GROOMING: Horses love to be brushed and bathed. Spend lots of quality time with your horse when you first get him and each time before and after you ride him with gentle loving hands and lots of brush grooming. Pick the stones and dirt from his feet before and after a ride to keep him from getting bruised feet. Check him for ticks after any ride in the woods or tall grass -- especially in warm weather. Keep all your tack clean and the leather saddle-soaped and lightly oiled. Wash your saddle blanket after each use and rinse his bit well too. He doesn't like a hard, dirty blanket on his back or a crusty bit in his mouth. Keep your brushes clean too, rinse, wash and pull the hair out of them periodically.

NUTRITION: Nutrition is a powerful factor in the life of a horse, just as it is our own. Often a problem horse can just be suffering from some nutritional deficiency. Often a horse that is "cribbing" that is chewing on his stall or on the fence has a nutritional deficiency. This should be handled quickly as the swallowed wood splinters have obvious danger to your horse. Horses need vitamins, roughage of course, minerals, protein, oils, carbohydrates, enzymes and trace elements in their diets to be at their best in health, behavior and attitude... and sometimes even if they are getting the correct food they may not be digesting it to get the proper use of the nutrients... just like us.

Horse Hair Analysis is a very useful tool to find the realistic needs of your horse. The hair is a long term record of the horse's nutritional health and the analysis will tell the most accurate story as to what your particular horse needs... or what he is getting too much of -- especially if he is ingesting some sort of toxic substance.

TRAILERS and TRAILERING: For most people learning to trailer your horse is mandatory. If you are fortunate to purchase a place far out in the rural un-populated areas, especially if you purchase property on a long dirt road or network of such roads -- you may be able to do a lot of riding without trailering. You will still likely want to have a trailer eventually, so that you can take your horse to a trainer, pick up another horse, or take your horse to join a friend for a ride.