It’s that time of year when the weather is always changing. Warm to cold, wet to muddy, rain to snow. The horse blanketing question surfaces. How should Larry be dressed for turnout? Does he need his thin stable sheet with a rain sheet over top? Or his heavier stable sheet with an insulated turnout blanket over top? It’s the eternal horse blanketing question: what should Larry wear as the weather gets colder?

The other day it was half-raining, half-snowing, and 1°C (34°F). I saw the two draft horses below (can you make them out?) way back in a field. No blankets. Their large body mass would help these guys retain body heat, but it was the rain that had me worrying about them. No amount of hair will protect a horse if he’s soaked to the skin. It was dark when I drove by again on my way home, so I couldn’t see if they were still outside. It was blustery and cold, so I hope they’d been brought in for the night.

I took the picture of the pony below on a really cold day about three winters ago. I’d see him in his paddock every time I drove by, and I always wondered if he was warm enough under all that hair. On this particular day, I waded through deep snow to get to his paddock, and burrowed my bare fingers into his thick coat. He was toasty warm, like he was wearing a down coat. Obviously, horse blanketing wasn’t on this guy’s list of necessities. I never worried about him after that.

Larry is a different critter, though. He’s ridden every day, so I don’t want his muscles to be tight because he’s cold. Being a Thoroughbred, he doesn’t grow a thick coat. So, one the one hand, I don’t have to clip him to keep from overheating when he’s worked. On the other hand, horse blanketing is definitely on his list when the weather turns chilly. The question always is, which blanket? What’s going to keep him from getting cold or from overheating? If only he could talk.

In 2016, researchers published a paper in Applied Animal Behaviour Science about horses that had been trained to communicate their blanketing preferences using simple symbols painted on a white board. The horses could choose to have their blanket taken off, put on, or no change. The authors reported that the horses were able to “communicate their preference regarding blanketing in order to obtain or maintain thermal comfort, based on their individual perception of weather including ambient temperature, wind and precipitation”.

Even if Larry could learn to communicate his blanketing preferences using painted signs, he unfortunately doesn’t have a team of scientists waiting on him hand and foot. So it’s back to making an educated guess, and hoping there are no drastic weather changes while he’s outside. If he were a cat, it might be easier…