You guys have been very helpful, and thank you for the offer of additional help MorganGuru - you can bet you will hear from me!

Husband started looking around and has gotten interested in Springfield... I'm not really sure why he seems so locked into this location, other than it is a fast commute and near a metro station. Any thoughts on Springfield as a place to live? I have visited horsetalk.com, but not yet the VAEquestrian, and found some boarding in the surrounding areas - mostly woodbridge, clifton, fairfax, and fairfax station. Granted, I only looked for maybe fifteen minutes, but will invest more time this evening. Any thoughts on these areas regarding boarding?

These were the stables:
Windswept Farm
Cedar Run Horse Center
Blackacre Farm
Arnold Farm
Barranda Ridge Eq Center
Oliver Stables
Red Maple Farm (this one's name cracked me up... isn't red maple deadly for horses?)

I haven't looked up all of them, but learned that Cedar Run (I think, may be mistaken here) ran about $550 for full board. Blackacre was self care with stall for $200.

It's been a while since I boarded, and that was at a great facility, but now I'm not really sure what I want. For instance, before I would have wanted good instruction onsite, but now I think I'd be ok with the option to bring in a trainer occasionally if the board was cheaper. I use to like a bustling, busy barn, but now kind of like the idea of a very small community. In the end though, I wouldn't avoid looking at anything that had something particularly good to offer. It may make it more difficult, but that's why I'd like to know of all options, so that I can start narrowing things down.


Thanks again for any and all suggestions!

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