Whether your goals are to get ready for a show, improve your riding abilities, train your horse to do something new, or just ensure that you ride often enough to enjoy your horse and your hobby -- or perhaps some combination of all three -- one of the best ways to keep track of your and/or your horse's progress is to keep some type of calendar or journal.

I've seen a variety of approaches.  When my trainer and I were starting my first horse under saddle, I kept a little notebook in which I recorded a summary of all of his work sessions, including anything I thought noteworthy.  (That notebook is interesting to look through now, four years later!)  A fellow boarder at the barn where I keep my horses now use a calendar printed out and tacked up on a clipboard, where they simply jot down when their rides were and how long they rode for.  This approach works great for them, since they lease the horse, and clear communication is needed between owner and leasee.

Now that I'm training a second horse, and since I am trying to ensure that I get out to the barn more frequently than I have been in recent months, I wanted a better way to keep track -- something that would show me at a glance when I worked with the horses, but also allow me to record details.  Because I've become something of a technology geek, I decided to look for an iPhone app, but all of the equestrian and horse management apps fell short of my requirements.

Finally I thought to look through regular journals, and found My Daily Journal, a regular diary app for the iPhone.  The app has a calendar view that allows me to see which days have journal entries (i.e., which days I worked with the horses), and I can tap on individual entries (under the calendar) to read the notes from that day.  Another nice feature is the ability to search -- so if I want to see when I last, say, dewormed the horses, I can just search for the word "deworm" and the app will bring up all entries with that word in it.

Do you keep track of your rides or your work with your horses?  What have you found works best for you?