Owning her own horse is a dream that every little girl harbors at some point during her childhood years. That’s because horses allow them a safe outlet for a maternal urge to care for something that they really can’t understand in first or second grade. Flash forward a few years to adolescence and not as many of those girls are still interested in spending time in the stables.
Nonetheless, for those girls who don’t lose the itch for equine ownership, here’s what they can expect from horse ownership. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that owning your own horse is a time-consuming, and very expensive, proposition.
Would-be horse owners might be surprised to find that the horse itself is one of the cheaper items associated with horse ownership. If you’re not dead-set on having a registered Arabian, or some other high end equine, you can almost always find cheap and free horses from rescue animal rescue societies.
These big hearted organizations place unwanted animals in good homes for a small processing fee they use to supply food and veterinary supplies for the animals in their care. (If you do go this route, be prepared to answer some pretty detailed questions about how you plan to care for the horse.)
As we’ve seen, getting the horse isn’t much of a problem; the long-term care is where the expenses really start piling up.
Unless you live on a ranch or horse property, you can expect to spend a few hundred a month just to board your horse at an appropriate facility. Plan on spending a lot of time comparing stables because the quality of these facilities varies wildly. We strongly recommend making an unannounced visit to a stable before committing just to make certain they’re on the up and up.
Once you’ve found a horse, and a place to keep the horse, you’ll also be on the hook for things like tack, horse supplements and food. This definitely isn’t the area to cut corners on. High quality food and vitamins can help your horse fend off some very expensive ailments later on down the line.
Horse ownership can be a very rewarding experience, if you know what you’re getting into. For most young ladies, simply renting a horse for a few hours of riding a couple times a year is a much better bang for their buck than actually purchasing a horse of their own.
