From: Sarah
Hello Jessica Thank you from the UK for sharing your knowledge via the newsletters, I really look forward to my Emails.
Please could I ask a further question regarding hosing a sweaty horse? We have owned a 6yo coloured (paint?) since November 2003. He is shared by myself and my daughter. He came from a Riding School with very bad manners! He barged, kicked and bit and generally uses his weight and size against people.
I am sure his behaviour is due to him not being taught any different as this was not a high class riding establishment. He came to us covered in his own muck and generally uncared for. Together we have worked (using lots of your advise) on his manners and have come a long way.
We started hosing his muddy legs in the winter, not every day as he has feathers. He didn't like this at all and would stamp kick and move about (tied) but gradually seemed to get used to it. Now its Summer, well UK style summer! We don't want to hose him regularly compared with others on the yard, but would like to cool him down after work. I have tried to hold him on a 12ft rope so he can move about but due to his history of barging and dragging he just leaves and I can't hold him! We lead him daily in a Dually halter as he doesn't drag when he wears it. If I used the training halter when hosing it could make him panic more and confirm that hosing is scarey!
He doesn't show signs of fear of the hose, his face and ears don't change expression, he just doesn't want me to hose him.Should I forget hosing and just use a bucket and sponge which is is still not fond of but doesn't try to squash me?
I'm going to answer this at some length, because without realizing it, you've brought up two quite different issues here, and I want to be quite sure that we get them separated, so to speak. ;-)
First, the issue of water coming from the hose.
Many horses dislike being tied and hosed down with cold water. I can't really fault your horse for objecting to having his legs hosed down in the winter, and of course if he developed a dislike for the process in the winter, that dislike is quite likely to carry over into the summer months.
It's useful to be able to use a hose on your horse without him having a fit. There may be times when his legs - especially with feathers - are covered with sticky mud and manure that will take hours to dry, and washing his lower legs will be a sensible practice. "Cold-hosing" is also a traditional way of dealing with many injuries, so standing quietly for the hose is a nice skill for a horse to have.
Given your horse's history, I shouldn't hold him at the end of a 12-foot rope if I were you. It invites him to move about, and allows him enough space to turn away from you and get the rope across his chest and shoulder, at which point there is nothing that you will be able to do to stop him walking (or trotting, or cantering) away. It would make more sense to hold him as you normally would to lead him, with one hand on the rope six or eight inches below his chin, and the other hand holding the rest of the rope, in folds. (I'm assuming that you and your daughter are working together, so that one of you can hold the horse and the other can direct the stream of water.)
I'm not a particular fan of the Dually, or of other coercive halters such as the knotted rope ones, but I can see that you need something to give you a little more authority in this situation. I don't think that panic is really an issue, if he isn't concerned about the water itself, and I think it's even less of an issue since you say that during the winter he learned to stand reasonably quietly TIED whilst you washed his legs with the hose. If a horse is truly afraid of a hose, it's far more likely to panic when tied and unable to escape from the frightening object.
I think it will be most practical to begin with the assumption that your horse is NOT, in fact, truly terrified of the hose. That said, I think that he may well be concerned about it, but perhaps for another reason entirely. He may be coming to the wrong conclusions about what he is supposed to do when he's at the end of a 12' rope and sees you approaching him with the hose. If this horse has spent any time in a round pen, and has learned to move away from gestures, ropes, and prressure, he may well be interpreting the hose as a rope, the lifting and movement of the hose as a "move your feet and go away from me!" gesture, and the touch of the stream of water as pressure - yet another signal to move away. In any case, in the absence of absolute proof of a combination of perfect understanding and deliberate disobedience, I think it's MUCH better to assume ignorance and confusion on the horse's part, and inadvertent lack of clarity on the part of the handler, and make some changes accordingly. ;-)
I'm going to suggest two methods of teaching your horse to accept being wet down with the hose. The first is the traditional method of gradual desensitization:
Don't try to do too much at once - what follows can be done over days or weeks or longer. Your goal is not to get water from the hose onto the horse, it's to be able to get water from the hose onto a calm, accepting horse. Work according to the horse's understanding and progress, NOT according to a timetable. If a lesson goes very quickly and very well, stop for the day - don't think "Aha, we can move to the next lesson immediately!" If a lesson goes very badly, stop for the day and try again the next day. If someone tells you that once you have begun a lesson, you MUST continue until the horse becomes obedient and submissive, or the horse will have "gotten away with it", ignore that person. Pushing and insisting when a horse is frightened, confused, angry, or exhausted will never teach the horse anything you want it to learn. Or, there ARE lessons you can teach a horse by pushing, insisting, and punishing it, but "RELAX, TRUST ME, THERE IS NO CAUSE FOR CONCERN" isn't one of them.
Your first objective is to make both the water and the hose become acceptable, and not causes for concern. You can do this by separating the hose from the water. Work with the water first: Fill a bucket with water, use a sponge to wet down your horse, and let the hose just lie there doing nothing at all. If you are gentle and calm when you use the sponge, and if you use it on a hot day and begin by wetting his lower legs and work your way SLOWLY up from there, and if you allow him to move a little - not racing at the end of a 12' rope, but shifting around and taking a few steps in one direction or another - he should quickly become accustomed to the water itself. Once the water is no longer an issue, you can begin to work with the hose - but NOT with water coming out of it! Teach the horse to accept the presence and movement of the hose itself, by holding it in one hand as you groom him, or while you use the sponge to wet him down.
Eventually, he will understand that the hose is just another piece of harmless equipment, like a brush or scraper or rub rag, and that it is not actually going to attack him or even make a move in his direction, and he will understand that the hose is NOT a signal for him to move away. At this point, you can allow a trickle of water to come through the hose. When the horse is calm about the presence of the hose on the ground, pick it up, but don't direct the water at the horse - instead, use the hose to wet your sponge, and allow him to learn to accept you moving around him with both hose and sponge. (This is similar to a useful technique for teaching a horse to stand still for flyspray - you can spray a rag, then use the rag to put the flyspray on the horse, thus allowing him to become familiar with the feel and scent of the spray without having to cope with a bottle "hissing" directly at him.)
When he is calm about this, you can bgin using the hose to direct a trickle of water at his feet and lower legs, don't try to make him stand stock still. Allow him to take a few steps this way or that, but keep the water in contact with his legs, and praise him whenever he stands still for a moment. The fact that he was able to stand tied during the winter, and accept the hose with minimal fussiness, tells me that if you accustom him to both water and hose, then to hose-and-water together, then to water-from-the-hose, and are very calm and clear about what you want him to do about it all (that is, stand quietly), you will succeed. You are more likely to succeed, and you will succeed more quickly, if you can conduct your training sessions in a calm atmosphere - that is to say, without an audience of admiring (or critical) observers. You will also do well to conduct your lessons somewhere where the traction and drainage are both good. A fall or even a bad slip is all it takes to convince a horse that water and a hose truly ARE dangerous enemies, so try to find a convenient patch of gravel for your lessons.
The second method I'm going to suggest is clicker training - and not only clicker training, but target training as well. I often suggest these methods, especially for horses whose backgrounds and previous experiences are unknown to their current owners. It's possible that someone, or several someones, may have had a go at getting this horse to accept being bathed. Since you can't know which methods may have been attempted in the past, it may be best to try something that has probably NEVER been used on the horse, something clear and simple that will let you practice a whole new way of telling your horse what it does that you LIKE and APPROVE OF. Target training is an excellent tool to use with a horse that seems to have a strong dislike of something specific, be it a hose, the trailer, or even a particular corner of the arena.
Now, to the matter of hosing a horse down to "cool it down after work"!
You'll often see riders hosing their horses down after a ride, but this is primarily for their own convenience. Walking a horse dry, then grooming him thoroughly, will get the sweat out of his coat just as effectively as washing the horse, but it's more work for the rider, hence the great popularity of the hose. ;-)
Riders who rinse or bathe their horses after riding are not doing it to cool them down - they are doing it to wash off the sweat. Washing a horse is certainly preferable to driving away and leaving the horse sweaty, and if the horse is not very fit, and its sweat is thick and sticky, then rinsing off the sweat may help prevent the horse from being tormented by flies and becoming horribly itchy as it dries. But none of this has ANYTHING to do with making the horse cool after work. The best and easiest way to do THAT is to follow the old dictum "Walk the first mile out and the last mile in." Walking that last mile - or the last fifteen or twenty minutes of the ride - is the healthiest method of allowing the horse to cool down. Alternatively, ending the ride and immediately hand-walking the horse for fifteen or twenty minutes will be nearly as effective.
Many riders like the idea of hosing down their horses because they misunderstand what they've seen on vidoes of top-level eventing in hot, humid climates. When you see horses being "cooled" between phases on cross-country day at a three-day event, you'll find water, scrapers, ice, and sometimes powerful fans involved in the process, but these are highly-conditioned horses that have very thin hair coats. They have been making a big effort that could lead to a dangerously high core temperature... and in just a few minutes, they will be asked for another, all-out effort. NONE of this really applies to an ordinary riding horse that's been out for a hack on a warm summer day!
So don't worry about the "cooling" aspect of using a hose on your horse. Unless you are hosing him down with cool water, IMMEDIATELY scraping off all the water, then hosing him down again and IMMEDIATELY scraping off all the water, over and over, you aren't actually going to be able to cool him down with a hose. When a horse is hot, the day is hot, and the sun is out, the "cooling" effect of wetting the horse's coat with water lasts for no more than a few seconds, unless the air is so very dry that the water evaporates almost instantly. That might work in the Sahara at noontime, or in Delhi just before the monsoon, but in the UK, even during an extraordinarily hot summer, the humidity is just not likely to be that low. On a hot, sunny day with higher humidity, when you wet a horse's hair coat, the water becomes warm, then hot, in just a second or two. It can't cool the horse at all - if anything, it will make him hotter. The only way to use water to bring his temperature down is to rinse, scrape, and repeat until you are exhausted, then scrape all the water off one last time, so that his coat can become dry as quickly as possible.
If the horse is truly hot after a ride, cool him down at a walk. If his coat is still wet with sweat because the humidity in the air isn't allowing the water to evaporate, feel free to give him a (probably welcome) bath to remove the sweat, but don't be angry when he does his best to give himself a bath in his own way, by having a lovely roll in the dirt or grass or sand, or in the bedding of his stall, as soon as you put him away. He isn't trying to make himself dirty again and he isn't trying to spite you, he's just doing what comes naturally.
In the old days, before the popularity (and huge commercial success) of horse shampoos and conditioners, sweaty horses were led to a sand-pit after work and allowed to roll to their hearts' content. Later, the horse's owners or grooms would brush away the sand and dried sweat together, leaving a happy, dry, and clean horse. This is still standard practice at some stables, and the horses enjoy their "sand bath" just as much as other horses have come to appreciate a good sudsy scrub.
In either case, if you persevere with your horse in a pleasant way, and use cool water and a good stiff brush on very hot days when he is sweaty, he will eventually come to enjoy being given a good scrub-down. In a pinch, you could even try my own method of convincing reluctant horses that the hose and water are not only acceptable but enjoyable: On a very hot and sticky day, go out for a ride without using any flyspray at all, and when you come back to the yard with your sweaty horse, remove the tack and just stand about for a bit. When the flies come in to enjoy some bites of sweaty, salty horse, let your horse become uncomfortable and annoyed, and then begin using the hose, first on his hooves and lower legs, then gradually higher on his body. Every horse I have ever worked with has been intelligent enough to work out a series of connections along these lines: "Flies BAD, OUCH - hose and water, oh-oh, don't like them much - hmmmm, water might not be so terrible, and no flies - AHA! WATER, NO FLIES, COOL FEELS GOOD!"
Horses can get to enjoy water for its own sake. We have one mare who was born in the middle of a very hot summer and exceptionally bad fly season - she learned about fly-bites very early, and also learned that flies didn't bite horses that were standing in the spray of water from the hose. Then, one day, she realized that she enjoyed the water even when no flies were bothering her! Fifteen years on, she'll still leave her grazing and come up and beg for a shower whenever anyone is using a hose to fill the pasture water tank - even in cool weather when there's not a fly in sight. ;-)
Jessica
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