Thick Question!

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Puzzles

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Right, so this has been niggling at me for ages: if you have no stable/covered area in which to dry your horse after s/he has been soaked by the rain (i.e. in preparation to tack up and ride, or before being rugged up after being ridden) then how on earth do you do it? Particularly if it is still raining?

There may be an obvious solution that I just haven't thought of :o but this far-from-ideal situation prevents me from riding when it is raining, which is ridiculous! One of the horses gets cold really easily and absolutely hates rain, whereas the other two don't mind but I don't like to rug up a wet horse. The rugs aren't the modern, breathable kind that dry the horse off whilst preventing them from getting any wetter. And it's also far from ideal to just 'sit it out' and wait til the rain stops or the horses dry off naturally...

So what does one do?
 
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I don't have a stable or shelter and my horse lives out year round. I ride through the winter. When it's not rainy (and as we live in the West of Scotland there haven't been many of these "dry" days this year), I tack up and ride as usual. If it's raining, horse wears a lightweight no fill rain sheet, mainly to keep him dry enough to ride.

If I miscalculate and he's a bit wet, I tack up and ride as normal... he has a lambskin pad under the saddle so we usually find he's dry under the saddle when we get home. If he's sopping wet, I use a sweat scraper to get as much water off as possible, a towel to rub roughly dry, and then tack up as normal. I try to avoid this happening using the rain sheet.

If we get wet when out, a rough towel dry when we get home and rain sheet goes back on. It has no fill so the horse dries out under it very fast. Horse isn't clipped, by the way and has a thick coat. This approach might not work so well with a clipped or very sensitive skinned horse, but has worked well for us. I'm lucky that, being a hardy living out type who's never clipped, he seems to have an ability not to sweat up on normal hacks, so I don't even have to worry about sweat under girth.
 
towel dry the worst of it off, then put a polar fleece cooler on and a rain sheet on the top. the fleece wicks away the moisture and the sheet keeps rain off. both rugs will need to then be taken off and dried out, but the horse should be pretty dry after a while.

thats what we do if the horses are freezing and soaked and we are needing to get the rugs on.
 
we towel dry an cover there backs with straw then put the rug on over the straw. it soaks up excess moisture, keeps them warm and stops puttin a rug directly onto a horses wet back which is never a good thing! :)

rain sheet when riding also are great! try ebay!
 
If they are rugged then they will be dry, ride in an exercise sheet to keep them dry then they'll be ok to put the rug back on.

Also as you mentioned it why not buy a breathable rug ?

I've got an all over rug (Bucas cost £25) that you can ride in, its silver look a bit like an alien but who cares your horse will be dry ! I've given up on thinking what other people think
 
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