11/03/2025
It’s fuzzy horse season (in the northern hemisphere, at least), which means it’s sweaty coat season! 🦣 This week’s lesson is all about helping our furry friends keep their cool during winter workouts.
We learned - the hard way - that the time to teach this lesson is BEFORE your students are responsible for post-lesson cool downs in the winter. ⚠️ It’s also important for parents to understand the importance of caring for a horse after a ride. ⚠️ Otherwise, your students may rush through the process due to pressure from their parents to “Hurry up!”
Ask your students to come to the lesson with their warmest winter coat. Begin by asking them to put on their coat, then demonstrate jumping jacks or a similar exercise for at least sixty seconds - or long enough that they start to feel hot and sweaty! Ask:
🧥 How do you feel about your coat right now?
🧥 Would you like to take it off? What if you couldn’t?
🧥 What if you kept exercising and your coat got SOAKED with sweat? How would that feel as your body temperature dropped?
🧥 What if you had to stand outdoors in that wet coat on a freezing cold night?
🧥 How can we help a horse with a similarly heavy coat?
Have students help you create a pros & cons list for clipping, then learn about different clipping styles by drawing them onto the outline of a horse or matching flashcards/photos. 🪒 If there are horses in your barn who are routinely clipped, you can time this lesson to coincide with a demonstration, or even give your advanced students some hands-on practice with clippers.
Hands-on practice is also ideal for learning the cool-down process - can a horse be exercised during the first part of your lesson, and handed off to students during the second half? If not, organize a “You Be the Horse” simulation in which students must practice walking, evaluating and grooming a hot and sweaty “horse.” Be sure to address:
🐴 How to tell when a horse is actually cool enough to put away and/or feed.
🐴 What is a cooler, and when is it actually helpful to the horse?
🐴 What are the best ways to remove sweat from a winter coat?
If you’re teaching younger students or need to keep the lesson moving at a brisk pace, limit the clipping portion of the lesson to just a few minutes. Begin the lesson with a discussion about warm-ups, emphasizing how skipping the active walk period can damage a horse’s joints, and lead students through a series of unmounted warm-up stretches for the rider. 🧘 (This can also be extremely beneficial for older students who spend all their time at a desk!)
Learning Levels resources you might find helpful:
🆓 Horsey Hairstyles Worksheet
🟧 Level Up Flashcards: Equine Body Clips
🟡 Teaching Guide for Yellow HorseSense Level: Cool It
🟠 Teaching Guide for Orange HorseSense Level: Close Shave
Want more ideas? THE BIG BOOK OF BARN LESSONS is a treasure trove of unmounted lesson activities like this one. 📚 LLPro members can also find lesson activities for every objective in our unmounted curriculum in the HorseSense Teaching Guides - plus worksheets, games, flashcards and more!
