Good rugs last for years, but knowing how to repair horse rugs can be invaluable – especially if your horse is one of those “rug wreckers”.
You can, of course, send your rugs off to a professional rug wash and repair person, but if you can’t manage without it for a few days or want to save money and reduce your horse bills, you can try to repair them yourself. And if you’re feeling thrifty, you can wash your rugs at home and reproof rugs yourself, too.
How to repair ripped rugs
How to approach a rug repair depends on the extent of the damage done. You can use these methods on all turnout rugs, but also fly rugs, summer sheets and exercise sheets.
Spread the rug out on a large table or the floor so that it can lay completely flat and give you the best chance of making a neat job.
Sew neatly along the rip – back stitch will hold best if you can manage it.
Seal it with a strong waterproof glue, such Gorilla glue (also on Amazon). You could also use glue to seal a patch in place.
Small patch repair
(Image credit: creditUnknown)
How to repair small rips
For small nicks and rips, you can get specialist rug repair kits, such as the Stormsure Repair Kit (available on Amazon). These patches (either self-adhesive or with glue) do the job well and prevent the rips from extending further.
A rug repairer may be the best option for dealing with broken straps and missing buckles if you have the time to wait. But if you are up for a challenge, this is when that old, battered rug that you’ve been holding onto comes into its own. You can reuse the buckles and clips on your newer rug if anything breaks.
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If the broken straps are not removable, you will need to cut them off first, noting how they are fixed so that you can copy this. Replace them, using heavy-duty webbing (available on Amazon), copying the original fixture. You will need an industrial sewing maching or a very strong specialist upholstery kit to tackle the thick fabrics.
Another emergency fix is to use baler twine as a fillet string under the horse’s tail instead of the crossover leg straps. Make sure you remove any trailing straps that cannot be fixed.
In a perfect world, our horses’ rugs would never tear, break – or get muddy – but with a few simple tricks and a bit of patience, you can make them last as long as they were intended to.
Martha is an experienced journalist who is mad-keen on horses and dogs. Her reporting CV includes the Paris Olympics, European championships, Aachen World Equestrian Festival and World Cup finals. After growing up with assorted liver and white springer spaniels, she enjoyed 14 years with two rescue dogs. Now, her constant companion is Fidget, an extremely energetic and habitually muddy black and white springer. Martha has written on topics as diverse as a top horse’s clone to the best GPS trackers for dogs, as well as equestrian and rural matters for Country Life, The Field, The Times, The Spectator and The Telegraph alongside Horse & Hound.
