The Real Cost of Owning a Horse

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Our friends at Diamond Trailers have put together the real cost of owning a horse, as it’s every little girl or boys dream to own one. Think back to your childhood and you probably though about it at least once. Probably asked your parents for one at Christmas or a birthday? Well, it sounds great. Until you look at the cost of owning a horse in the long run, it’s a huge financial commitment and not one that should be taken lightly. Here’s a infographic showing the initial cost of owning a horse and the yearly cost […]

How to Use Recycled Materials to Cut Down on Equestrian Arena Costs

If your budget is the only reason you keep putting off your plans to build your own equestrian arena, here is some good news for you. While you can definitely save money by doing much of the actual construction yourself, you can also possibly cut down on costs by using recycled construction materials wherever possible. For example, choosing crushed glass instead of silica sand can save you a lot of money when it comes to putting together your sand surface. Additionally, recycled materials are eco-friendly and will help you bring down the carbon footprint of building your own equestrian […]

The History Behind Show Jumping

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Show jumping is the only Olympic sport in which men and women compete at the same level in the same competition.

Our friends at The Irish Field newspaper (http://www.theirishfield.ie/equine/Show%20jumping/511/) created an interactive  StoryMap to highlight the history behind the sport of showjumping.

The StoryMap can be viewed at – https://s3.amazonaws.com/uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/ffb3f89e5f8c2712dce9691116b11b40/history-of-showjumping/index.html, and is interactive and can be scrolled through.

We found it very interesting, and a great way to convey the history of the sport […]

Cascadia Earthquake and The New Yorker Article

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The following post has been provided by one of our guest authors and colleague, Travis McFeron.

The recent article in The New Yorker, “The Really Big One,” by Kathryn Schulz has caused a considerable amount of discussion and worry in the media and among some people in the region who have read it and were not previously not familiar with the Cascadia fault system. My initial impression of the article was that while it was fairly accurate in many respects, some of the wording seemed a bit sensational in nature.  Overall the article does a very good job of spotlighting […]

The Benefits of Equine-Assisted Therapy

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The following post has been provided by one of our guest authors, Daniel Matthews.

You may know someone who has a therapeutic animal. In my experience as a Community-Based Rehabilitation Specialist, I’ve seen dogs, birds, and even hamsters fulfill the ‘therapeutic animal’ role. The animal serves as a companion allowing the individual to take her or his mind off of real, or perceived, problems. The animal helps teach care and empathy for another being. By helping ease and stabilize the mind, caring for the animal becomes a form of self-care for the individual.

Now, horses are emerging […]

Riding Arena Construction

Choosing the Site

Choosing a suitable site for your Riding Arena is often dictated by the amount of land available to you. If you are short of land you won’t have much choice as to where the arena is built. If you are lucky enough to have a choice there are a variety of factors that should be considered. Some obvious, some not!

1. Access – The majority of people fail to consider the implications of poor access on arena construction. Poor access means suppliers cannot use large delivery vehicles thus dramatically increasing haulage costs as more trips […]

For Your Consideration: Pet Trusts

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If we are lucky, we will have many pets who bless and enrich our lives for many years.

Unfortunately, we are going to grieve for them many, many times throughout our lives since their life spans are so much shorter than ours.  However, if we persist in pet ownership, at some point, our pets are bound to outlive us.

We have all seen emailed pleas for pet rehoming for suddenly homeless and loveless pets who have lost their owners, since it is human nature not to want to recognize the inevitability of our own passing. Culturally, we seem […]

Equine Coronavirus

Equine Coronavirus – A Black Swan Event

When I first heard of the concept of a Black Swan event, I was more than intrigued.  Curious enough in fact, that I read the New York Times bestseller: The Black Swan, the Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2007, Random House, 300 pages and notes, etc).  This very complicated treatise was based upon the story of the black swan: basically people were convinced that all swans were white.  When a black swan was first discovered, it literally, in today’s vernacular, rocked their world.

This shock […]