How do you plan your time? Do you buy a dollar store notebook or do you prefer the space and feel of a Moleskine sketchbook? Or, do you head to a craft supply store and pick up an Erin Condren or Happy Planner. One thing is for sure, very few planners are made with horse owners in mind. There are few though which you can purchase. And of course, there are the options of hacking those other planners to suit your horse lifestyle or making your own.
Both Horse Savvy and Brown Trout make planners with a horse theme. Horse Savvy has special pages to record things like farrier and vet visits. They both have nice horse pictures and Horse Savvy comes with stickers. I know using stickers seems a little silly, but I’ve found in my own planner the visual cue can be very helpful, especially as my handwriting can get a bit snarled sometimes.
Some planners for horse people take into account the fact that oftentimes, our weekends are the busiest. That’s when many of us are heading to shows or clinics, traveling to look at a prospective horse, or when we just want to plan our days carefully to eke out every rideable moment. Many regular planners condense the weekend down, but planners like Live Extraordinary Equestrian Planner and Equestrian Planner give you lots of space to detail all those to-dos and lists you need for a well strategized weekend. Leroy and Bongo have extra sheets intended for dressage riders. These planners come with lots extras, lovely covers, and support, but the downside of these particular planners is that you can not add in sheets and some are very expensive.
Of course, you can modify a plain planner or DIY your own. You’ll need paper, a printer and a hole punch as well as a some sort of cover. There are tons of free printable planner page sites online - the Canva site is just one example of many. Choose a daily, weekly or monthly spread, whatever suits you. Add some tracking pages. These also can be found easily online. These can be used to keep track of your riding, frequency, time or distance, hay used or whatever else is important for you to track. There are also plenty of printables for list making, which is essential for packing for horse shows or other events. Add some essential information like emergency info and feeding schedules. The Charming Farmer offers some of these for free. I made up my own weekly planner sheets - you can take a look at them on the Lucidpress site. You can easily edit these to accommodate the extra space needed to plan your weekday or weekend show series. I cut these to 7x9” size and punch to fit a disc binding system like the Arc Customisable Notebooks.
And if you’re like me and want to try being a sticker and star kid, you can make or download equestrian themed stickers. Use sticker paper and your printer, or print on plain paper and use a glue stick. Did you ride today? Indicate that with a sticker. Did you clean out ten box stalls, scrub out the trough and pull burrs out of three tails. You definitely deserve a gold star. I haven’t found a lot of horse themed printable stickers. But, Victoria Thatcher has a beautiful sticker set on her site. There are some on Etsy, although most of you can probably come up with comparable or better on your own. Get out your markers and brush pens too. Planners are very useful, but become mini-scrapbooks when you start adding comments, journaling cards, quotes and photos.
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