Cob Jockey

Last week, it took over an hour and a half for Connor to be cool enough post-lesson for his blanket.


This week, after getting a new clip with the help of Austen from Guinness on Tap (who took a day off work and drove two hours to help tag team clip him with me in exchange for a box of wine and gas money - now that is a good friend!), I was able to untack, curry and reblanket him immediately after our lesson.  Success!

I wrote my last clipping post when I was rather hot-headed about cooling him out taking longer than our rides, and as I cooled down (ha), I started to re-think my full clip plan.  As Stanthehorse pointed out, I said I'd already given him a trace clip in my last post but actually meant apron clip, I apologize.  I also didn't realize just how much hair had grown back since I'd clipped him, and I'm still gun-shy about taking that much hair off when I live so far from the barn, and I don't like making the barn staff do a bunch of blanket changes for me.  They've got enough to do.  (This is all me publicly learning how to keep a clipped and blanketed horse, by the way, which I'd never done before I got Connor.)

So, we decided to do a medium-ish trace.  Please admire Austen's straight lines, which are amazing, and did not leave him looking like Fred Flintstone's hemline like my clips do.  The end result looks like this (except my trainer said last night that she doesn't like the racing stripe look on his butt, and asked me to fix it this weekend.)

Pretty pony.

 Also, it's never more apparent that Welsh Cobs were bred to be easy keepers in harsh climates than when you shave off some belly hair and get to see their ridiculously thick coats in all their Cobby glory:

It's like a shelf of hair.

Because of that, Austen spent a really long time getting each line straight, because, as she put it, you have to first trim the long laying-over hairs, then the hairs at the skin, and finally you have to get the middle layer of coat even in order to make a straight line.  So maybe I don't suck at clipping, maybe he's just hard to clip.

"In a few short minutes, I'm going to take all of your hair off."

Connor stood like a champ for the entire thing, even his flanks.  Good pony.

Pre-clip: We used a hot towel and Show Sheen to simulate a bath, and it actually worked really well.