Walking On Volume 5, Issue 1, January 2018 | Page 6

Back to Basics
Boarding Horse Stables - How to Find a
Good Stable For Your Horse
By Dale Anderson 
Looking for a good boarding horse stable can be a
real challenge. The easy thing to tell you would be to
ask around, but not when it comes to finding the best
place for your horse. If someone is keeping a horse in a
lousy stable, do you really think they are going to admit
that it is a crappy place to keep your horse? I don’t think
so, they would have to admit that they are keeping her
horse in a substandard stable just to save a few bucks.
The best way to check out a stable is to go there
unannounced, and see what’s going on. Go to the stable
at 7 a.m. are the horses fed or the stalls clean? This will
say a lot about the stable management, if the horses are
hungry or the stalls are a mess, move on to someplace
different!
I spent about 20 years as a farrier, when I went to a
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boarding stable there were some clues that I noticed
right off the bat. Does the stable manager show concern
about helping you or do they act like you are bothering
them? Many are only concerned about making money
you can tell they really don’t care about you or your
horse. Of course sometimes they will fool you so, I
would ask a lot of questions how many times a day do
you feed? What kind of hay do you feed? Have them
show you the hay, how does it look to you? Ask them if
they grain the horses or do they charge extra for that?
how many times a day do they clean stalls? what kind of
bedding do they use? Is it clean, is it deep enough?
Now I am assuming that you know good hay, clean
bedding, if not ask someone who does to come with
you. At one stable I used to go to the urine smell was