I have a horse that HATES to be in a confined stall–needs his head out or the ability to see the horse next to him or an attached paddock, all of which are impossible in the temporary stalls that are used at shows. I’d like to show rated jumpers this summer, and am willing to buy him a metal ‘show gate’ to allow him to stick his head out. But…how do you safely and effectively attach them to a temp stall?
I do not know if methods have changed since I was a show groom a zillion years ago, but we had to put two screw-eyes into the frame of the stall doorway itself, at the right level (with the eye parallel to the ground when it was tightened up, not parallel to the stall frame), and then the the gates had extensions that dropped into the screw eyes to hang the gate on the frame. You also need to put a screw eye into the other side of the frame, to accommodate a chain with a snap or whatever system you might use to close the gate securely. If you were lucky you got a stall someone with similar gates had used before and the holes were already there for you.
So many of the stalls at rated shows are vinyl now … It can be very difficut to hang gates… You need to attach 1x2’s or 2x2 to the frame itself with heavy duty Zip ties so you have something to screw into often, that means getting boards long enough that you can dig down a bit below the the ground so you can circle the Zip ties to secure the board , You are in essence building a door frame attached to a door frame . Good luck it is a pain in the butt …
Ah…hadn’t thought of bring your own door frame! Perfect. God bless zip ties, too. Yes, all the stalls we are talking about are metal framed, vinyl sided stalls, so no way to use eye screws there.
I don’t think there is any method that I’d trust for unsupervised overnight. You can use vinyl or web guards during the day. If you don’t have the whole aisle though it’s not going to make you very popular with the neighbors. Aisles are pretty narrow most places for one to have its head hanging out.
If he’s ok just being able to see his neighbor you can change a solid wall out for a front from a grooming stall, again as long as your barn owns the stall next door. Or try getting him a double or share a stall and a half and see if that helps.
I’d close his door at night, certainly. He’s not one to push his luck, thankfully. He just gets so anxious when he can’t see another horse.
How do you get them to swap a wall out for you??? That would be awesome! Do you simply ask management?
We always just used the web things with 3 clips on each side (for overnight as well). The only one who didn’t respect them was the shitland who would just roll right out the bottom. The solution was putting her tack trunk in front of her stall!
You need to do wall swapping yourself. If your barn doesn’t remove fronts from the grooming stalls or tackroom you can look around for one nearby that does and snag one of theirs. It’s a two person job. And again the ajoining stall has to be a barn mate that’s ok with it.
What about a vinyl stall webbing. You can get them in any colour you want. A webbing and a stall chain keeps all my horses at the track in. The colts get aluminum gates that go to the floor but they can get their head out a bit to look around. If you get a gate, make sure its aluminum if your going to have to pack it around.
