Make Your Horse Barn Space Your Happy Place
By Nikki Alvin-Smith

The horse barn offers a great place to retreat, to refresh and to reboot. Perhaps it’s because there is an absence of other daily duties and responsibilities, and focus can be directed to simpler tasks. Many people count even the chore of mucking out stalls as a meditative time.

For the horse barn to be a happy place, it benefits from being free of the usual dramas of life. Those may be familial obligations, complex relational environments such as the political workplace, commuting and dealing with traffic or crowded spaces, noise and mess.

Best barn build designs can help ensure an optimal space of harmony as well as functionality and an expression of individual style. And consistent practices can keep the horse contingent happily engaged in the barn too. Let’s take a look.

Sometimes I Like To Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit

Creature comforts in the horse barn will ideally incorporate human comfort factors as well as equine ones. These might include:

• A temperature-controlled space where you can find warmth on cold winter days and a cool spot to recover your equilibrium on hot days.

• Designated areas to safely interact in pleasurable activities for you and your horse such as grooming and bathing your equine partner. Here are some tips on making sure the design and siting of a grooming stall is well-thought out.

• Sheltered spaces that are ‘rooms with a view’, these might include balcony or porch areas that offer a vista of horses contentedly grazing the paddocks or fields.

• A place to sit down in comfort. These areas might be a tack room/office or horse-safe furniture that is considerately placed in key areas where you can take the weight of your feet for a moment and enjoy a brew of one sort or another.

• Bathroom facilities that work in all seasons.

• Safe food and beverage storage where you can grab a cold or hot beverage and a bite to eat when you are on the go or simply want to take a break. Vermin proof areas a must.

• Visitor/barn rules clearly posted an enforced. These might include no noisy activities like radios playing or running and shouting allowed; supervision of pets and children at all times; for horse businesses specific hours of operation and access.

If you’ve inherited a barn with a new property purchase then consider making it your own by adding specific finishing touches that make you happy. These might be changing the color of paint on the exterior of stall doors or adding decorative flourishes to walls such as inspirational art pieces or functional shelving units and organizers.

If you are planning to build a new barn then there are many design features you can immediately incorporate into the structure style-wise that lend themselves to making the horse barn both horsey space and a home away from home. Consider the tack and feed room idea for example. Easy to implement and very useful.

Develop Productive Habits

There are habits you can also adopt to increase the benefits of owning a horse barn and horse ownership in general.

To reduce stress in general terms avoid only visiting the horse barn at feeding times. If you make a point to spend time at the barn outside of the feeding hours you avert an annoying issue with the horses becoming over-excited whenever they see you, as they associate you with food.

There are bonding and trust-building benefits to stroking, grooming and simply hanging around horses. Stroking a horse can reduce anxiety in the horse and the human. It can literally slow the heart rate down and reduce stress. While grooming a horse helps you stretch your muscles and increase your physical fitness while providing the bonus of giving the horse a massage.

Think outside the barn when you consider furniture placement for sitting and relaxing. A bench or two placed outside across the property can provide a change of view, encourage you to be physically more active walking, and provide a space far from the madding crowd where you can enjoy the sincere pluses of mindfulness of nature.

Harmony Is Where The Horse Is

There are many factors that go in to making the horse barn a place of harmony.

Clutter can make any space seem overtly busy and annoying to view and use. A place for everything and everything in its place begins with providing sufficient storage for all the paraphernalia that comes with horse care and their management and training.

Additionally the visual harmony in how the horse barn furnishings and design fit together also creates a visual calm.

Harmony of course also begins with self. Consider that time for self-care needs to be non-negotiable and included in your daily routines as a priority. And finding that time can be difficult.

If you can successfully cut down the time you need to spend doing chores in the barn (as much as you might enjoy them), then you provide yourself with more time to spend with your horses. Here are The Top 10 Tips in Barn Design To Cut Down Time Spent Horsekeeping. Well worth a read.

True Health Benefits Of Horse Ownership

There are many mental as well as physical health benefits to spending time with, on or around horses. When your non-horsey partner criticizes the amount of time you spend at the barn they likely don’t realize what an important ‘refresh’ and ‘reboot’ time this activity provides for you.

Aside from reducing blood pressure, improving physical fitness in general etc. interaction with horses can improve self-esteem as well as reduce anxiety and stress. Conditions such as ADHD; PTSD; eating disorders; substance dependence; trust issues; lack of emotional intelligence, can all be improved by spending time with horses. That’s a lot of help right there in the barn.

The Right Barn/The Right Horses

In my professional career with horses and helping other riders train theirs, I’ve often been challenged with the so called, ‘difficult horse’. Logically when a horse owner finds themselves overwhelmed with their own horse’s behavior or training difficulties, they seek professional help. In these cases a careful evaluation not just of the horse’s behavior and what is causing it is needed, but also a look at the compatibility factor between the two living entities is required.

It's OK to admit that sometimes a particular horse just isn’t the right fit for you. If you are nervous or anxious around the horse(s) in your care, then he will certainly reflect that energy back to you. Horse owners that avoid spending time in their own barns are often limiting their time to routine tasks of horse care like feeding and mucking out because they are intimidated and a bit afraid of their equine partner.

Obviously a neophyte horse person, faced with an excitable three-year old horse that requires experienced handling and training, will likely be an ill-fit. Green horses don’t go well with green riders. While the human needs more training, the horse has some growing up and training of his own needed in this situation.

Similarly, if the barn is ill-designed. Has issues such as flooded stalls, sticking entrance doors, is made of cold and damp breezeblock or is uninviting due to being dirty, dark or lacks air circulation, then hanging out in the barn is not something anyone will want to do.
If you are in the market for a new barn build then it pays to do your research. Even if you only have a small acreage or a limited budget you can be create your own horse barn happy space in the backyard.

There are many options available out there, in style/design and price point. Buy the best you can afford! And same goes for the horses you put in it!