Clip Hair Extensions

If you have ever shown a horse, you will know just how important it is to have your horse braided to look its best. Not everyone knows how to braid their horses, and many turn to professional braiders to do the job. But horse showing is very expensive and adding the cost of braiding to the fees only makes it that much harder to afford.
Anyone can learn how to braid their own horse. It takes a lot of practice, but with time and patience, you can learn to produce show-quality braids and avoid the cost of paying a professional to do the job.
The first stage in learning to braid is to braid with elastics. Start out with elastics the same color as your horse’s mane. If you can’t find the right color, choose a color that is darker than his mane as it will blend in better than a lighter color.
In addition to elastics you will need a mane comb (or pulling comb), a hair clip (the long alligator type is best) and a small brush or sponge with a bucket of water.
Start out by combing your horse’s mane so that it lies flat and has no tangles. Use water on the brush or sponge to wet the top portion of your horse’s mane. Then separate a section about 1″ in width, and use the hair clip to hold the rest of the mane back.
Take an elastic and place it on your baby finger (you can put a few on the finger if you’d like, but be careful not to cut off your circulation). Then separate the hair into three even sections. It is very important to make these sections as even as possible as uneven sections will make braiding impossible.
Now comes the braiding part. If you have never braided before, this will take some practice. If you know how to braid, you are ahead of the game, but the technique on a horse is a bit different.
Throughout the process keep the tension on the braid in a downward direction, along the horse’s neck. If you pull the braid sideways you will have a braid that sticks out. Take the far right section and cross it over the middle section so that it is the new middle piece. Now take the far left section and cross it over the middle section so that it becomes the middle piece. This is basic braiding. Continue this process until you reach the end of the braid.
If this is your first time braiding, your braid will probably be quite loose. The best braids are tight braids, so you need to learn how to make the braid tight. Keeping the tension between your fingers, pull each twist of the hair as tight as you can. The pressure should be sideways, through the twists, not downwards along the neck. This takes a lot of practice, and your first attempts will not likely be very tight at all. Don’t despair; if you keep trying you will learn to get it tight and tidy in the long run.
At the end of the braid, use the elastic to hold it in place. Braid the hair as close to the end as possible, or you will get stuck with a lot of excess hair that sticks up and looks messy.
When the braid is finished, fold it under itself so that the elastic is underneath. Now, take a second elastic and wrap it around the folded braid, close to the top of the neck. If you have kept it tight and the overall pull downwards, the braid should lie more-or-less flat against the horse’s neck.
Continue this process down the neck until you reach the end of the mane. Wet the hair as necessary to keep it lying flat and the braids as tight as possible. While your first attempt will not likely be show-worthy, if you keep up the practice, soon you will have decent braids suitable for low-level shows.
Once you have perfected the elastic braid, for professional-quality braids, try learning to braid with wool.

When showing your horse, doing a proper clipping job can be one of the most important ways to make him look his best.
Many people leave show grooming to the last minute. When clipping a horse for a show, it is important to think ahead. It takes about a week for any clipper marks to grow out enough to be unnoticeable, so show clipping should always be completed at least a week before the show.
Start out with the head. There are several things that should be trimmed to make a horse’s face as refined and beautiful as possible. First of all, you need to trim the excess hair from under the jowl. While in the summer, many horses are sleek, during the fall and spring seasons, the shaggy hair below the jowl can be quite unsightly. Pointing the clippers so that the teeth are perpendicular to the cheek, gently run your clippers down the cheek towards the jowl. This will catch any cat hairs and shaggy coat without clipping down to the skin.
Under the jaw, clip the coat tight to the jaw line. Make sure that the edges are even, or your horse will wind up with a ragged look. Trim the hair down towards the chin, removing the long hairs that snug up against the chin.
Generally you should not need to trim any hair on the rest of the face. The whiskers will need to be trimmed, but they can wait until the day before the show. The eye whiskers can be trimmed too, but should be left at least half an inch long as they are the eye’s primary protection against damage in the dark.
To trim the ears, fold them gently in half so that the inside hair sticks out. Trim along the edge of the ear, removing the inner hair that sticks out. Unless it is necessary for your breed or discipline, avoid trimming out the inner hair as it is an essential protection against flies in the summer.
The bridle paths should be trimmed with scissors before using the clippers. For most horses, a 2″ long bridle path is adequate. Some breeds require longer bridle paths, so check your breed’s standards to know how long it should be.
Clip the bridle path as tight to the neck as possible. You will probably want to repeat the clipping from both sides of the neck to make sure that you don’t miss any hairs. Avoid the temptation to trim a little further each time as you will soon wind up with a bridle path that is too long and looks terrible. The bridle path can be trimmed again just before the show if necessary.
Another area that often requires trimming is the fetlock. This will probably only need to be done a couple of times a season, but does make a big difference in how a horse looks in the ring. Following the direction of the hair, clip down the fetlock, around the joint. Do not clip the front. Picking up the foot, trim the hair up the back of the pastern, towards the ergot. Remove the ergot if it has gotten long.
Finally, if your horse has decent hooves, you will want to boot up your horse. This is done by clipping the excess hair around the coronet band. Clip each section upwards from the hoof, just catching the hairs that hang over the coronet. Be sure to go all the way around the hoof, catching the inner hairs as well as the outer hairs.
No matter what breed or discipline you show, make sure that you check the standards before you go ahead and clip. Some breeds specialize in long fetlocks or shaggy faces. It would be a terrible faux-pas to arrive with a neatly trimmed horse only to be confronted with a ring full of shaggy beauties.