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Re: Re: clipping



Subject: clipping


> I  wasnt aware Renee was one of our avian friends ! She struck me as being
a
> liveley minded individual with the courage to buck the done thing trend
...

Tamara,

"Ducky" is a term of affection and all that you say about Renee is
absolutely correct.  Renee introduced the thread on clipping and I guess
we're all just expressing our opinions in the matter, as per usual.

No-one is saying you HAVE to clip your horse.  It largely depends on the
horse, what sort of work he's doing, and the weather is like.  A fit horse
should cope quite easily with 20 miles unclipped at the beginning of the
season when the weather is perhaps not too warm.

However when you start doing interval training early on in the year as prep
for some longer distance race rides, then it makes life easier for the horse
if he is clipped a bit.  Yes, seriously.  Imagine running a 4 minute mile
with a heavy overcoat on.  If the horse is doing fast work and he's clipped
he has to work less to cool himself down as his sweat evaporates more
quickly.

Where I live in France we are on yellow clay.  Our horses are out all day in
all weathers and I can tell you without rugs on it would take more than a
rubber curry comb to even make room for the saddle.  So turn-out rugs are
standard issue here, and yes, you guessed it, its for the convenience of the
them as trains the horses.

If you're trying to say clipping a horse is not natural, I would completely
agree with you, but then so is 95% of what we do with horses.  No horse in
its right mind would go out and do 160kms in a day on its own.  He'd take 3
weeks about it stopping off here and there to eat.  In fact dressage is
arguably more "natural" than endurance because some of the movements horses
do actually perform in the wild.

So I don't know, perhaps I should just turn all my horses out into a big
field and let them get on with life........what do you reckon?

Heather
SW France

PS  If the people in your yard are such a pain, why don't you change yards?




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