Why shouldn’t you scrape?🐴💦
You have probably seen the posts doing the rounds on facebook about the best way to cool a horse – and that you shouldn’t scrape the water off.
Put simply this is why….The theory behind ‘not scraping’ starts with a very hot horse. Perhaps he has been working hard on a hot day and is at risk of heat exhaustion. The quickest and most effective way to cool a horse quickly is by continually applying cold water. If you stop to scrape the water off you are wasting time when you could be applying more cold water. Secondly, It is the process of evaporation that cools the skin – As the water evaporates off, it is cooling the body under it.
Therefore by applying more cold water, and not scraping, you get a double cooling effect.
Now, if you are just giving your horse a quick rinse off because he is a bit sweaty, scraping isn’t going to do any harm. I usually scrape the excess off my horse, otherwise he thinks the water dripping off is more flies!
And, in case you are wondering, pouring cold water over a hot horse isn’t going to cause stress, colic, laminitis or anything else. And excess water doesn’t act as an insulator on the skin. Prior to the Atlanta Olympics a huge amount of research was carried out that disproved all these myths!