On a jumper you groom skin, not coat

Brushing boots and over-reach boots sit on the same patch of skin for hours. Why the skin under the kit is the grooming job on a jumper, and how to check it daily.

A jumper is the horse that wears the most kit on its legs. Brushing boots in front, fetlock boots behind, over-reach boots on top of that, and often from the warm up until after the prize giving. Under all of it is skin, and skin likes neither heat nor friction nor wet that never quite leaves.

The coat of a jumper causes no trouble. The skin under the boots does.

What happens inside a boot

A closed boot is a small sauna. It holds heat, and it holds sweat that cannot dry. Add the sand that works its way between shell and leg and rubs with every stride. After two hours that is nothing. After two hours a day for a fortnight it is something.

• Boots come off first after a round, before the saddle.
• Wipe the shell and the lining out every time, otherwise the sand stays in.
• Hose the legs and then actually dry them. Towel and air, not water alone.
• Turn the over-reach boots over and feel along the rim with your hand.
• Keep two sets of boots in rotation. One set is never dry.

Hosing is half the job, drying is the other

Cold water after a round is right. It takes heat out of the legs and flushes the sand out. It goes wrong when the leg stays wet. A damp cannon under a stable bandage, a damp pastern spending the night in bedding: those are where care turns into a problem. Work from the bottom upwards, strip the water off with your hand, and run a towel through the pastern until it feels dry.

The daily look at cannon and pastern

It costs thirty seconds a leg and it is the one piece of grooming nothing else replaces. Run a flat hand down the cannon from knee to fetlock, both forelegs against each other, then the hinds. Then open the pastern and look at it rather than only feel it. That is where the hair is thickest, where it dries worst, and where everything starts in winter.

Over-reach boots and the spot nobody looks at

Over-reach boots are there so the horse does not strike into its own heel on landing. They do the job well and rub exactly where the rim sits. Turn the boot over after untacking and look at the heel. A bare line around the coronet says the boot is too big or too stiff. An open patch is no longer a grooming question.

A jumper is not measured by its shine. It is measured by whether it still has the same legs on Sunday that it had on Friday.