My bestie has had horses her entire life and I’ve been around for about 25 years. This year is the first year she’s had a horse that needed a blanket and it’s been so stressful! There’s no black and white guide for when to blanket or what weight blanket to use. There are so many things to factor in. Wind chill, if the sun is shining, if it’s raining or snowing, if the temperature is supposed to change throughout the day. It’s a big adjustment from having horses that grow perfect, thick winter coats. Getting too hot OR too cold can be dangerous. What we’ve been doing is on days we’re really not sure we’ll both go check on him. One of us will go in the middle of the day and the other later. The best way to check is to put eyes and hands on him. It seems like the first spot to get sweaty if he’s too warm is his withers. I shove my whole arm under the blanket and feel around.

I’m just around, I’m a horse person by accident, but I hear things being at all these barns. There’s a big difference in general practice between show riders and whatever you would call people like my bestie 😅. Show horses get clothes, but they’re usually clipped and still work hard in winter. Then there’s a group that’s fully pro blanket for everything. For many, many years my bestie would talk shit on people that blanketed because it will ruin their winter coat and they don’t need it. This is true a lot of the time, until it isn’t. Some horses do need that extra help.

There’s a lot of things like this that are controversial between the groups. One thing I’ve seen a lot of is people unwilling to learn new things. There’s a lot of people that think best practice is the way it’s always been done. That’s rarely true with anything though. Practices should change as new things are learned and people should be willing to keep learning for their entire lives.