Check Environment

STEVE: The environment is paramount to where you put or house your horse or where they’re kept routinely. What I normally do when I put my horse in a stall is I go in and inspect the stall, completely. I look at things that maybe other people wouldn’t, I look at to where the, let’s say there’s a feed tub in there…to where it’s attached…to where the snaps are arranged to make sure they can’t get hooked on a snap…to make sure there’s no nails or any sort of splinters that are basically protruding out in the stall the horse could rub against it and impale himself on…to make sure there’s no holes on the surface that their going to either standing on or laying down potentially…that there’s plenty of bedding in there…that it’s safe as far as you can lock them up in it and make sure that they stay in there and that they don’t get out…or something that can’t get their head out of the window or something like this and basically impale themselves or basically get their head stuck in something or a limb stuck in something. I give it a full inspection before I put them in it.

I do the same before I turn them out in the paddock. I go make a spin around the paddock just to make all the gates are closed…make sure the fences are safe to make sure there’s no nails sticking out…there’s something that can create a problem…there’s no holes that they can go ahead and fall in. I mean you can’t do it on everything, but we watch our paddocks pretty close. So if there’s a problem we take care of it before we put a horse in it.