Fighting Back Against Fungus

Hey Wednesday. It’s Susan.

As the weather continues to play havoc with our horses’ general appearance, mud and wet is brutal for their skin. You can turn your horse out with no nasty bumps or puffiness and find the following days that your horse’s legs feel like rough gravel. It does not take much for fungus to cause swelling and tenderness around the lower legs, and if you have a gray horse or a horse with those big beautiful white socks, this blog post should really hit home.

I’ve learned a lot over my many years of grooming, and the first thing to know – NO SCRUBBING. To pick or aggressively rub gives rise to a whole new headache….cellulitis. I can speak from personal experience that I scrubbed fungus with a bath mitt and that poor boy developed cellulitis within a day. (If we haven’t mentioned this yet, we can share the good without going through the bad and ugly!) Cue the EQUIDERMA Shampoo and just your bare hands.

I love this shampoo for its effectiveness and the product does not burn the inflamed tissue. This fungus stuff hurts them so we want to handle the problem with kid gloves. As a person that honestly never reads a label, treating fungus requires reading a label. We want the shampoo to be left on the fungus for at least twenty minutes and then rinse and dry the area. Not rubbing a towel over your wet hair drying, but gently patting the area. Fungus loves wet conditions so you want to be sure to really pat the rinsed legs. I discourage people from shampooing fungus constantly. I like to give the skin a chance to dry out so I typically shampoo and then apply lotion following the shampoo. When it’s time for the lotion, you can grab one of two products – and honestly I love both.

The first partners with the EQUIDERMA Shampoo – EQUIDERMA Skin Lotion. For the next two days, I apply lotion only. This is a barn favorite, and when we don’t order it straight from EQUIDERMA, we like to stock up from our local Tack Store – Waxhaw Tack Exchange.

Another barn favorite when it comes to horse lotion is WHERE’S THE BLUE STUFF! This lotion is truly awesome and dries out the fungus really quickly. We tend to buy this product from SmartPak or, another personal favorite, Riding Warehouse.

Both WHERE’S THE BLUE STUFF and EQUIDERMA are at about the same price point of $23, and you can use both lotions for a variety of problems like rain rot and summer itch. If you ask me what is a must have in a tack trunk, either of these lotions should be in there. I love trying shampoos, conditioners, leave in conditioners, and any product that says “shine,” but truth be told, fungus is ugly and painful so it has to be a part of the beauty regimen.

Have a fungus fighting secret of your own?! We would love to hear it! Drop a comments of your experiences, and don’t forget that we’re all in this together.