Everyone’s time at the barn is precious, especially when you live far away. Here are some tips that should help you be more efficient in the day to day care of your horse without any short cuts in their care:
- Pick their feet in their stall ( that way you don’t have to sweep up the stall for hoof pickings)
- After drying your horse’s legs with a towel, use the same towel with extra water on it to wipe their head and behind their ears before finally using it to wipe down your tack and bit. Then you only need to go over your tack with a conditioner.
- Use the girth straps on your saddle pad. These keep your saddle in place which eliminates the need to adjust your saddle mid way through your ride. If the straps that go on your billet straps don’t work – cut them off to eliminate an untidy look.
- Before you head out to the ring to ride- Hook your lead shank to both sides of your halter with one snap and hang on a hook in the wash stall- signally that this halter is OFF LIMITS to someone else coming in who is in need of a halter. Everyone should have their OWN halter.
- You will need to trudge through a bit of a muddy ring to get to the mounting block. Bring a small towel out with you to the to wipe your boots off before you mount, and then leave the towel for the next person to use. No point in having clean riding boots which then get mucky on the bottom before mounting. Every so often be the person who picks up the dirty towels left on the mounting block and takes to the laundry room.
- A great Article from this past month’s USHJA InStride Magazine talks about proper Nutrition for fueling the show rider. Too often we talk about all that it takes to get our Equine Athlete ready without thinking of the just as Important other half to the team; the rider. Check out this link :https://lsc-pagepro.mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?i=583167#{%22issue_id%22:583167,%22view%22:%22articleBrowser%22,%22article_id%22:%223363806%22}
Let me know if you have any other great tips that you can share with us-