>I was wondering if anyone has ever used one of
these? What are your
>thoughts. I have a new 6 year old Mustang who is
like Pig-Pen from Charlie
>brown. I have NEVER seen a horse get
dirty like this one. I think he
>spends more time rolling than grazing.
And we have very fine silty soil. .
>so he always has a cloud of fine
dust when we ride. Drives me NUTS!!!
>Any suggestions.
I bought a Vac 'n Blow from State Line Tack four or five years
ago for just
this reason (Pig Pen horse). I tried it out and took it
back. The problem isn't
the vacuum cleaner (a vacuum cleaner is a vacuum
cleaner). The problem
was the utensils. A more poorly designed set of tools
I've never seen. All
the pieces had one of two problems:
1. Either the brush kept the nozzle so far away from the
skin that
most of the suction was lost and the
amount of dirt picked up
was negligible, or
2. The end piece contacted the skin *too* well so that
it simply
stuck to the skin.
The only piece that worked worth a darn was the little round
spaghetti
brush, and the comb pieces on that were already starting to
break off
after just ONE going over my horse.
The trick is getting the right end pieces. By far the
best is the metal end-piece
on an Electro-Groom (the big blue hunk-of-iron horse
vacuums). It seems
to have just the right combination of contact while still letting enough
air through so that the suction works. My advice is to get a plain old
shop vacuum from Loew's or Home Depot and
buy just the Electro-Groom
endpiece. Dover Saddlery sells just
the end-pieces (Jet-Vac Nozzle $19.80)
and spaghetti brush ($5.90). You may need an adapter
piece if the
hose diameters don't match up.
And as I discovered last year, a plain old broom does a good
job of
getting most of the heavy encrusted mud off fast as a first
pass.
Linda B. Merims
Massachusetts, USA
Linda B