Equestrian Barns & Architecture: Start Living the Dream

Equus: Life as Art

8:38 pm

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Meeting Jeffrey Terreson in the wonderful Cutter & Cutter Art Gallery in St. Augustine, Florida this year was an amazing moment for me.

I’m a horse person and he paints the most beautiful images of equines I’ve ever seen. But a more amazing story is how Jeffrey got there.

Jeffrey has been an artist all his life. Like many artists, a devotion to art means years of struggle but he never gave up. “I’m 55 and I’m still friends with this remarkable teacher I had in high school, Harold Witherspoon. He’s the one […]

Record Courier Recognizes Trilogy Barn & Stable

6:17 am

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Misc.

There was a nice piece in the Gardnerville, NV, Record Courier noting the formation of our company, Trilogy Barn and Stable Company.

The new company is a partnership between Innovative Equine Systems of Minden, NV, and Equine Facility Design of Oregon City.

The concept is to provide a one-stop solution for those who seek an attractive, horse-friendly and efficient design with quality products for their horse stables and barns at reasonable prices […]

To Tree or Not to Tree

5:46 am

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Equine Care, Facility Planning & Design

That really is the question when you’re pasturing horses. Do you plant trees for shade for your horses and if so, what kind?

The typical bucolic scene of a horse farm is expected to include ancient giants their bending leafy branches toward the ground and your equine friends grazing happily beneath. It’s a lovely idea. Let’s look at the reality.

Trees can actually become a hazard to your horses in the pasture. If you live in an area with frequent thunderstorms with lightning that reaches the ground (which it often does), you don’t want […]

Horse Barn Interiors: A New Way to Care

6:44 am

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Equine Care, Facility Planning & Design

You probably already know that bamboo now comes in many gorgeous forms that you can use in flooring, paneling, and other applications. You might also know that this versatile wood is a sustainable, renewable resource.

Did you know that it’s good for your horses? Not for food—for finish material in the barn.

Although panda’s eat bamboo, it would be hard for your horses to digest because it’s so woody. But we’re talking about surrounding your horses with finished bamboo in the stall. Take a look:

We loved this idea so much we started […]

The Dish on Dirt

2:55 am

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Facility Planning & Design

What you put your equestrian barn or riding arena ON is as important as where you decide to put it.

The variables involved in evaluating the appropriateness of the site you’ve chosen are well understood and it’s mostly a matter of going through the process.

Structure of the soil

It may seem odd to talk about the structure of soil but what we mean, put very simplistically, is how much space there is between the granules that make up the soil and how those granules clump together. We want to know this because it […]

Riding Arena Footing: Anatomy of a Forelimb

4:16 am

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Equine Care

As we wrote about the importance of the proper footing for the kind of equine activity you’re engage in, we mentioned that poor footing can be hazardous to your horses health in many ways.

We wrote:

“The forces carried through your horse’s hoof during movement are tremendous. When the hoof strikes the riding surface, the response from the surface is either concussive, absorptive, or reflective.”

Watch this fascinating video, created by Dr. Jonathan Merritt for his Ph.D. dissertation and you’ll have a better sense of how those concussive forces are distributed by an extremely […]

Equine Superstardom

3:26 am

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Equine Events

The 65th annual Del Mar National Horse Show is about to get underway in San Diego.

This is a huge event in the equine world and features three types of riding over the three weeks of the event: Western, Dressage, Hunter/Jumper.

The show debuted in 1946 with 350 riders competing for $20,000 in prizes. The show was part of the San Diego County Fair and so it remained until it outgrew the fairgrounds in 1979.

This year will see more than 3,000 horses competing for over $350,000 in winnings.

Del Mar has […]

Riding Arenas: Getting Your Footing

2:13 am

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Equine Care, Facility Planning & Design

I’ll bet we’re not the only horse enthusiasts who find the biom echanics and forces of horse movement fascinating.

Some of the people who study such things are the people who develop footing for riding arenas.

What is Footing?

Footing is the term we use for the surface laid down for horses to move on during exercise or horse-riding events.

Competition to be the company that supplies footing for high-visibility equine events is fierce. This benefits all of us who love our horses because it means the development of better and better […]