BY PATRICE D. BUCCIARELLI
Shortly after bringing her horse home to her Florida farm from a nearby boarding barn, Helen Yakin-Palmer looked up from her desk to find her mare, Cera, peering at her through the office window. “It was a wonderful surprise,” Yakin-Palmer recalls. “It’s the upside of keeping a horse at home.”
In fact, it’s what some horse owners—especially prospective ones— dream about. But keeping a horse at home is not as simple as it seems. And keeping one anywhere—whether a farm or a boarding barn—is not an inexpensive proposition. Either way, providing for its needs makes all the difference between a horse that is thriving and one in danger of becoming a welfare statistic, whether he is a performance horse, a trail horse or a companion equine.