along your horse’s face and ears now.
Brush out their mane and tail. Grooming the mane and tail is essential because it helps stimulate hair growth, as well as removes any burrs, dirt, or debris that can tangle in their hair. Use a wide-toothed comb, soft brush, or your fingers. Using a detangler to help you brush is also a great idea. For tails, groom from the tip of the tail upward.
Use fly spray. After your horse has been groomed from nose to tail, finish off with a fly spray to keep your horse comfortable (and stay relaxed after “spa time”!)
The 15 BEST Horse Grooming Tools
A great grooming session is only as good as the tools you use. We have compiled a list of the 15 best horse grooming tools horse owners need in their tack room or box.
- Woodback Finishing Brush
- Schneiders® Woodback Medium Fiber Brush
- Schneiders® Magic Grooming Brush
- Schneiders® Soft Body Curry
- Rubber Curry
- Schneiders® Extra Soft Face Curry
- StripHair® Gentle Groomer™ Horse Grooming Tool
- Schneiders® Aluminum Pulling Comb
- Schneiders® Curved Handle Brush
- Ultra® Magic Detangler
- Epona Tiger's Tongue Horse Groomer™
- Wahl® Arco SE Cordless Clipper
- Ultra® Nourishing Hair Moisturizer
- Schneiders® Hoof Pick with Brush & Scraper
- Dura-Tech® Smartchoice Grooming Tote
The Woodback Finishing Brush is the perfect brush for applying finishing touches. Its soft synthetic bristles remove dust easily from coats, and its solid wood back provides a comfortable grip for the perfect grooming session. This tool is great for use before entering the ring or for brushing sensitive faces.
This medium fiber brush is tapered perfectly to conform to your hand's natural holding position. Its hourglass shape makes the wood back fit comfortably in your hand as you remove mud, dust, dirt, or shedding hair.
The magic grooming brush is a unique bristled brush that combines a stiff yet soft tip to massage your horse while loosening up dirt while grooming. The lightweight design and molded PVC contoured shape allow for longer grooming sessions without tiring your hand. The unique stiff yet durable, bristles massage your horse while loosening up dirt and shedding hair: making grooming enjoyable and efficient.
This soft body curry comb is ideal for legs, knees, hocks, and faces. The rubber nubs gently massage the skin to promote the production of natural oils, making it an ideal curry for baths, loosening, shedding hair, and removing sweat marks. This brush is also small enough to comfortably fit all hands, while the hand strap ensures a firm grip.
The traditional rubber curry, known as the workhorse of the curry family, is great for use on the body to stimulate natural oils. The stiff rubber body with rounded inflexible “teeth” removes embedded mud, loosens hair, and massages skin. The webbed strap handle ensures a solid grip, making this a great choice for your next curry!
This extra soft face curry has extra soft, flexible nubs, perfect for faces and small, sensitive areas. This brush has round, molded rubber with a raised knob handle to provide comfort for you and a great clean for your horse. Your horses will love the massage before and after riding!
The Gentle Groomer™ is a versatile, multi-purpose horse grooming tool that massages, shampoos, and squeegees water. Made from a proprietary rubber blend with natural oils, the Gentle Groomer™ is durable, flexible, grippy, and sanitary, with cleaning diamonds that comfortably dislodge dried mud and aerate a sweaty coat. It stimulates blood circulation to benefit the skin, coat, and muscles, distributes natural oils to promote softness and shine, and applies gentle pressure to remove loose hair, dirt, and dander. You can safely use this on your horse's most sensitive areas. Check out this guide on "How to Shed Out Winter Coats"!
Ideal for pulling and shortening manes, Schneiders Aluminum Pulling Comb makes separating hair for braiding and banding easy. Its lightweight design fits nicely in your hand, making grooming a breeze.
Fantastic quality and economically priced, this curved handle mane and tail brush is made with rubber-tipped bristles to prevent hair damage. It glides easily through the heaviest manes and tails and is perfect for removing loose or shedding hair. The durable plastic with ergonomic non-slip handle keeps your hand feeling comfortable throughout grooming.
Ultra® Magic Detangler strengthens hair fibers to keep your horse's mane and tail growing thick and long. Add this tried and true detangler to your horse’s mane and tail during grooming for a shiny and conditioning effect. This detangler also prevents breakage and tangles that can damage fragile mane and tail hair. Check out these “Tips for Mane and Tail Care” for more information.
Epona Tiger's Tongue Horse Groomer™ is a multi-tasker tool that easily tackles dirt, debris, and sweat marks. This grooming stone is uniquely designed to work like a cat's tongue and wipes away caked-on dirt and dander without dust clouds. This tool is so versatile that it can erase saddle pad marks and clean white markings and dirty hoof walls. It can even clean water buckets and feeding troughs! Wet or dry, this tool can do it all.
The Wahl® Arco SE Cordless Clipper is designed with a robust rotary motor that operates at an impressive 5500 strokes per minute. Despite its power, it runs extremely cool and with minimal vibration. This ensures that your horse stays comfortable throughout grooming, and you can complete the job quickly and efficiently. The snap-on 5-in-1 blade adjusts easily to offer options of #9, #10, #15, #30, and #40 - an outstanding choice for clipping your horse’s fetlocks, muzzles, bridle paths, and ears. See these “Tips and Tricks for Clipping Your Horse” for more information.
Ultra® Nourishing Hair Moisturizer is the most advanced, all-natural leave-in moisturizer on the market. It can be applied to wet or dry coats, manes, and tails. The lanolin formula improves hair strength, thickness, and elasticity while repelling dirt. This moisturizer even controls dry skin and dandruff, even on horses with sensitive skin. It is ideal for use after clipping or daily grooming to restore dry, brittle coats!
This hoof pick with a brush and scraper is the ideal hoof pick that ensures hooves are clean inside and out! The specially designed plastic body with a wedged scraper on the end scrapes dried mud from hoof walls, providing the ultimate clean. This steel pick for hooves comes with a brush containing 1 1/4" bristles. The ergonomically designed length of this hoof pick ensures a comfortable grip for every hand, hoof after hoof.
With all of your grooming supplies, you need the ultimate organization for your grooming bag! This tote has six inside pockets (three on each side of the bag), which are great for holding spray bottles. The center of the bag is open and has stiffeners running up each side, which makes it a great place to keep quilts, wraps, or rags. An additional six pockets surround the outside of the bag for the rest of your grooming needs. This bag also stands upright and has convenient carrying handles for grooming.
Grooming is a great way to monitor your horse’s health while ensuring their coats, manes, tails, and hooves remain clean and well-conditioned. It is also a great way to bond with your horse, cementing your relationship. With the right tools, grooming will be an enjoyable experience for you both!
