Our season began "down south" in Feb. and I decided we'd go give it a shot. The wee beastie was about 3 1/2" deep in coat - enough to hide his harness nearly completely. He was hot, out of shape and completely lackluster.
For the 2012 season, we'd like to revisit that venue, so I have decided to keep the horses more conditioned over the winter. The website mentioned is really handy. I clipped my one horse full clip in August, the other not so much. Now we are dealing with 30 to 40 degrees at night and 70 to 80 degree days. Without a barn, and just a loafing shed, it's a worry, but I have come up with some helpers.
Since I don't work hard enough to sweat out the face, I leave that unclipped until hair wants to get caught in the buckles of the bridle. I do clip under the throatlatch, the bridlepath and the hair just behind and between the ears, so there's kind of a path from the browband, up over the poll, to the browband, as I find my guys sweat there.
I have also been clipping at the elbows and stifles.
Pretty shortly, we'll have sort of a #7, medium trace, but extended to the throat and under the jaw, but not the face like on #8. By December or January, likely we will be more like #11, but with less of the neck clipped. That will depend on how much ice I am breaking on the water tanks. Late January we will go to a hunter clip to prepare for going down the hill. We are a mile+ up, so to work them I have found that my dressage saddle pads work nicely as quarter sheets. I use the velcro loop for the billets to go around the saddle, and I added 2 other loops to go around the breeching holdbacks, so nothing else goes under the tail.
My hope is that we can still blanket comfortably up here at the single digits/teens/20 degree, while still being able to condition enough to be a little fit, and then not be so uncomfortably hot in the 80 degree southern climate.