hello it's josie here and today we're going to clip wiggins as you can see wiggins has a bit of a
very furry coat wiggins is one of my earlier horses and he's got a special place in my heart he
has cushings and that's why his coat is like this and in australia we have disgustingly hot summers
particularly down in south australia and so the kindest thing to him is to take his coat off him
wiggins has always been known to have an attitude and that's why his name is attitude his show name
and he can sometimes be a little bit smart with the clippers he's not scared of them but he tells
brittny he's scared of him so i'm going to work through that with him and show you how i work
through a horse that's nervous with clippers if you think about clipping a horse and you think
about what you're actually going to do the horse has to be tolerant of the noise of the clipper
and the feeling of the clipper on them and then the feeling of the clipper on them
vibrating so that's three different things that you really should have your horse
pretty desensitized to before you're going to do it if you just decide you're going to
clip your horse today come out with a pair of clippers turn it on and your horse runs off
more fool you that's pretty silly you always need to set your horse up okay set them up to win it's
the only fair thing to do so that's what we'll do with wiggins i will actually stand at the back
here and turn the clippers on and off and see what he does he may shoot out and if he does that's
fine we'll just bring him back in what i want you to remember though is that you release the
pressure so the pressure on this horse is going to be the noise of the clipper or the clipper on him
that will be the pressure so you release that pressure when he's doing what you want him to do
and my aim is for him to stand still so that i can clip him so i will turn the noise of the clipper
off when i first start that when he stands still sometimes you have to be really quick when you're
doing a young or a really green horse and flick the clipper off as all four feet are on the ground
i'm going to turn the clippers on a reasonable away away from the horse i'm gonna take him up
to him and turn them on because that's actually expecting him to deal with two things at once
this noise and these things near him so i'm just going to turn them on and turn them off up so it
helps if you've got the power on so as you can see in real life i actually turned them off when
he was still moving we all make mistakes it's just part of horsemanship i might actually see
if his owner will just go and stand with him if she doesn't mind i'm just going to turn this on
now this time i'm going to watch his feet i'm going to try and turn them off when he is still
perfect i'm going to do it again
so he's still a little bit nervous about it so i'm just going to do this a few times
if you were working with a really green horse who had never had this which i've done with
mine actually working up to winter when i'm going to clip them every time they came in here i would
turn the i'd actually turn the clippers on in my shed and then move them closer each time i
might spend two weeks working up to doing it this and i've never had a problem with a horse
that i can't clip sorry that's going to be very loud because of my mic but as you can see
all right so now i'm going to bring the clippers up to him i'm not going to have them on and bring
them up to him because that's two things and i'm going to actually put them on him
and see if he will just relax with them on him and when i actually do run them and put them on him
i won't be cutting hair because trust me i've done this you do one and then the horse is just
like ah ah and then you're left with the patch on there while you do the work for the next week
that's how i can teach you these things i've made all the mistakes
all right so i'm a little bit closer so it's pretty noisy so i'm going to stand
here it's all right i'll let them have a look i don't have a problem if these
things actually have a smell to them good boy good boy good boy
so i'm feeling a little bit comfortable that i can probably start this closer to him
good boy sometimes if you've got smaller quieter ones you can start with them
so now i'm going to actually turn it on and i'm going to
i'm just moving back to make sure we're in shot and i'm going to just put it on his shoulder going
so i don't know if that was in shot but i hope you saw that i took that off when he stopped moving
okay so we just start it and one of the mindsets i have and i always keep with me when i'm
working with my horses is i've got all day i've got all day if i'm trying to put a horse on a
float that won't go on i've got all day and in doing that i don't actually try and teach
horses things exactly the day i need it and that's probably another principle to think of
good so he was really good then so i'm just going to walk away and take the pressure of
this and me way away from him bless him
and i pretty much think that we can probably get on with our clipping now and turn this
hairy mammoth into a nice smooth lean machine okay so let's see if you'll let me cut a little
bit off of him come in though i'm not just going to come in turn on and slap it on him turn it on
and there you see under that horse a sleek machine and i hate to tell brittny this but she's clipping
him not me i hate clipping horses thank you see clipped he looks like the beautiful beast
he was when he was 10 years younger lost all that hair a little bit of a makeover for wiggy
do i laugh at myself all the time