The Best [FREE] Apps for Horse Owners (2021)

Here is a list of my favorite apps to help make your life as a horse owner a little bit easier. From training your horse to figuring out if your fluffy beast needs a coat on, I've tried some of the apps out there and weeded through them so you don't have to.

Best App for Blanketing Your Horse: SmartBlanket by SmartPak

This app is wonderful. It tracks the weather in your area and tells you a recommendation for each day/night. You can enter multiple horses and their body conditions to getter super specific or just use it as a general recommendation. It will tell you whether your horse should have no blanket, a light sheet, or a med/heavy coat. I love this app as it takes the guess work out for me and for my helpers when I'm away at a horse show.

Pros

• Easy to use

• FREE

Cons

• I haven't found any 🤷‍♀️

Best App for Horse Health Records for Multiple Horses or Breeding: Horse Notes

This is the app I have been using the most and seems to have all the features I need for tracking my horses' health. I've used other apps that are simpler, but this seems to be the only one I've found that blends usability with robust details. I own 6 horses and breed, so I need a place to keep track of all my vet, dental, and deworming records. If you only have 1 or 2 horses, maybe another app might be simpler, but Horse Notes really does make it easy to keep years of records in one place. I wish is were a bit more UX (user experience) focused, but the desktop/online version is much easier to use than the phone app. I also like that it has a section to keep track of pricing on vet records so I can go back and see how much a procedure, medication, or vaccine cost for reference.

Pros

• Robust record keeping

• Desktop version is user friendly

• Keeps everything organized in one place

Cons

• Mobile app is a little clunky until you get used to it

Best App for Horse Health Reminders: EquiTracker

If you don't need robust record keeping, but a simple way to remember when you need to do certain services, then EquiTracker is for you. You can set frequencies of how often you want your horse to have each procedure done and it keeps track of the last one done and when the next one is due. It does keep a history of records if you need to go back and see all the past instances, but it only records the date, no notes. This is a very simple app, but perfect for those with only a few horses or those who don't want to take the time to record every detail, but just a need a quick reminder of when the last appointment was and when to schedule the next one.

Pros

• Super easy to use

• Reminds you when to get care done

Cons

• A bit simplistic for record keeping

Best App for Buying & Selling Horses: Equine Trader

This app is so easy to use and straightforward. I love this app. I'm honestly so sick of all Facebook's rules and regulations about animal sales, plus shopping for horse on FB was a pain anyway. You had to scroll and scroll... and scroll. There were never any great search features and heaven forbid if you forgot to save the post! Good luck finding it again... And we've all tried using dream horse and other sites, but it's so annoying to find a horse you might be interested in, but there are NO PHOTOS! 🤯 Like why? No one wants to pay to display images of their horse and no one wants to look at ads with no pictures. But no worries there with Equine Trader. They are free to post image ads and with easy search and favorite options, it's really a breath of fresh air.

Pros

• Easy to use

• FREE

• Images

• Great search functions

Cons

• Not a con really, but a want: Would love to be able to sort favorite ads into folders and make notes about what I do and don't like about each horse or things I want to keep in mind when I go see the horse

Best App for A Little Bit of Everything: The Equestrian App

I'm still new to this app, so I'm not sure yet if having SO many features is going to be cumbersome. It is everything from a professional management app, a horse owner's record keeping app, a buy/sell app, and it even have 100s of training exercises/patterns. This app has too much to mention, so I will simply list a few of the main features below. Some features you do have to pay for. Overall, it was a jack of all trades, master of none type app for me personally, but I mention it here as it does have everything in one place and may work well for others.

This app includes:

• Best time of day to ride in your area (This way kind of neat, but not very straight-forward)

• Blanketing recommendations (Nice, but not as simple and easy to find as SmartBlanket)

• Horse health record tracking (I didn't like this function as it was hard to go back and see what's been recorded. It wasn't well organized. And the vaccines where broken down in a way that was hard to record if you give a multi-vaccine shot like 5-way)

• Equine community connections

• Buy/Sell horses

• Income/Expense tracking & reporting

• Calendar

• Barn chat (paid feature)

• Patterns (paid feature)

• To-do lists (paid feature)

• Ride tracking (paid feature)

• Competition & award tracking (paid feature)

Pros

• Has everything you need in one place

• Clean design.

• Some features are user friendly...

Cons

• Not very robust health record keeping / not user friendly

• Jack of all trades, master of none

Honorable Mention (Not a free app, but still a great one):

Best App for Horse Training for Mental Focus & Relaxation: WS on Demand (Warwick Schiller)

There is a paid subscription to access the videos in this app, but they are chalk full of valuable information. From teaching your horse to tie patiently to creating a connection/bond with your horse, there is just a bunch of bananas to learn in this app. If you want to get a feel for Warwick's teaching style before you subscribe, he does have quite a few free videos available on his YouTube channel. For only $35/month (less than 1 lesson!) you can have hours of training videos from a horse trainer who focuses on the mental side of training just as much as the physical side.

Pros

• HOURS of great information & exercises

• Helps you create a connection with your horse

• Outlines an order of riding skills, which I find helpful as it can be hard to know which skills to teach you horse when

Cons

• Can be hard to find/search for certain topics

Please leave a comment.

Have you tried any other apps you like better than these ones? Or have you found ones to make these apps even more useful? Comment below, I'd love to hear your thoughts!