Picture this: It’s six thirty in the evening. You’re tired from a long day at work. All you want is to get to the barn, get your horse’s stall cleaned, and maybe get in a quick ride before you head home to eat dinner and collapse.

You walk into the barn and sigh. Your horse’s stall is a wreck. There is more hay beneath his feet than bedding. He’s been working on that tunnel to freedom again, too: the gnawed spot on top of his stall door is easily an inch deeper than it was yesterday. And look at those hoof-marks on the wall. He’s been kicking. Last time he kicked the stall walls, he was lame for a week.

All to easy to picture? As horse-owners, most of us have dealt with at least one of these situations at some point. The stall-walking, the kicking, the wood-chewing: what does it all mean?

Is your horse bored?

If your horse spends all or most of his time indoors, boredom is a pretty good bet. Horses are nomadic by nature; all the domestication in the world isn’t going to change their innate desire to walk about, and graze, and gaze at the horizon, for the majority of their life.

But endless pastures of waving prairie grass aren’t an option for most horse-owners. What can you do to help your bored horse out? Here are five tips to help relieve equine boredom.

1. Check your stall size. A horse stall’s minimum size is generally accepted to be 12 x 12 feet. This gives the average horse enough room to walk around, lay down, and separate eating areas from manure areas: all natural inclinations for a horse at pasture. If his space is smaller than that, it becomes difficult for him to keep his stall clean, and when his hay becomes soiled with manure, he’ll be out of food and grow bored. And speaking of hay...

2. Slow down that hay burner! A horse that blows through three flakes of hay in an hour is destined to spend the rest of the hours between feedings looking for something to do. And if he’s stalled, that probably means he is going to pick up some nasty tricks: whether eating through his walls or eating his own manure. If you have to feed hay in big portions once or twice a day, consider a special hay-bag or hay-net with tiny openings to ration out the hay slowly. The longer he has clean, fresh hay to eat, the more content he will be.

3. A room with a view. A horse with a window -- especially if he can hang his head out said window -- can be a very happy horse. Herd animals who seek one another’s company for comfort, and prey animals with a nearly 360 degree field of vision and hearing, horses naturally prefer to be as aware of their surroundings as possible. If your horse has a window -- or at least a dutch door or cutaway stall gate -- he’ll have a whole new world to capture his attention.

4.Amusements. Maybe your horse is an inveterate chewer, and no amount of extra space or stimulation is going to break that habit now that it’s engrained. There are toys for that! Give him something to chew on that isn’t part of your barn. Tack shops, feed stores, and catalogs offer all sorts of “pacifiers,” with or without flavored fillings, that can keep a horse with an oral fixation happy and keep your barn standing upright.

5. Just let him out! Although there are some situations where real turn-out, in a big field, just isn’t a possibility, do you have a little extra space behind the stall? Attaching a small pen to the back of the barn for free-choice turn-out might be for you. Just the ability to walk inside and out, to soak up some sun and enjoy the view, might make all the difference for your bored horse.

Having a bored horse left to his own devices all day can really mean a mess for an owner, to say nothing of possible health and mental issues, such as ulcers and excess energy, that can mean expensive vet bills and less effective training. Consider some of these tips as you come up with a plan to amuse your horse, and maybe ease up your workload in the barn!

Winter is the perfect time to makeover your tack room and be organized for spring activities with your horse(s).  One of the easiest ways is to take everything out and separate items into piles: keep, store, fix, give away and throw away

• The “keep” pile might include the tack you use every day; first aid items, boots, and bandages and other frequently used items. These items should be clean and ready to go.  Thoroughly inspect all your leather tack to see if it belongs in the “fix/clean” pile to repair any damage and give it a good cleaning.

• The “store” pile can include those items that you don’t use on a regular basis. If its winter, it may be fly sheets and fly masks, or things you use only during showing season.  Again, these items should be clean and ready to use; they are typically things you don’t use during the winter.

• The “fix” pile also includes the “to be cleaned” pile.  These can be saddle pads, polo wraps you keep meaning to wash, extra blankets that need to be cleaned and/or repaired, your show jacket that needs a button put back on or anything you know you’ll use but needs to have something done before you can.  In addition, add to this pile your grooming brushes, sponges and towels to clean, disinfect and let dry thoroughly.

• The “give away” pile is all those items that are still in good shape but you no longer use.  For instance, the blanket for your 17hh warm-blood that you sold and now have a 15.1hh quarter horse.  The four extra brushes in the grooming kit that you don’t know how they got there, the polos in navy and yellow because now you’re at a barn with burgundy and black as their colors.  And do you really need ALL those saddle pads?  There are many organizations that would dearly love your hand-me-downs; such as, horse rescues, therapeutic riding programs, horse programs for at-risk youth, etc.  Or rather than give away, sell them on EBay or host a tack sale at your barn. 

• The “throw away” pile consists of items that can no longer be used.  The mane comb with missing teeth, your horse’s blanket that was ripped to shreds by an overenthusiastic neighbor or the broken riding crop.  Before you toss, consider the possibility of recycling:

- Could your blanket repair/cleaning service use any of the hardware from your blanket?

- Could your pile of supplement containers be used around the barn for feeding?  

- Could you use these as paint buckets on your next “paint the jumps” party?

This is also the pile that all your expired medicines and outdated first aid products would go into. Don’t just dump them in the toilet or toss them in the dumpster.  These products may contain ingredients that must be disposed of carefully.  Check with local officials to see how best to get rid of these medicines and products.  While you’re at it, make a list of any medicines or first aid products you need to replenish. 

Congratulations!  Once your piles are finished and you’ve fixed/cleaned what you can, you are ready to create your new tack room.  First, sweep out all cobwebs, dirt and dust.  If the floor of the tack room is dirt or concrete, you may want to add stall mats as they make the surface nicer to walk on and cleaning spilled items much easier.   

With a little work and planning, once your tack room is clean and organized, all your horse products will be easy to find and ready to go.

I have been asked, more than I ever expected, questions about my choice of arena footing.  As any horseperson is well aware, in the horse world, everyone has their own opinion about everything and their opinion is the only right one.

With that and one more caveat, I am taking a deep breath and going out on a limb to share with you my opinion on footings.  The caveat is: this is the footing that works best for me.  Your situation may be far different depending upon material availability, weather conditions, riding discipline and personal experience.

In the Pacific Northwest we have a plethora of trees.  When I ride over the Willamette River on the Canby Ferry (blessed to have it just two miles from my house), there is nothing but Douglas firs and assorted varieties of maple and other deciduous trees as far as I can see all the way down to the bank of the river.  From this vantage point, I can most easily imagine what it was like for Lewis and Clark as they arrived here after passing through so much high desert and open plains.  The lusciousness must have felt like arriving in the Garden of Eden, yet the density of the growth must have made their passage untenable except when able to traverse by waterway.

So it is natural that one of the top footing choices here is a wood product.  I use what is called hog’s fuel or hog fuel.  So named I have been told, because the machine that grinds huge tree stumps is called a hog and the raw material is its fuel.  Factually, I find the name a little disconcerting because it seems to my literary mind that the end product should not be called “fuel”, since that is the same name as the raw material, but since they never asked my opinion regarding it’s name, so be it.

The resulting hog’s fuel is semi fine ground up tree stumps where the material ranges from fine (like garden mulch) to coarse (like the smallest pieces of wood you might try to start a fire with when rubbing two sticks together).  When trying to describe it, I have gone so far as to gather some up in a Ziploc bag and mailed it to people who live too far away to visit my farm in person.  Hog’s fuel should not be confused with the stringy cedar material sometimes called pole peelings or affectionately referred to as gorilla hair.  I do not like this material as it is hard to spread and harrow, feels trippy and slippery when I have ridden on it, apparently can turn into a dusty peat moss concoction as it breaks down, and some horses (I have one) are allergic to cedar.

Hog’s fuel has so many good things to say about it.  It is “relatively” inexpensive wherever there are trees.   Mine is made from tree stumps left over from logging so I don’t worry much about foreign materials.  It is made by a company aware of it being used in a horse application so they are cautious about the trees they grind - knowing that black walnut and yew are so harmful to horses.   I know there is no guarantee that an unwanted variety could be used accidentally - but in the 20 years I have relied on this material for not only my arenas, but also pathways and gateways, I have never had a problem.  It works well to mitigate mud in the winter around gates and high traffic areas if you install it on top of heavy road fabric and/or gravel depending upon your circumstances.

It holds moisture so needs less watering to keep down the dust; it is in large enough particles that any dust that is stirred is usually pretty heavy so it stays low to the ground.  It requires very little harrowing and maintenance.  I usually mainly need to pull it off the walls along the track.  If it requires frequent harrowing or I see or feel any slipping by the horses,  it simply means that it is time to add a couple more inches to the top.  I started with 8 inches and as it breaks down, I add a couple of inches to maintain it at 7-8 inches in the indoor and 5-6 inches in the outdoor.   In the 12 years I have had it in the indoor, I have never had to remove any of it and really don’t ever expect to - I just add more as needed.   The outdoor I add some maybe every couple of years and in the 8 years have not had to strip any off - though I cannot be sure I won‘t have to someday.  The outdoor is an all weather surface and gets hit hard with a lot of rain in the winter, and a lot of direct sun in the summer.  I have never had to water the outdoor but I do water the indoor depending on traffic and weather conditions.

I feel fine using the indoor for lunging and turnout.  I don’t like using the outdoor for lunging because the fabric that makes the outdoor all weather is just 5-6 inches under the surface and I don’t want an errant horse to dig down to it and risk slipping or ripping it.  However, the outdoor is in my winter turnout pasture and handles the horses rolling on it and galloping across it just fine.  I am meticulous about cleaning up manure in both arenas - it helps with maintaining the longevity of the footing and no one, horse nor rider, needs to be breathing in broken down manure dust.

The best part is the fact that my horses stay sound on it, the maintenance is so easy, and the material is mostly readily available when I need it.  I use the same material in both the indoor arena and all weather outdoor arena, so the horses have no adjustment going from one arena to the other.  For FEI dressage riders, sand or sand mixed with other products is the ultimate choice due to competition regulations.  But sand by itself and sand mixtures have a host of issues I am not willing to deal with  - maintenance, cost, dust (I wear contact lenses) and more.  Hog’s fuel may not work well without adding something to it for hunter/jumpers and I wouldn’t expect it to work at all for reiners.  But for pleasure riders and dressage riders, you could do far worse.

Best of all, I love watching horses being ridden on it as I can see the cushion it provides them on the landing and the support it provides them on the take off.  You can feel the spring it gives the horses as you ride them, too.  And, living where Lewis and Clark once strode, I really like the natural look of the wood against the backdrop of the trees and pasture… well almost natural, except for the exclamation of the white dressage arena rail and letters that would let, even Lewis and Clark know, that a dressage lover rides here.

There’s a lot to be said about going Green.  Often times, the benefits are accentuated. And generally speaking, those benefits inspire us to invest in what we believe will be a better and more efficient future for generations to come.  Makes sense, right?  
 
With this being an election year, my thoughts take me to the campaign process and recent debates.  Each candidate expresses their views, experience, and opinion with great passion and conviction.  For the most part, they present a compelling argument. However, I tend to wait for the Fact Check coupled with my own research, values, and beliefs to help me assess whom I believe will get the job done. 
 
Over the past 10 years, advancements in technology have supercharged our ability to get things done by a mere push of the button.  While there’s value in this and constantly moving forward, there’s also caution in becoming complacent, looking for a quick fix and not checking out all the facts before casting your vote on a purchase or investment.

The same holds true when it comes to legislating Green Code for the building design and construction community.  How far, how much, what’s exaggeration, what’s reality, what are pros and cons?  
 
If you have a chance, on November 7, 2012, from 1:00–2:30pm EST, George H. DeBose and Chuck Allen, with the Liberty Building Forensics Group, will present another perspective during their webinar titled, “What Happens When Green Becomes Code:  Do Buildings Get Better or Do Lawyers Get Richer?”.

Take a listen, do some more digging, weigh the facts, and increase your understanding. Then you decide what you believe is best for our future.  In this day and age that sounds like a lot of work.  But without it, someone else will decide for you.

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