DVDB Training LLC at Shevlin Stables

09/05/2026

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What Does Your Monthly Board Actually Pay For?

I recently saw a comment in a local horse group suggesting that boarding rates are far higher than the actual cost of caring for a horse. From the outside looking in, it can be easy to assume that board simply covers hay, feed, bedding, and basic daily care. In reality, operating a safe, well-maintained equine facility involves many additional expenses.

Along with the direct care of each horse, monthly board helps cover:

• Property rent or mortgage
• Business and liability insurance
• Electricity and utilities
• Facility, arena, and equipment maintenance
• Fuel for the equipment used around the farm
• Manure removal
• Repairs and replacement of items damaged through normal wear and tear
• Water and feed buckets, hoses, pitchforks, cross-ties, and automatic-waterer parts
• Cleaning supplies and everyday necessities for shared areas
• Payroll for the dependable people who help provide daily care

The list is nearly endless—and many of these expenses continue to rise.

Board is not simply payment for a stall and a few bales of hay. It supports the people, equipment, facilities, and behind-the-scenes work required to provide consistent, professional care while maintaining the safe and comfortable amenities horse owners expect.

There is an enormous amount of time, responsibility, and expense involved in properly caring for horses and operating a quality facility. Boarding rates reflect the true cost of providing that level of care—not just the items that are easiest to see.

08/08/2026

YOU ONLY FAIL WHEN YOU STOP TRYING

07/28/2026

Great post ! "The exercise itsrlf is not therapeutic. There quality in which it is ridden is" 💯🙌

“I asked for a plan for my HORSE’S movement, not mine. It’s the horse that needs rehab, not me.”

A student said this to me after receiving feedback on her riding.

Her horse was hollow, crooked, and struggling to carry himself well. She had expected a list of exercises for the horse—a rehabilitation program to strengthen his body and improve his way of going. Instead, much of our conversation revolved around her: her balance, her posture, her awareness, and the way she organized her own body in the saddle.

She was surprised.

Like many riders, she viewed herself as the instructor and the horse as the student. From her perspective, the horse was the one with the physical deficits, so surely the horse was the one who needed the exercises.

The problem is that a horse cannot separate their movement from the person sitting on their back.

Our bodies become part of their biomechanics.

Every shift in our pelvis changes how the horse uses their back. Every collapse through one side of our torso influences how they load a limb. Every moment we brace, grip, lean, or become asymmetrical changes the information the horse receives about balance, direction, and weight.

In other words, rider and horse become a single athletic system. One cannot move independently of the other.

This is why any rehabilitation or gymnastic program is only as effective as the rider’s ability to perform it.

Shoulder-in, for example, is a brilliant exercise for improving lateral suppleness, engagement, and straightness—but only when it is ridden correctly. If the rider overbends the neck, collapses a hip, drives with the seat, or blocks the horse’s back with tension, the exercise no longer develops the horse as intended. It simply rehearses poor movement under a different name.

The exercise itself is not therapeutic.

The quality with which it is ridden is.

This is why the conscientious rider learns to balance themselves, control themselves, and understand themselves before asking the horse to do the same.

They understand that horses cannot separate our influence from their own movement. Every aid, every posture, every habit becomes part of the environment in which the horse learns to carry themselves.

The goal, then, is not simply to find better exercises. It is to become a better influence.

Because a horse can only move as well as the conversation we create with them allows.

In the end, horsemanship is not simply the education of the horse. It is the continual education of the rider.

07/20/2026

Now offering a few lesson opportunities; as well as half and full in-barn leases on carefully selected, privately owned horses.