Why I Created EquiHealth App

Welcome to the EquiHealth App blog! My goal with this series is to provide the human background to the technology that you have in your pocket. In our increasingly digital culture, it is easy to lose sight of the human side of the projects that help us be more efficient and detail oriented.

EquiHealth App is a project I started in July 2025 but has its roots in the early 1980s. I grew up in South Africa and started riding horses at 8 years old. I have always been an animal lover and like so many little girls, wanted only to spend time hugging ponies and kissing puppies!

Learning to ride on Chatterbox

Fast forward a few decades and my family moved to Canada where I continued with weekly riding lessons and learning all about horsemanship from an incredible mentor. It was apparent that owning my own horse was not on the cards - the expense and distance to travel to barns from where we loved was prohibitive. But my love for horses never faded and I continued to ride weekly and work at my barn to gain as much horse experience as possible.

“Trying” to do dressage with my favorite horse, Legacy.

The next chapter of my life brought me to Lubbock, Texas for graduate school but also meant a long break from riding: 18 years to be exact. I focused my efforts on my studies and became very serious about triathlon which was more accessible than riding horses for me at the time. I achieved USA Triathlon All American status in 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022 and built a thriving triathlon coaching business. After a bout of stubborn injuries, I decided it was time to take a break form the hard triathlon training and get back to horses, my first love! I googled “English Riding Lessons” in my area and quickly found a wonderful trainer who had a few school horses for me to take lessons on. It wasn’t long before I was completely hooked again.

At one of my favorite races: Kerrville Triathlon

After a few months of riding lessons, I calculated a budget and decided that I wanted to look for my own horse! I contacted a trainer in the Dallas-Fort Worth area who found me the perfect partner and who has also become a mentor and friend to me. Little did I know, the learning was only just about to BEGIN. All the years of taking lessons, Pony Club, and working in a barn only partially prepared me for the challenges of owning a horse and caring for it to the best of my abilities.

My lovely boy, Royal

Although training had been going fairly well, I battled a few common challenges like ulcers, lost shoes, and joint stiffness. As I learned more about taking care of my horse, I realized I needed a reliable way to track his health and performance. I could not find an online (mobile or web) application that kept the exacts types of data that I wanted to track. I searched for some options but finally decided to attempt to create my own app. I had worked as a data analyst in my early career at Texas Tech University so I had the skills I needed to begin scaffolding the project.

What began as a personal tool for tracking my own horse’s health has grown and developed into a mobile companion helping equestrians take the best care of their beloved horses. As I have gained experience in my own journey as a horse owner, I have translated what I have learned into the App’s capabilities. It has been a joy to see the App come to life in the ways I envisioned. My goals for the App are to:

1) Prioritize horse care

2) Save you time

3) Reduce care-related stress and anxiety

4) Track your horse’s performance

5) Make life better for equestrians and horses

EquiHealth App is available as a mobile app from the App Store here: https://apple.co/47Jcvbe and now also available as EquiHealth Web - a web app compatible with any device, here: https://app.equihealth.net/.

Please feel free to reach out any time with questions using the “Contact Us” link on any of the web pages. Thanks for spending a little time with EquiHealth App today!