While there are “rugs for dogs,” I couldn’t find a definition for “dog rugs.” Horse rugs, on the other hand are clearly defined by Wiki as, “ a blanket or animal coat intended for keeping a horse or other equine warm or otherwise protected from wind or other elements. They are tailored to fit around a horse’s body from chest to rump, with straps crossing underneath the belly to secure the blanket yet allowing the horse to move about freely.” Since this blog is about discovering Rugs, Carpets and Tapestries I couldn’t ignore this…. And I know even less about horses.

Everything For Your Horse On Amazon

A Horse Rug (UK English)

“Horse rug” is the term in British English. We Americans usually refer to them as “horse blankets or “stable blankets.”Horse rugs, horse blankets or stable blankets are not the same thing as “saddle blankets”  Saddle blankets are those  which have protected the horses’ back from riders and stiff leather saddles since the beginning of time.

A Saddle Blanket

Here is something else about “horse blankets” that I didn’t know: “Horse blanket” was a slang term for pre-1929 US dollar bills.” The bills, as you can see in the image below, were much bigger than today’s bills. The joke was that they could be used as

A saddle blanket on a quarter of a horse…

saddle blankets.  I know, I know, I’m using “horse blanket” and “saddle blanket” almost interchangeably. Not my fault. Although my friends accuse me of being far older than I actually am, I wasn’t around in the 1920’s and had nothing to do with this deplorable lack of linguistic consistency.

Two horse blanket bills from the 20’s that could have been used for saddle blankets. Ha! Ha!

History of the American Dollar on Kindle