Home | List of Articles | Submit an Article | Contact Us

Horseback Trail Riding Checklist

The weather’s warming up & you’re itching to load your horse up & do some trail riding. Before you saddle up and head out to the great outdoors, here’s a checklist of essentials to make your trip safe & enjoyable.

Check over your truck and trailer

Check tire pressure & wear
Check your floorboards for rot & cracks
Check gates and latches for damage
Check your hitch for wear
Check your brake lights and turn signals
Look for any sharp edges or rust holes

Check your horse over – your horse should be able to:

Be tied safely
Stand calmly when being tacked up
Go forward, backward, left, right & most importantly, stop on command
Cross water, bridges or fallen trees if you anticipate any of those on your ride
Load and unload from the trailer easily
Be in good enough shape for the length of ride and terrain

What to bring with?

Map of where you’re going, noting parking areas for trailers
Copy of Health Papers if required and a Trail Pass
Clothes appropriate for the weather that’s been forecasted
First aid kit for you & the horse
Tack that’s been thoroughly checked over along with extra reins, cinches, halter & lead lines
Fly spray for the horse, bug spray for you.
Water & hay, buckets & hay net
Cooler with water & snacks for you
A friend or cell phone – let someone know where you’re going & when you expect to be back if you’re going alone

Trail riding can be fun & relaxing. Using this checklist can make it stress free.

Suzi Sevcik loves to go trail riding & is the owner of PetLabels.com, a company that produces high quality, full color address labels with your pet’s photo on them. For more information, go to: http://PetLabels.com or email her at suzi@petlabels.com

Related Articles:

Which Of These Horse Catching Mistakes Do You Make? - The other day, I was invited to see my friend’s new horse. He had her for about a month before I got to see her. When I arrived at his house, he met me outside and said, “C’mon…let’s go see her.” We stood at the fence and marveled at how beautiful she was. Excited, he asked, “You wanna pet her?” “Sure!” I said. So my friend grabbed the halter and w ...

Afraid To Buy A Horse At Public Auction? - Here are 5 things to do to put the odds of getting a good horse in your favor. Let me share a short story with you about public horse auctions and my friend Jack. I'll show you how to buy a horse at auction so you won't get burned. Jack, an old time horse trader and I use to travel to horse auction all over the state. I'd just watch ...

Horse Art - Eadweard Muybridge, Leland Stanford, and the Hobby Horse - A collaboration between an English-born eccentric Eadweard Muybridge and the founder of one of our great universities resulted in a series of events which spelled the end of the "hobby-horse" posture in horse art and paintings. Towards the end of the 19th century, an event occurred which significantly change ...

Ralph Waldo Emerson and Horsemanship - A collaboration between an English-born eccentric Eadweard Muybridge and the founder of one of our great universities resulted in a series of events which spelled the end of the "hobby-horse" posture in horse art and paintings. Towards the end of the 19th century, an event occurred which significantly change ...

How to Change Career Horses in Mid-Stream - You’ll get wet but the reward just might be a more fulfilling ride! In Survival is Not Enough, author Seth Godin says change is the "new normal.” Rather than thinking of work as a series of stable times interrupted by moments of change, Godin says we “must now recognize work as constant change, with only occasional moments of stability."

The Secrets That Keeps Horses Trainable! - As you likely know already, horses have at least 10 times our strength. If they also had our intelligence, they would probably be riding us humans. Fortunately, horses cannot reason like human beings and therefore will never have superior intelligence. Since they don't have reasoning abilities, horse training becomes a challenge because you ...

For a Complete list of Articles with summaries Click Here