Keep Your Horse Show-Ready. All Night. Every Night.
The Dura-Tech® Full Zip Full Body Slicker wraps your horse head to tail in lightweight, 4-way stretch lycra — so the bath you gave Tuesday morning is still there when the gate opens Saturday.
You Bathed Him Tuesday. By Thursday He Looks Like He Rolled in a Dirt Parking Lot.
It's 5 a.m. on a Thursday in August, three days before the county fair, and you're standing in the barn aisle with a headlamp and a bucket of warm water. Your Paint gelding was bathed Monday after you pulled him home — white legs scrubbed to chalk, mane combed straight. But sometime in the last 48 hours he found a patch of loose shavings in the back corner of his stall, rolled twice, and came up looking like he lost a fight with a bag of sawdust. The fair opens Saturday at 7 a.m. This is the fourth bath you've given him since July. You haven't slept past five since Memorial Day.
The problem isn't the dirt itself — it's what the dirt does to your timeline. When a horse is stained, especially a gray or a paint or a palomino, you can't just spray him down and call it good. You're scrubbing beet juice out of white stockings, working stain remover into a shoulder rub that went pink overnight, re-setting a mane that came out of braids sideways. A full re-groom before a show class isn't an hour of work. It's a four-hour morning that erases everything you built the night before. And if the class is early, those four hours start at 2 a.m., when your horse is fidgety and you're running on coffee and stubbornness.
The grind is relentless from late spring through the end of show season. You're burning through show-sheen and whitening shampoo faster than you budgeted for. You're scheduling rides around bath windows so the horse has time to fully dry before dark. You're checking the weather the night before not because you care about rain — the show goes on in rain — but because a north wind means the stall dust kicks up and settles on a wet coat like concrete. If you're hauling to multiple shows a month, you're running this cycle over and over: bathing in the dark, drying in the parking lot at 6 a.m., hoping the horse doesn't roll the second you turn him into the stall.
Most people try everything before they land on a real solution. They double-wrap stall walls with shavings bags to cut dust. They put fly sheets on, then realize fly sheets don't cover the head and neck — the two places a gray horse always manages to get green. They try standing bandages to keep legs white, but the legs are the least of it. Some people put their horse on full stall rest the week before a show, no turnout at all, which keeps him clean but turns a normally pleasant horse into a coiled spring by day four. None of it works reliably because none of it covers the whole horse. A partial solution to a whole-horse problem was never going to get you there.
Every Minute He Stays Dirty Is a Minute You're Not Sleeping — Or Riding
The dirty-horse problem doesn't stay in the barn. It spreads into every decision in the two weeks before a show. You skip the trail ride that might have settled his nerves because you can't risk sweat marks and trail dust. You leave the barn meetup early on Friday to go home and re-wash. You push your farrier appointment because you can't have anything look off the week of a show. Every single call gets filtered through one question: is this going to make the cleanup harder? That's not why anybody got into horses.
Beyond the logistics, there's a toll on the relationship with the horse. A horse that gets scrubbed four times in a week isn't a horse that's relaxed and forward in the ring. The water, the patience required on both ends of the hose — it compounds. You're spending your pre-show emotional energy on cleanup instead of on preparation, on flatwork, on the mental game that actually determines how a class goes. And you're walking into the ring tired, which your horse reads before you even pick up the reins. The judges may not be able to see it but the horse absolutely can.
Add up the workarounds over a full season and the math gets uncomfortable. Premium whitening shampoo isn't cheap when you're using it every few days. Show sheen, stain remover, color-enhancing rinses — these stop being once-a-year purchases. Some riders pay a groom to cover the 48 hours before a big show, which runs $50–$100 per day. Others book stalls at the show venue a day earlier than they need to, just to get the horse out of the home environment where the dirt is familiar and abundant. A product that actually keeps the horse clean from bath to ring costs less than two weeks of workaround chemistry and overtime.
- ✗Bathing 3-4 times in the week before a show
- ✗Braids, sets, and white legs ruined overnight by stall dust
- ✗Burning through whitening shampoo and stain remover all season
- ✗Walking into the ring exhausted from pre-dawn re-grooming sessions
One Zip. Still Spotless When the Gate Opens.
The Dura-Tech® Full Zip Full Body Slicker is exactly what the name says — a full-body cover that zips on cleanly and stays put while your horse sleeps, eats, and shifts around in a stall overnight. It starts at the nose and runs all the way back, covering the neck, shoulders, body, hindquarters, and legs, leaving nowhere for shavings dust to settle on a freshly bathed coat. If you've ever wished for something that just kept the horse clean between bath and ring, this is it.
The engineering is straightforward but deliberate. The cover is cut from a 4-way stretch 6.5 oz lycra that moves with the horse rather than bunching or fighting him. The full zip runs the length of the spine, so you're not wrestling a cover over a 16-hand head in the dark — you unzip, drape, zip back up, and you're done in two minutes. The face hood is designed without a center seam, which is the most common source of pressure rubs on the bridge of the nose and forehead. The noseband is fleece-lined on the inside for exactly the same reason. Large, reinforced eyeholes sit where they need to sit without sliding toward the eye when the horse nods or grazes. A wide bellyband with hook-and-loop closure anchors the cover laterally, and detachable elastic leg straps keep the bottom edge from riding up overnight.
What you get in practice: the bath you gave Tuesday still reads on Saturday. Legs stay white. Grays stay gray instead of turning barn-floor tan. Braids survive the night without a touch-up. You're not out at 4 a.m. re-doing anything. Your horse is calmer because he hasn't been scrubbed down three times this week. You walk into the ring with a horse that looks like you spent weeks on him — because you did, and the slicker just protected that work so none of it went to waste.
Schneiders has been outfitting working horse people since 1948 — 78 years out of Chagrin Falls, Ohio, third generation. The Dura-Tech line is our own private label, built to the spec we'd want on our own horses. If the slicker doesn't hold up or doesn't fit right, we make it right. That's not a marketing line. It's how a family business stays a family business for three generations and counting.
Full Zip On/Off — No Head-Wrestling
Spine-length zipper means you slip the cover on in two minutes without fighting a 16-hand head through a hood in the dark.
No Center Seam, Fleece-Lined Noseband
The face panel is seamless at the pressure points and padded where it contacts skin — so overnight wear doesn't mean morning rubs.
4-Way Stretch Lycra Moves With the Horse
6.5 oz lycra flexes in every direction, so the cover stays comfortable whether he's eating hay, pawing, or shifting weight at 2 a.m.
Stays Put — Bellyband + Detachable Leg Straps
Wide hook-and-loop bellyband and removable elastic leg straps keep the cover anchored from poll to fetlock through a full night in the stall.
What This Full-Body Slicker Includes
- Lightweight four-way-stretch Lycra body
- Fleece lining inside the noseband
- Face design without a center seam
- Large eyeholes designed to resist sliding toward the eyes
- Wide bellyband with hook-and-loop closure
- Detachable elastic leg straps
- Full vinyl zipper and wrap tail cover
How We Stack Up
| Feature | Schneiders Dura-Tech® Full Zip Full Body Slicker | SmartPak Synergy | WeatherBeeta Comfitec |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full-zip spine entry (no pulling over head) | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| 4-way stretch lycra construction | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Fleece-lined noseband (rub-free overnight wear) | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| No center seam face design | ✅ | ❌ | ⚠️ |
| Large reinforced safe eyeholes | ✅ | ⚠️ | ⚠️ |
| Wide hook-and-loop bellyband | ✅ | ⚠️ | ✅ |
| Detachable elastic leg straps | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Full poll-to-fetlock coverage | ✅ | ✅ | ⚠️ |
| Machine washable | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Under $130 | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
Built for the Full Week Before a Show — Not Just One Night
Most body covers are designed for trailering or a single night of use. The Dura-Tech® Full Zip Full Body Slicker is built to go on Monday evening and come off Saturday morning without incident. The 4-way stretch construction means repeated on-and-off cycles don't distort the fit. The hook-and-loop bellyband doesn't fatigue the way elastic does after daily use. And the detachable leg straps give you the option to remove them for hauling and reattach when you're back in a stall — so you're not buying two different products for two different situations.
At $129.99 it sits well below comparable full-body covers from specialty show suppliers, and it ships free on orders over $99 to all 50 states. Schneiders carries it in multiple sizes to fit everything from a 14.2 hand pony to a 17-hand warmblood, and our team has been fitting horse blankets and covers since 1948 — if you're not sure on the size, call us. We'd rather sort it out before the order than after the first show weekend.
- ✓Lightweight 4-way stretch 6.5 oz lycra — breathable and form-fitting
- ✓Full-length spine zipper — on and off in two minutes without disturbing a set mane
- ✓No center seam face design — helps reduce a common source of hood rubs
- ✓Fleece-lined noseband — padded contact on sensitive nose and jaw
- ✓Wide bellyband + detachable elastic leg straps — stays anchored from poll to fetlock
One Slicker, From Face to Wrap Tail Cover
Lightweight Coverage Without a Complicated Layering System
This full-body slicker brings flexible fabric, face-conscious construction, stabilizing closures, easy zip access, and tail coverage together in one show-season sheet.
Protect the Grooming Work You Have Already Done
Choose the Dura-Tech® Full Zip Full Body Slicker for lightweight, full-body coverage designed to help keep your horse clean and dust-free during show season.