White is a decision, not a colour

Anyone who owns a grey knows the green patch on the hip. On stains, purple shampoo and the question of how much white a horse can carry.

A grey is a horse that lies down wherever it is dirtiest. That is not bad luck, it is the combination of a pale surface and horse logic: what stands out to us does not interest the horse. Living with it takes a system rather than a panic on show morning.

The three kinds of stain

Green is grass and muck and sits in the hair. Yellow is urine or sweat and sits at the root. Grey is dust and sits everywhere. Only the first needs water. The second needs time and something mild, the third needs nothing but a brush.

Nine stains out of ten come out dry if you give them two days.

Which is why professional grooms do not tackle a grey on show day but two days before. A fresh green mark almost always washes out. One that is a fortnight old is anchored in the hair.

Purple shampoo, properly understood

Purple shampoo does not bleach. It lays a minimal violet tone on the hair that neutralises yellow optically, because violet sits opposite yellow on the colour wheel. So it is cosmetics, not cleaning. Everything else follows from that:

• Always dilute, or the horse ends up lilac in patches.
• Leave it briefly, a minute is usually enough, and work evenly.
• Apply to a wet coat, never a dry one.
• No more often than necessary. Frequent use dries the hair and dulls it.

The evening before

A grey is washed the night before, scraped thoroughly, walked dry and then rugged, with a clean rug. Go to all that trouble and then put the horse into an unmucked box and you have wasted the evening. The box is done before the wash, not after.

An honest word at the end

A grey in everyday life does not look like a grey in a catalogue, and that is fine. Trying to hold show white all year means washing so often that the skin suffers. The better route is to keep the coat in good condition and spend the effort on the days when somebody is looking.