Awhile ago, I was approached by a representative of Country & Stable, and asked if I would be interested in receiving a few of their products in exchange for a review and some social media sharing…so of course I said yes.
I chose three different products to try:
I received all of these items within a few days after the order went through, and it was exciting to open the box, pull everything out, and look through it. Looking at the saddle pad, I quickly realized that I had ordered the wrong size. *sad face* On the website, there is listed a small and large, with small being for horses under 15hh. Since Crumble is 14.2hh, I went with small. Why I suddenly forgot that my horse is not a normal pony sized 14.2hh, I have no idea. But it’s worth noting for this review – if you have a wide Haflinger-type horse, you probably don’t want to order the size small, even if your horse is pony height. Oops.
And so, I had to exchange the pad. While I wait for the larger size to return, I thought I’d go ahead and try out the grooming gloves.
Crumble is shedding. That means we’ll see spring someday…right???
In a word, the gloves are AWESOME. I ordered them because I thought they might be a nice replacement for my many-year-old curry comb. I kind of hate using my curry comb, to be honest. It’s something I bought way back when, at a time I just needed grooming tools and any would do. It’s not particularly good at doing it’s job. It’s just a boring old curry.
Thus far, I’ve tried the gloves out a few times, and am looking forward to being able to use them some more – especially to try them out for baths. As things stand now, living in New England means the first bath of 2018 may yet be a looooong way off…seeing as we still have two feet of snow and -12 wind chill yesterday morning.
Still, I know I’ll get a lot of use out of these. The gloves have a series of rubber knobs, in different sizes, lining the palm and fingers. It’s pretty easy to adjust how you use them if your horse needs less/more pressure as you groom. I’ve tried them on a couple horses at the barn so far (one was Crumble), and both loooooved them. I could see how a super sensitive horse probably wouldn’t tolerate these gloves very well – but I think they really are something that most horses would hugely enjoy.
Because everyone loves lists, here are my pros and cons:
Pros
- Easy to use
- Easy to adjust pressure (just lean in more!)
- Molds around the horse’s body (including legs and face), unlike a curry comb
- Removes a TON of hair and dirt
- Most horses will probably love it
- Not horribly expensive (especially when you think of it as getting two brushes for the price of one)
Special thanks to one of the barn kids for modeling!
Cons (but are they really?)
- Extremely sensitive horses might not like them
- The hair flies around a bit more than it does when you use a curry – my allergies don’t like this, but overall I think these gloves are awesome, so I don’t mind much
- Requires a bit of extra elbow grease to use two hands to groom – but you get used to it…yay workout!
Keep an eye on the blog for my LeMieux pad/polo review!
