Estride Care Kit: 21 free horse care tools

How it works

1. Work through the prompts in order: pulse, gum colour, capillary refill time, gut sounds in all four quadrants, and behaviour.
2. Enter each reading as you take it. You can photograph the gums so the colour is on record rather than remembered.
3. The decision tree weighs the readings together and returns one of three verdicts: keep watching, call the vet today, or treat as an emergency and call now.
4. The assessment saves with a timestamp, so if the picture changes over an hour you have both readings to give the vet.

Example. A horse is flank-watching and off his feed. Capillary refill is over two seconds, the pulse is elevated and the gut is silent in two quadrants. The walkthrough returns emergency, and you have the numbers ready when the vet answers.

How it works

1. Find the pulse under the jaw or behind the elbow and tap the circle on every beat you feel — the app works out the rate.
2. Count breaths the same way, then add capillary refill time and mucous-membrane colour.
3. Optional fields cover rectal temperature and gut sounds.
4. Tag the reading pre-ride, post-ride, recovery or illness, so like is compared with like over time.

Example. Resting heart rate for a horse is roughly 28–44 bpm. Knowing this horse sits at 32 is what makes 48 meaningful at 6am.

How it works

1. Have a helper trot the horse in hand, straight away from the camera and straight back, about 15 metres.
2. Film 10 to 15 seconds. The app keeps the clip with the assessment.
3. Score each limb on the AAEP scale, where 0 is sound and 5 is non-weight-bearing. Prompts remind you what to look for: head bob on the sound forelimb, hip hike on the lame hindlimb.
4. Each assessment joins a dated soundness diary your vet can review.

Example. A horse is intermittently short behind. Filming it on the days it shows means the vet sees the lameness, rather than a sound horse on the day of the visit.

How it works

1. Browse the plants that actually kill horses in UK, US and Australian pasture, each with its botanical name and the other names it goes by.
2. Every entry gives the quantity that causes harm, the symptoms it produces, what to do, and an authoritative reference drawn from BHS, RSPCA, AAEP and Cornell sources.
3. A quick-action opens an image search for the botanical name, for when you are standing in a paddock looking at something unfamiliar.
4. There is no camera identification. Misidentifying a plant is worse than useless, so this is a reference you read rather than a scanner you trust.

The plants it covers

Example. Two of these matter most in British pasture and both are counter-intuitive. Ragwort is more dangerous dried in hay than growing in a field, because horses avoid the living plant and eat it readily once cut. Sycamore seeds and seedlings cause atypical myopathy, and as few as 100 seeds can be enough — which is why a single tree upwind of a paddock is a genuine risk in autumn.

How it works

1. Enter the horse’s weight, or pull it straight from the weight tape tool.
2. Pick the drug from a curated list covering bute, flunixin, omeprazole, acepromazine, detomidine, xylazine, reversal agents and more.
3. The calculator returns the dose in milligrams and millilitres, with a maximum-daily warning.
4. A one-line safety note per drug flags the must-know risk — for example that flunixin is absorbed through human skin and is teratogenic, so gloves matter.
5. Doses can be written to an administration log, so what was given and when is recorded rather than recalled.

Example. A sedative that causes excitement and ataxia when used alone carries that warning on the screen at the moment you are about to draw it up.

How it works

1. Photograph the horse from the side, from above and from behind — the same three angles each time.
2. Score 1 to 9 on the Henneke scale and add a note on feed or exercise changes.
3. Entries build a monthly trend, with estimated weight alongside.

Example. A horse you see daily can gain two condition scores before you notice. Fixed-angle photos a month apart make the change obvious.

How it works

1. Run a cloth tape around the heart girth, just behind the elbow, pulled snug.
2. Measure body length from point of shoulder to point of buttock.
3. The app applies the Carroll & Huntington formula: (girth² × length) ÷ 11877.
4. The result is stored per horse as a trend, and feeds the drug calculator.

Example. A girth of 185 cm and a length of 160 cm gives (185² × 160) ÷ 11877 ≈ 461 kg. That is the figure your dose should be based on, rather than a guess.

How it works

1. Select the hoof with the LF / RF / LH / RH selector at the top.
2. Capture side, front and sole photographs for that foot.
3. Record heel-toe angle and note anything you can see — cracks, flares, an abscess track.
4. Set the next farrier visit, which goes on the calendar as a reminder.

Example. Photographing all four feet each shoeing cycle shows whether a remedial trim is actually changing the angle, over a timescale too slow to see by eye.

How it works

1. Add each horse and the vaccines it needs — influenza, tetanus, EHV, EEE/WEE — with the cadence your vet uses.
2. Add worming treatments by active class, such as benzimidazoles (fenbendazole, oxibendazole), macrocyclic lactones and others.
3. Rows are colour-coded: red for overdue, amber for due soon.
4. The rotation prompt helps you avoid using the same class repeatedly, which is how resistance builds.

Example. Anthelmintic resistance is now a serious problem on UK yards. Rotation only works if it is recorded — most people believe they rotate more than they actually do.

How it works

1. Start a countdown when a horse arrives or comes back from a show. The default is 21 days and can be changed.
2. Record which barn, pen or paddock it is isolated in.
3. Each card shows days remaining and a progress bar, and flips to cleared automatically when the period ends.

Example. Most yard-wide outbreaks start with one horse returning from somewhere. Isolation fails when nobody is certain which day it began.

How it works

1. Photograph each item and record what it is, where it is stored and which horse it belongs to.
2. A chip strip across the top filters by kind; you can also search by horse.
3. Every item sits on its own card with its photo and location.

Example. Useful for finding a particular bit at 6am, and useful again when an insurer asks for an itemised list after a tack-room theft.

How it works

1. Work down the list: coupler latched and locked over the ball, safety chains, breakaway cable attached with a charged battery, all lights including brake and indicators, tyres, ramp, hay, horse tied.
2. It also covers what travels with you — bedding, a weather-appropriate rug, buckets, cards and cash, and emergency vet contacts.
3. The checklist produces a single go or no-go verdict rather than a list you half-read.
4. Add driver name and route, then save. Each trip is kept in history.

Example. Towing failures are rarely exotic. They are a breakaway cable nobody clipped on, or an indicator nobody checked.

How it works

1. Put the phone in the trailer, start the log and drive.
2. It records vibration and motion from the phone’s accelerometer alongside GPS speed and distance.
3. At the end you get duration, distance, maximum speed and peak g-force, with hard braking events marked.
4. The result exports as a PDF you can send to a transporter or keep with the horse’s records.

Example. The tool in Care Kit with no real equivalent elsewhere. It turns “he travels badly” into a measurement — and sometimes shows the problem is the driving, not the horse.

How it works

1. Pick the discipline — dressage, jumping, Western or endurance — and a starter list is generated.
2. Edit it to match your own kit: add items on the inline row at the bottom, swipe to remove.
3. Tick items off as you pack. The list persists for next time.

Example. The thing you forgot last time is on the list next time, which is the entire point.

How it works

1. Browse by category: flatwork, lateral work, transitions, poles, gymnastics, hacking, suppling and groundwork.
2. Each exercise gives the set-up, how to ride it and the common faults.
3. Filter to find something for the session you are about to ride.

Example. An entry might tell you to aim for symmetrical loops with the centre crossings level, or that both transitions should land within one stride of the cone — a standard to ride to, rather than a vague instruction.

How it works

1. Pick a level or template, from Novice through Elementary / Third Level, or define your own.
2. Score each movement 0–10. Coefficients are applied automatically and the percentage updates live.
3. Add collective marks, save the test, and build a trend for that horse.

Example. Scoring a mock test at home shows whether the movement you have been drilling is actually scoring better, or whether you have simply got used to it.

How it works

1. Choose the arena size — 20×40, 20×60, or custom width and length.
2. Draw the movement with a finger over an outline with A, C, B, E, F, K, H, M and G markers in place.
3. A five-colour palette distinguishes trot, canter, halt and corrections. Solid lines for trot, dashed for canter.
4. Save the sketch and reopen it at the next lesson.

Example. Easier to show a student the pattern than to describe it from the middle of the school.

How it works

1. In the first tab, pace out the distance between two fences and enter it. Course-walking paces are taken as roughly 0.9 m.
2. The tool returns the stride count with a walks-on, short or long verdict, and tells you how the horse will tend to meet it.
3. The reverse tab works the other way: give it a stride count and it returns the distance to build.

Example. A related distance that comes up short tells you the horse will fit a tight stride; long, and it will stand off. Knowing which before you jump it changes how you ride in.

How it works

1. Record student, horse, discipline and date.
2. Two free-text fields: what you worked on, and goals for next time.
3. Tag the lesson and search across every lesson you have recorded.

Example. You arrive at the next lesson knowing exactly where you left off, instead of opening with “so, what did we do last week?”

How it works

1. Add a chip for each rider in the group.
2. Tap a rider’s chip to start their turn; tap the next to roll over to them.
3. Time and turn count are recorded per rider and the lesson saves to history.

Example. Keeps a group lesson demonstrably fair when six riders are waiting and one is quietly taking twice as long as the rest.

How it works

1. Set a clear, dated goal for a rider.
2. Break it into milestones and tick them off as they are met.
3. A progress bar and percentage track the goal, marked active, achieved or paused, with evidence notes against each milestone.

Example. A goal with milestones and a date behaves differently from an intention. The progress bar is the difference.