Product Review: HandsOn Grooming Gloves

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:

• LeMieux dressage saddle pad
• LeMieux polo wraps
• HandsOn Grooming Gloves

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.

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)

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!

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Have you tried the HandsOn Grooming Gloves? What do you think?

Keep an eye on the blog for my LeMieux pad/polo review!