WE HEAR YOU

The She Shed

My wife, Davana, grew up on a ranch in Wyoming and has been around horses all her life. We’ve been living in Southern California for the past 30 years and the prospect of having a horse out here has been quite expensive. But that all changed last year when we bought a former racetrack pony from a local racetrack.

The facility lets you have a tack shed on the property, and I thought I’d take it one step further and make her shed look like an old Western building. The saddle box holds three saddles and has space for helmets and boots—all protected from the dust with a set of barn doors. The shavings are accessible from the loft by way of a library ladder, which can be moved the length of the shed. The storage box underneath can hold an extra bale of alfalfa and double as a bench. Without electricity, we got creative and bought solar LED lights and refurbished an old horse collar to become a handsome chandelier.

This project was more than just building a tack shed for my wife, it was a labor of love and was my way of reconnecting with her and getting involved in her passion for horses.

Domenic Valentino