There’s an App For That, Pt. II: Management Apps

Enable your inner obsessively organized micro-manager with these helpful apps.

1. EQStable – App Website

• Free
• Last Updated 10/22/2014
• iOS and Android

I like EQStable, and it freaks me out that I didn’t have to pay for it. They’re doing a lot of things right. I found it easy and intuitive to add each of my horses, to set up their current health records, and track a lot of important information. It really felt like it was designed by horse people for horse people. I added vaccination, worming, dentistry, and farrier records for both my horses, and set up future appointments and reminders. I added contacts for my vet and trimmer and some other emergency contacts. All that took less than 10 minutes. (Also, the customized worming schedule is a total winner.)

It also has free texts sections for Feeding, Turnout, Exercise, Stable Management, and Grooming Schedules, which I thought was nice. (These would be even better if you could coordinate them to a reminder date or ping on a calendar, I think.) Best of all, you can send ALL the info you’ve uploaded to the app about your horse(s) in an email very simply by hitting a “share button.” How useful for a barn owner, trainer, or hired hand! Really sleek.

My other favorite feature is the “track my ride” which if you turn on and off as you head out the door will map your ride, tell you how long you rode, how much distance you covered, and your average speed. It also saves a map of your ride route. That whole feature is a great app in and of itself.

My only complaint is that over the several weeks I’ve had the app, I’ve had some bugs with the reminders. For some reason, it reminds me every week that I have a farrier event for one of my horses, and no matter what I reset or how often I plug in a fake date saying she was trimmed, it keeps reminding me every week! But other than that, this is really a winning app.

2. Rendaivu – App Website

• $9.99
• Last Updated 04/30/2014
• iOS and Android

Like EQStable, Rendaivu is supposed to help you manage one or many horses more efficiently. If you really are the queen bee organizer obsessed with minutia, detail, and doing everything on a budget, you’d probably love this app. I could see it being especially helpful for a professional, more than an amateur.

I dislike that I have to log in with my email and password every time I use it, and it doesn’t save that info.

There’s a home screen for the person, and then home screens for the horse, and that was a little confusing to me. But the value in this app is that it allows you to capture a TREMENDOUS amount of data if you choose- every lesson, every expense, every health event. Putting each of these events in is rather laborious in this app, and there’s no way to set recurring events (for example, I pay the same board bill every month, do I really need to put each one in individually? But if you want an accurate expense report, then yes, you would). Same with lessons. If they could automate them to recur on the same day/price every week unless you say otherwise, it would be a lot less painful to track things here.

There’s a secondary really cool part of this app, which is that you can go along plugging in all your expenses, and then log into the web version of the app, and download all that data you put in the app into a report. You can tailor the report to expenses per category, per horse, or both. This goes way above and beyond other apps I’ve seen, and the web version is completely free beyond the price of the app.

I love this product for being incredibly thorough and really getting at the money in/money out part of horse management, and with a few automated tweaks, I think it could be really sleek for people who are running big operations as a pro competitor, a barn manager, or trainer. In fact, the next obvious step for this app is to introduce a system that allows instructors to build profiles for every person they teach, and then this is practically a $10 invoicing tool. I’ll take a cut for giving you that idea when it goes big, Rendaivu.

3. SmartPak’s Smartblanket – App Website

• Free
• Last Updated 10/28/2014
• iOS and Android

Be jealous of my mare’s glamour shot, you guys.

This app has been a hit at my barn, and the gold standard as far as the barn manager is concerned. Essentially, you put in info for each of your horses (zipcode, are they clipped, indoor or turnout, etc) and the app tells you based on that and the weather forecast which weight of blanket your horse needs that day/night, or no blanket at all. It also tells you for about 10 days out, so you can really plan ahead.

Granted, an app is no replacement for your own good sense, and you should always think of something like this as a tool rather than a law. But for me, who is a bit of a clipped horse novice, it’s really helpful to have something I can consult for quick advice.

The cons on this app for me: It took me a solid 7 minutes to figure out how to move from horse to horse (kind of a big deal in my case, when one is a partially clipped performance horse and the other is a fat fuzzy unclipped yearling that I am CERTAIN is part grizzly bear in winter) because I am an idiot. The answer, swipe right on the picture at the top of the screen. Duh. My only other con was that I can sometimes see a long wait for a screen to load, or it stalls out altogether, but I’d say that’s gotten much better over the past two weeks or so. (It’s a brand spanking new app, so we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, there!)

If you’re into the whole blanketing thing, you need this app. And it’s free. So there you go.

4. Horse Care Gallops – Link to Google Play and Apple Store

• Free Version and $4.99 Version
• Last Updates 07/15/2013
• iOS and Android

This is similar to EQstable, but with a few less functions. To be worth it, you’ll want to shell out the five bones, because then you can access the schedule setter for de-worming, vaccinations, etc. It also has some feeding diagrams, and a weight calculator.

If you’re looking for something without all the extra bells and whistles, that is JUST for efficiently tracking your horse’s health needs and nothing else, this is a fine product. It’s a simple but intuitive app, and rather than trying so hard to meet ALL your tracking needs and overwhelming the user with bad functionality, this does one thing really well.

This app easily lets you track, schedule, and set reminders to worm and vaccinate every horse. It does not have a section for dentistry or miscellaneous health events, which is a big disappointment to me.

The feeding charts are not formatted to fit my screen, which is a real shame, because what I can see looks like good information if you’re a junkie for that kind of thing. The weight calculator is super handy, and I’ll probably leave the free version of this app on my phone just for that alone.

Join us again next week for our favorite in-the-saddle apps, which include ride trackers, dressage test builders, and other such fun!