Did you know there’s a plethora (excellent word, that) of horse museums out there? Everyone knows about the International Museum of the Horse located in the Kentucky Horse Park, but there are lots of smaller, specialized museums out there as well. The Dartfield Horse Museum and Park is located in Ireland, east of Galway City and boasts exhibits dedicated to the history of the horse, live Irish horses for admiring, an art gallery and shop, mechanized horses to ride and lots of other neat stuff. It’s the brainchild of renowned Irish horseman and Connemara breeder Willie Leahy, and has only been open for a few years, but I think it deserves to be better-known. What would your ideal equestrian holiday be? I’ll be posting about more museums in the future; if you have a site you’d like to suggest, please post a comment or email me at defrostindoors at gmail dot com.
Bridlepath 
RE: Dartfield horse museum
I recently visited the museum and granted it was off season, but it was not what I expected. In addition, I groomed a couple of the owner’s horses which had just been ridden and found one with an open sore on his back and the other with knots of hair where the girth goes. The horse with the sore had to have been saddled like that. Willie may be a good rider, but he surely isn’t a good horse person!