Gray Dapple
Thoroughbred Assistance Program - Going Beyond The Finish Line
If you do not have a barn with a stall in your backyard, or you do not intend on boarding your horse in a stable with adequate sized 12X12 stalls, then please do not waste your time or ours filling out the application.
And if you want to adopt one of our gray dapples, remember our rule ...
"No stall? No horse!"
NO STALL? NO HORSE!
Thats right. That's our new slogan at Gray Dapple TAP. A lot of our adopters fall in love at first sight with a picture of one of our dazzling horses. People apply, determined to get that horse that they can't get out of their minds. "I love this horse already," many of them have said.
But unfortunately, love is never enough. Having a nice pastures and a couple run-in sheds is bucolic, but that setup alone does not suit the lifetime needs of a horse. Horses need to have constant access to their stalls. On hot summer days when the sun beats down your horse will need to be brought into a stall with 2 buckets of water and a fan blowing. If your horses gets an abscess he will need to go into his stall for a recovery period. If your horse goes lame he will have to go into a stall for possibly months at a time. On freezing cold winter days your horse will have to be left in his stall.
But from a psychological perspective, your horse needs the daily structure of being fed breakfast in his stall and then being turned out into his pasture. He will know that every night at the same time he will be brought back into his stall for dinner. He will be brushed in his stall and then will sleep and possibly lie down in his stall.
Horses without stalls lack daily structure, human interaction, and, in short, a pampered lifestyle.