Showtime Stables

04/20/2025

04/02/2025

🩷 Let Them Have a Horse...

Let them have a horse, let them ride,
Let them learn with dirt stained pride.
Give them reins and room to grow,
Show them truths only horses know.

Let them feel the morning chill,
Boots in stirrups, heart be still.
Let them fight for what they earn,
Through every fall, let them return.

Let them brush and braid and mend,
Make the barn their second home.
Let them whisper, laugh, and cry,
Beneath the endless, open sky.

Let them know the work is tough,
That love alone is only one part.
That feed needs hauling, stalls need cleaned...
That dreams are earned by hands that work.

Let them feel the wind in their hair,
And the freedom only horses share.
For horses teach what words cannot...
Strength, respect, and all they’ve got.

So when they ask, don’t think twice,
The price is high, but so’s the gain.
Because without a horse, they’ll never know, the kind of love that helps them grow.

❤️ Michelle Knutson | Born In The Barn

03/14/2025

Today we're going to talk about why it's so hard to find the right horse these days. This is something I hear people complain about 24/7. I see the ads ALL the time with a laundry list of "requirements" I know perfectly well they are not going to find in a living, breathing horse.

See, the average horse starts life over on the left side of this graph. He's totally sound in almost every case! But he's also wild as a March hare. Foals will kick you, bite you, etc. Young horses who have recently been trained to ride can be fairly unpredictable. It's not at all unusual for them to spook, buck, or bolt, thus disqualifying them from consideration by the folks that post the "NO spook/buck/bolt" ads.

As horses get older, if they are consistently ridden, competed with, etc., they tend to get progressively safer. But much like your car when you go over 100k, stuff starts breaking down, too. That horse will now need some maintenance to keep doing his job. Joint supplements, Adequan/Legend whatever, corrective shoeing or lifestyle changes like pasture instead of a stall will be required to keep him working.

The problem is, too often, the ads that say "NO spook/buck/bolt" also often say "100% sound/no maintenance required." Folks, those two things are almost never in the same bucket.

So if you actually want a horse to ride, you are probably going to have to compromise somewhere. I would say that beginners should buy at the blue heart point, your average reasonably competent rider should buy at the red heart point, and if you want to do something competitive that's hard on them (barrel racing, polo, endurance, jumping, higher levels of dressage, etc.) you are going to have to shop in the green heart range and learn to stick when that young, sound horse does some silly young, sound horse stuff.

There are no other alternatives. Now, stop posting silly ISO ads and buy or adopt a horse at the point in the graph where you know you belong.

02/06/2025

Show season is coming, because hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard. .

01/21/2025

Sharing: written by Paige Nebloe

What no one tells you about owning a horse boarding facility….

•It’s loving someone else’s animal so much it hurts at times.
•It’s noticing and addressing the slightest change in a horse’s behavior, eating, or drinking habits.
•It’s staying up all night to monitor someone else’s horse when they aren’t feeling well.
•It’s an overwhelming feeling of guilt when a horse gets hurt or sick; even though there was nothing you could have done differently to prevent it.
•It’s facility overhead. There’s ALWAYS something that needs fixed or updated.
•It’s having a camera roll full of cute, silly pictures of horses you don’t own.
•It’s eating Taco Bell 3 nights in a row because it’s the only place still open when you finish chores at 11pm and you’re starving.
•It’s unplugging/plugging in water tank heaters several times throughout the day/night to try and keep the electric bill from quadrupling.
•It’s an overwhelming feeling of anguish for weeks on end when you have to tell boarders that the cost of board must go up.
•It’s working on every holiday, birthday, anniversary, and sick day.
•It’s a constant feeling of guilt for not spending enough time with your own animals.
•It’s wondering if you pay your wonderful help enough, even though they make more per hour than you do most days.
•It’s getting to know horses even better than their owners do, in some ways.
•It’s rearranging family, work, and personal commitments to take care of horses.
•It’s dreaming about that bathroom remodel you’ve always wanted, but getting new fencing installed instead.

Boarding horses is so much more than feeding, watering, and cleaning stalls. It isn’t for the faint of heart and it surely isn’t for anyone looking to get rich. It takes a village of people with a special place in their hearts for equines. To anyone that can relate, just know that you ARE APPRECIATED! 🐴❤️