Rhinegold Lunging Rug Review

The weather so far this winter in the UK has been simply awful. We have had strong gale force winds, rain, lots and lots of rain, weeks of below freezing temperatures and I have never known it to snow as often as it has. All these horrible conditions have made keeping Scottie in semi regular exercise pretty difficult! So a few weeks ago I invested in a Rhinegold Lunging Rug.

Battle with exercise sheets

I don’t enjoy riding in many of these horrible weather conditions, especially not on a regular basis. Scottie also doesn’t really want to be out in the for too long either! So this winter lunging has really been our friend. I feel that popping him in his pessoa and on the lunge for 20 mins is just as productive as schooling for 40 mins.

However, in these conditions it has been too cold to expect him to work naked. Especially where his first clip still hasn’t grown back! So I tried lunging him in our ride on exercise sheets. But these just don’t work that well without a saddle. They don’t cover the most cold sensitive part of his back and it’s quite hard to secure them under a roller.

While many of his turnout rugs offer a reasonable amount of shoulder movement, I personally don’t feel comfortable working Scottie in them properly. If can’t be that comfortable, especially with his pessoa over the top. That’s when I saw a few of the girls at the yard lunging their horses in horse walker rugs and I couldn’t help but think that these were a genius idea!

The Rhinegold Lunging Rug

I started Googling horse walker/lunging rugs and came across the Rhinegold Lunging Rug. It was fairly lightweight, waterproof and incredibly reasonably priced! When I had been looking many brands were charging £70+ for a waterproof walker rug, which seemed like a rather big investment for something I plan on using a handful of times during extreme winter weather. Whereas I found the Rhinegold Lunging Rug for around £35 in comparison.

Love it!

The rug is good quality and is perfect for what I purchased it for. It is waterproof with a thin fleece lining. I really love how it looks on Scottie and think it really brings out the gingerness! I also think that something about the way it fastens at the front just looks really smart and makes Scottie look like we know what we are doing. All the gear and all that!

I have lunged Scottie in it a few times already, both with and without gadgets and I must say I’m really pleased with it. It fits him really well and doesn’t seem to interfere with him in anyway, which is really important. The bag it came in is also suitable for continuing to store it in too. Which means I don’t have to add it to the pile of loose rugs spreading out across my big storage box!

Tiny issues…

Despite loving the Rhinegold Lunging Rug, I have found a few issues with it. The first is that the front surcingles does up pretty much exactly where the girth on Scottie’s roller sits. Which means I have to fiddle slightly so that the girth isn’t over the metal fastening. But at the same time, if this fastening was further back or forwards, the rug may not fit as well.

The second and really rather petty issue, is that the fillet strong attachments aren’t level. By this I mean that if the rug is level either side, the right fillet string attachment is in a fairly normal place, whereas the left is slightly left to the top of his tail. I can’t tell if this is a mistake or if it was done deliberately. I guess attaching it this way could potentially offer some extra security or something right? And it doesn’t cause the rug to move around at all. So maybe there is some logic in there, but I can see it upsetting those with OCD!

Overall, I think this rug is a fantastic purchase, especially if more snow and freezes temperatures are predicted despite it now being officially spring! It is also lightweight enough that you could comfortably use it on rainy summer days too.

Last Updated on 08/05/2019