Off the island, NOW!
Oct 12 2009
A reader sent me a rather shocking tale this morning. Apparently there are boarders at the barn she boards at that think it is ok to go out in the pasture and herd and cut the other boarders’ horses for practice! Lame horses are being run around, making them even lamer.Â
“When confronted about this on Monday by some other boarders, he said he did it because he could…WTF!!!????”
Well, apparently he CAN because whoever is managing or owns your barn has less spine than a jellyfish! I would ban him from riding on the premises immediately and give him 48 hours to move his horses. Wouldn’t you?Â
So, I think this is a great topic. What kind of behavior has your barn kicked a boarder out for? Was that action taken immediately or did the person make everybody miserable for a long time before it happened? If you are the BO/BM, what tales can you tell? If you board, is there a boarder you wish would get voted off the island, and why?
My personal peeve is small feral children brought to the barn and then left unsupervised to run wild. Many years ago I leased my barn to a trainer that I really liked except that she had a son who thought it was ok to rollerblade on the concrete barn aisles while people were riding in the arena. You can imagine how young Thoroughbreds feel about that noise, and she simply would not discipline the kid. (He grew up to be a delinquent teen, toldyaso…) Fortunately he finally got scared enough of my shrieking at him to take his activities outside, but it was not fun in the meantime.Â
Other out of control boarder behavior I’ve seen get someone booted include a polo player who would show up at 5 a.m. and stick-and-ball horses that didn’t belong to him at a Chicago stable. Yes, the barn help will tell on you, even if they do not speak English. 
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So tell your tales! What kinds of crazy have you seen? Are you living through it now?
Fans of the humongous Appy-draft #451, he got bailed out by someone from the auction office before the office opened today, so he is safe. If anybody wants to bail the red roan APHA gaming mare, may be 326, trying to confirm the #, I’m very, very interested in her in the future but I just got a return on a previous rescue and I need to place the return first. I hear she is very sweet with people but is an alpha with other horses. Mild navicular but I have an awesome farrier for that. cathy@horsereunions.com for inquiries about auction horses. Please continue to use resqtb@yahoo.com for normal blog mail. Thanks!
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I have been both the boarder and the barn owner. I boarded at a variety of places. One was partial care and you had all the drama associated along with a family that wouldnt buy food for their horse, instead they would steal yours so we had to have a feed bin made w/ a lock to keep them out. Their horse was nutty and uncontrollable. The field that my horse was kept in did not have its own water source so the people whos horses were out there were suppose to help keep the water trough full. Needless to say 20% of the people did 90% of the work. Another one I was feeding several times a week in liue of board. The guy traveled and needed help. Well there were numerous times I came on my non-feeding days to discover no water in the fields, the horses had not been fed etc. Once it was 100 degrees and when I pulled up he was cutting the grass and the horses were huddled around the water barrels- yep all of them bone dry.
As a Barn Owner I have had some great experiences and some terrible one. One gave me one of my best friends and through her a great network of friends to ride with. The last ones left me saying never again. I dont do it for the money, more for the company and these were 2 young girls the same age as my daughter. I was VERY nice and told them that if I was home they were welcome to leave their girls as I had to watch my child anyway around the horses so at least she had someone to ride with, BUT I made it abuntantly clear that if I was not home under no circumstances were these girls to be left w/o an adult present. They were 12/13 years old, I have NO neighbors, no home phone (we operate on cells only) and if they were to get hurt then there would be no one to help. Now I am home more than not, but we do go out of town on occaision and I pay someone to come to the house and care for my animals while I am gone. Sure enough we were gone for the weekend and the girls call my daughter and say they are at the house. I find out they are here by themselves, decide to clean out the water trough to be “helpful” and somehow broke the plug out of my water tank. Luckily my barn setter was on the way and when she got there she said the girls were riding all over the yard (another no-no- ring and trails only – or they could ride in the fields) barefoot (another no- no) I think they did have a helmet on- wonders never cease, jumping jumps they “made” from stuff in our shed. I couldnt walk in the barn for the crap they would leave all over the place. Drove me nuts. I wrote a letter to the parents readdressing this got the oh, no I didnt do it their dad did it I never would do that – thats dangerous speech and then they proceeded not to pay me for care of the ponies for months and months until I had to sell them to try and recoup money. I also spoke to the girls and told them not to mess with my stuff w/o asking. Was never so glad to see those ponies sold and those boarders gone. Oh, they hardly ever did come out, maybe once a month if that and when one of them came to pick up their pony and pay me what they owed me, she started making comments about how dirty their pony was and how poor his care must of been. I charged them for field board only. I provided feed water and because they wouldnt do it and I feel strongly about it wormer and held their ponies for the farrier. I was not going to bathe and brush their ponies for free either. They were fat and happy and in the own statment even a few months before looking better than they ever had and then I get those snide comments. GRRRR. Not as bad as some for certain, but my own personal aggrivation.
One of the barns I used to board at had solid mud out in the turnouts in the spring. The BO would bring her horses in to the barn at night but mine were stuck outside in the muck and the little one had to lay in it. They rarely cleaned out the turnouts so I took a wheelbarrow and filled it with muck and manure dozens of times trying to clean it up. The mud finally dried out in June and the BO had a really bad habit of filling up the water and leaving the hose turned on while she was outside on the patio drinking beer so the water would run out across the paddocks and just sit there, making mud all over again. This happened repeatedly. I would fill up the water troughs myself to avoid it but if I didn’t get to it in time we were doomed to more mud. It was no surprise that both of my horses had mud fever for weeks. As soon as I was able to I moved them both out.
The worst part was that if all of the horses had been left indoors for a week or so, they wouldn’t have been churning up the turnouts and they would have run off and dried out. The BO just didn’t care and didn’t bother to do anything about getting adequate drainage.
I”ve been with my trainer (who is also the BO), through 3 horses and 2 farms, for the past 15 years specifically because she does it right. She’s a phenomenal horse manager, won’t tolerate running kids, loose dogs, or disrespectful teens. We all had strict instructions from her that if any of her 3 generally well-behaved children stepped out of line, we were to yell at them immediately. My trainer really takes no prisoners, and all of her boarders get along because of it. It isn’t fancy, but the barn is clean, well kept, fences kept in perfect order, fields never overgrazed. She checks the horses top and bottom every morning and night, recommends when she thinks they need supplements, schedules the farrier and vet, swaps blankets as needed, and does her best to keep costs down. Even though her place is more expensive than others in the area, I’m happy to pay it because I know the care is top notch.
Over the years I can only think of one boarder that I know of that she had to ask to leave. This woman was very large (probably in excess of 250 lbs) and got very upset at the trainer when she told her she needed to either lose some weight or stop jumping her 16-hand lightly built and not reliably sound QH gelding more than 2’6″. She was a good rider but just didn’t get it that her horse couldn’t take the pounding that jumping over 3-foot fences caused. She was constantly changing farriers, having chiropractic work done, buying fancy magnetic therapy blankets/wraps, etc., because she was convinced that it was something other than her weight that was causing his soundness issues. She was also very hard on her horses otherwise. She *demanded* complete obedience at all times, and if the horse did so much as twitched an ear wrong, she would blow up on it. I made the mistake once, when I was away for a week, of telling her she could hack my mare while I was gone (since her gelding was lame again). I heard later from the owner’s daughter that the woman got my mare to rear *twice* during a 30-minute ride. Now, my mare is far from perfect. She is a typical mare and requires a tactful ride, something that this woman was clearly incapable of giving. At that point I told my trainer that I didn’t want her on my horse ever again. Trainer agreed. I think the final straw for me (and the trainer) was when I came in one day and found the woman body clipping her OTTB (another unsound horse that she’d apparently rescued from a field). She had the horse twitched, and it was clear that he’d been that way for some time, since he was already about half done. I pulled my mare out and started grooming her. Twenty minutes pass, and her poor horse starts fidgeting frantically more and more, and at each fidget the woman screams at him and smacks him, and each time she screams and hits him, my mare jumps. I finally finished tacking up my mare and headed out to ride, and I could still hear her screaming from the ring. I think she had that horse twitched for over an hour. I told the BO/trainer about the incident, and I think that, combined with other incidents I heard from other people at the barn, finally got her asked to leave. Granted, she wasn’t nearly as much of a nutjob as a lot of others have reported, but she was enough of a problem that my trainer simply didn’t want to deal with her. Last I heard she’d moved on to a dressage barn.
Well — after reading these comments, I suppose that as a BO, I don’t have it that bad. But, I will say this… be a considerate boarder. It goes a long way. I don’t charge you every time you use a wheelbarrow, or a rake, or shovel like some places do — please wash them and put them away. Don’t take from the barn hay pile to feed your horse a “snack” — get your own treats, and you just rile up the other horses when you do this. Please clean regularly or let us know if you’re not going to be here so we can take care of it for you. I don’t need calls at 10:30 at night, please, unless it’s an emergency. Pick up after your freakin’ self and your freakin’ horse. There isn’t someone that follows you around to do this.
And — I know we’re a cheaper barn. There’s a reason for that — the barn is older, a lot of ppl do their own care. I don’t have a fancy indoor arena or matted aisleways. When it rains, it’s muddy. Like a lot of ppl, I don’t have life sustaining grass everywhere. But my barn is clean, we fix things when they break, my boarders are nice, and generally, the horses have a close eye kept on them. We feed consistently and are big on turnout. I’m getting a lot of calls lately from these ppl who are used to boarding at “fancy farms,” but due to the economy, they are tired of paying the rising boarding costs (upwards of $600/full care horses with private turnout in our area). Don’t tell me things are fine and your flexible, then get here and bitch about it’s crappy that you can’t ride when it rains, or that your not used to cleaning your own stall and dumping your own wheelbarrow and can’t make it up the ramp. Don’t bitch that your horse got scraped or bit in the group turnout that you were okay with when you decided to board here. The effing barn doesn’t revolve around you.
Being a barn owner has taught me to be more assertive and that it’s okay to tell people, “No.” You don’t have to be a doormat to make people happy.
I have boarded and leased horses all over SW MO. Here are a few horrors I have witnessed…
- At a roping barn, horses left tacked up and with their heads tied to their tails OVERNIGHT
- My mare NOT turned out with broodies in the only field with a turnout shed b/c “she has on back shoes” (eyes rolling, as this mare was not the least bit aggressive) So they put her in a WAY back field alone and left her out there in HORRIBLE rain storm.
- Non-existent blanket service when I paid for it. I would go out at noon and no one would pull her blanket off from the COLD night before, so she would be soaking wet with sweat. Urgh!
- Boarder’s hock injections going into BO’s horse
- Non-exsisent training on people’s horses (People who are paying $800+ training board!)
- Horse on stall rest supposed to be hand walked daily, never moved from stall once. (At least the stall was cleaned daily (thanks to me!)
- Non-exsistent turn out. My poor mare would not get out of her stall if I did not go out and personally turn her out (I worked at this barn)
- Boarders suppliments going into BO’s horses
- My horse having the shit beat out of it by an ignorant cowboy’s horse, b/c he didn’t respect that I wanted her turned out alone. (No call of course, I went out the next day to find her covered in hematomias (sp?))
- The worst of the worst – BO tells people horse was struck bt lightening and she buried it, when I know for a fact it was sold to Texas. She pulled this again, I heard, after I left her barn with another guy. This time it was two horses. If anyone says my horse died, I want to see a body!
I am sooo glad to have my horses at home now. “My Barn, My Rules!” I never have to worry now if they are standing in a fithy stall, or being turned out or being fed. Thank goodness!
You are so going to love this one! I have never been a horse owner but have managed a couple of barns and dealt with all sorts of barn owners, trainers, horse owners ect. One of the places I managed was a Hunter-Jumper facility with one trainer. All owners were required to groom and tack their own horses for lessons. All horses were turned out in the morning, so it was the rider’s resposibility to show up in time to bring in their mount and have it tacked and ready for the lesson. We liked to turn horses out in groups (they are herd animals,after all) at this barn. One lovley summer day, as my co-worker and I are cleaning stalls the barn phone rings, it is one of our boarders/owners, she is in the pasture, nearly in tears, trying to catch her horse for her lesson but dosen’t know “which gray horse out here” is hers. I’m not making this up, she honestly did not know! She later told me that we shouldn’t turn out two horses who look so similar together because “it’s too confusing”. Have you ever had a difficult time picking your horse out of a group?
I could fill this page with stories of boarders, but that one really is the funniest.
On a side note, the barn in the above story wasn’t fancy or even the prettiest barn I worked in, but the horses were probably the happiest due to the large grass pastures and all day group turnout. In other words, we let the horses have time to just be horses.
Wow — I must’ve been really upset when I wrote this… I completely missed the your/you’re thing several times! it just irritates me when you hear stories about psycho BOs from boarders who bounce around from barn to barn. Ever think that you’re the one who made your BO a psycho witch/a-hole?
Oh yeah — and ditto on the feral kids thing. Last summer, I had someone who dropped off their 13 year old every day without a lunch, water, entertainment, money, etc. She would come at 10:30 PM (finally) to pick her up. Several times the kid fell asleep at our house waiting for her mom — she was just going to stay at the barn by herself in the dark and wait. Yeah — NOT! I am not your free babysitting service.
Rant over — I feel much better now. Thanks, fugly, for giving us a place to share and vent. It makes me feel good knowing that I’m not “the only one.”
Well, I am about to embark on a boarding experience.
I’ve known the BO for over 20 years (she was my judging coach in 4H), and she has experience with older horses (which I’m getting). It may or may not be permanent; I have a friend who’s building a big run-in barn this winter, and the BF she lives with is the local horse vet – so boarding there would ROCK, since she’s also one of the few non-QH people around here.
If any weirdness happens, of course I will dish. ; ) But I’m hoping it’s relatively drama-free – it’s a nice little place with an indoor, 20 mins. from home, 10 mins. from work.
Crazy ass animal people…. they will NEVER go away.
B/O had a dog that chased the horses. I asked her not too, she would scream at me “they are just playing”. She drove a truck with the trailgate down to feed. My horse reached in to get some food while she was throwing hay and the dog bit him on the hock. He kicked and missed turning, then was so pissed off he kicked out again and hit the tail gate. I was lucky he didn’t break his leg. The barnowner didn’t even wait for me to say anything, she just started screaming. I moved him within 48 hours.
Another barn and again it is dogs being loose. Big pit bull mix bully dogs with no respect for people or animals. I told her before moving in I don’t tolerate loose dogs with horses and she swore she kept them in her fence around her house but this was not the case. Her dogs finally chased and killed her cat they had lived with for 10 years (prey drive when it ran) and she blamed a boarder for “throwing the ball for them”. I moved him out a.s.a.p. after that…
I am an old woman, not a horse person and probably the person you mock at the barn. A year ago I bought a lovely yearling. It has been a learning experience to put it simply. I now know how to lead him, how to discourage him from biting, how to not get in someone else’s space, how to not turn him loose when another horse is around, etc. When he first arrived, I asked the BO about the “Barn Rules” and she chuckled and said she didn’t have anything written and would let me know when I messed up.
So for the last year or so, I’ve been messing up and been harshly corrected by the BO and others, repeatedly. If it weren’t for the luscious smell of my young horse’s neck and his soft muzzle and kind eyes, I might not have been able to take it.
Wow, the BO left to go overseas for 3 weeks, and had a house sitter come and care take (supposedly). We checked in every other day, horses kept getting skinnier, water troughs were dirty, I kept tossing them “extra”. I skipped a day (went to see my family). Found out the horses broke down the fence into the neighbor’s corn field. Fixed the fence, it happened again. Found out later that the house sitter was coming out once a week!!!! Moved my horses the next day. I thought I was feeding out snacks, not their entire meal every OTHER day, no wonder they escaped. Needless to say, I cried when I found out, my old boy came to me as a starved rescue and I swore it would never happen again. At least they live with me now! I know he’s getting a 1/2 bale a day plus grain and treats.
I’ve never owned or managed a barn, but I was at one yard that was truly pathetic.
I moved my mare there so she’d be closer to home and stabling would be a bit more affordable. She was stabled in the wooden barn (there was also a brick barn with more expensive stabling), which was in desperate need of some maintenance. She was turned out into a huge, over-grazed paddock with roughly 40 other horses where she was bullied and was too scared to go to some areas of the paddock because she kept putting her feet into the mole tunnels that popped up.
Vet bills for vaccinations would randomly pop up when the vet’s secretary would call to tell me I haven’t paid for work done 2 months before, when I hadn’t even been told the vet was coming out. I requested that the vet not deworm Daisy and that I would do it myself. The vet still ended up deworming her and I refused to pay for it.
They stabling fee jumped twice in a matter of 3 months and I was told I would need to pay R2000 (I was then paying R1500) because they YO wanted Daisy to go into the brick barn because the wooden barn was going to be broken down. I refused to pay so much for the stabling and decided to find somewhere else for Daisy. 2 days before I was due to move her, I got a phone call from the YM asking if I’d paid the farrier because he was there and needed to do Daisy’s feet. I wasn’t told the farrier was coming. I told them not to worry and I had her feet done once she moved.
When I went to fetch my tack and blankets, my lunge whip had disappeared, my rugs were lying in a heap on the floor in amongst other horses’ rugs (there were roughly 80 horses on the yard, so there were alot of rugs!), Daisy’s flymask, marked with her name, was on another horse’s face and Daisy came in looking underweight and sporting a huge bite mark on her one shoulder.
Apart from all this, the YO’s dogs would run riot around the yard, the arena’s had lumps of grass growing in them and where surrounded by electric tape (causing most of the horses to pull in off the track to aviod getting shocked), the stallion paddocks were getting demolished by the stallion’s they held (one got loose and killed the 1-month-old foal of a boarder’s mare) and the place is just a general dump.
Moving her from that yard was the best thing I ever did for her, I think.
It is now 1.5 years since I moved her. The wooden barn is still standing and housing horses at the yard, the paddocks are still so overgrazed that they look like a desert and the horses still look like SPCA rescues.
Theres a girl at my barn who has been kicked out of every barn in a 50 mile radius. She manipulates, lies and messes with other peoples horses (ie giving one boarders horses mineral with silinum and denying it, she also costantly overgrains peoples [boarders and bos horses alike] horses when she feeds) The only reason she’s still around is the BO feels bad that she will have no where to go unless she moves quite a ways away.
Personally I’d be thrilled if she was kicked out…I know thats rude but meh.
I guess I have been really, REALLY lucky! I’ve boarded at 3 different farms. The first two were run by the BO: we only moved to the second farm because she moved! When the commute (over 2 hours) became unbearable, I decided to move my gelding closer to home. It was an agonizing decision because I loved where we were and the BO where we boarded. I looked at some nice places, but even more dumps.
I really lucked out and found a 120 acre farm with only 10 horses, 10 miles from my house (about 25 miles from work)! The BO and her husband have been there over 50 years, she is brilliant but no-nonsense, and really loves the horses. When I was worried about my aged gelding and moving him from the herd and BO he’d known for eight years, she told me in her British accent, “Now don’t be surprised if he doesn’t need you to hold his hoof through this.”
They’re out on huge pastures with really good grass 24/7, with plenty of run-ins scattered about. They are only stalled in really bad (severe snow and ice) weather, and luckily there’s an indoor so we can still ride in winter. Of the 10 horses at the farm, mine and 3 others are boarded, and 6 are the BO’s that she rides and teaches with. And only 40 minutes from Philly, and less than 5 minutes from major roads. The students and other boarders are all wonderful… sure there are differences of opinion, but everyone is civil and there’s no drama. I really miss the BO and a lot of the people at the old barn, but the trade-off of having him 15 minutes from home is worth it!
The more I read all of your posts, the luckier I realize I am!
That first sentence should have read:
I guess I have been really, REALLY lucky! I’ve boarded at 3 different farms. The first two were run by the *SAME* BO: we only moved to the second farm because she moved!
That first paragraph should have read:
I guess I have been really, REALLY lucky! I’ve boarded at 3 different farms. The first two were run by the *SAME* BO: we only moved to the second farm because she moved!
Zwarte, hang in there!!
Horsepeople are generally cantankerous and ornery, not to mention opinionated.
Remember that in every equine pursuit, the ultimate compliment is “correct.” Now, there are many ways to GET to “correct,” but you have to keep asking dumb-sounding questions. When someone points out that you’re doing something WRONGWRONGWRONG, look at them and innocently say “Dude, I had NO idea, and thank you for setting me straight!! Do you have a favorite way of doing this? I’m just learning….” because learning horse stuff is kind of a stream-of-conscousness thing… one thing leads to another, and another….
I got a lot of Tough Love from a BO when I was a teen. She was really a big marshmallow inside and took great care of the horses, but you got NO sympathy when YOU got hurt!
You would come limping in with some kind of injury, and she’d grunt and say “Hunh. It’s a long way from your heart.”
She also used to say “It’s better to be pissed off than pissed on.” Also “Better a smart ass than a dumb one.”
I miss her. She scared off the Popular Rich Girl whose mom finally got her a horse… (who grew up into a decent human, actually)
I don’t know, zwarte; I’ve found that most people draw a pretty clear distinction between a new-to-horses new owner who ACKNOWLEDGES that she doesn’t know things, and one who thinks she knows everything there is to know about horse care and training because she read a couple books or websites (or watched some RFD TV or something). The former gets helped; the latter gets mocked.
I’m new to horse ownership, and actually hadn’t ridden (other than a couple of one-off rides) for many years before I bought my horse. When he arrived and I lined up a trainer, she came out to take stock of us for the first time and I told her how it had been so many years since I’d been in lessons. She joked in reply, “So you decided to buy a young, green, super-athletic horse and learn to ride him!” Yup, pretty much! Not exactly the recommended combination.
I had never cleaned a sheath before. I had never given dewormer. I had never scheduled a farrier, or dealt with scrapes and dings from pasture play. But everyone at the barn has been happy to give me tips, advice, and even demonstrations on how to do the things I don’t know how to do – and with nary an eyeroll. If you’re open to learning, then I doubt you’re being mocked. *Everyone* had to start out with no experience or knowledge, at some point!
…Aaaanndd to add onto the crazy lady I was talking about earlier, last night she came, in the dark, without lights, with two trailers and attempted to take 3 of “her” horses. However, the barn owners have a lien against her (She has a very considerable debt to them) in the form of two of the horses, and technically own the third. Luckily, a boarder noticed and alerted the owners who stopped her from taking two of the horses (One they technically own and one that’s part of the lien), but she had already taken the third. He’s a 4 y.o. Lippizan stallion, about 15-15.2, grey with dapples on the hindquarters. He will probably have come in with 5 other, very distinctive horses- a very old, laminitic pony, a very thin bay mare with a distinctive “?” star, a older, small Lippizan stallion, and 2 grey mares. It is extremely, extremely likely this stallion, named “Neo”, is with these. The barn owner is actively looking for him- If anyone is in or around the Minneapolis, St.Paul area, and have either seen this horse or perhaps the others (as a group) at your barn or know the owner and know where she is keeping her horses, please say something! This is being considered theft and the Wright Country Sheriff has been envolved.
AHH, feral children. We had a sign that “Unsupervised children would be sold” but that didn’t stop one from throwing the tractor key away while mommy was riding in the ring. Never to be recovered. Manure didn’t get moved for awhile.
Perverts…ick. 2 different places. One was the BM fiance and OF Course we were all making it up! Creepy guy was decked by an Amazon and they soon left. A horse stalled 30′ from her trailer went without water because “She’s a bitch just making noise” and the GSD was just “herding” when he bit a horses nose. The 2nd perv was more harmless and almost ended up in the manure pile by a little slip of a woman. We felt more sorry for his poor horse.
So called “Trainer” that admitted to walking past a colicing horse and not notifying anyone, probably would have cut into her schedule. Booting her probably cost a penny cause she had a few horses but she only ended up next door, you could always hear her screeching at her victems.
People with such poor critical thinking skills that it was a circus. Simple stuff done badly. And they were “experienced” in horses. When they show up, one eye is always kept on them so you wouldn’t accidently get caught up in the music *caliape circus parade tune* . OR you need to respond to a medical/vet emergency.
I lived with my mare at one site that had a constantly loose Brahma calf, as in no stall or paddock for him, that got to be about 600 lbs and trying to MOUNT people. Cause he’s KKUUEETT. My BF even BUILT a nice paddock for him as the owner watched and the bull was never put in it. The sister gave him all kinds of loving..ahem…perverts are not always guys.
Mabelicious wrote “…I had never cleaned a sheath before. I had never given dewormer. I had never scheduled a farrier, or dealt with scrapes and dings from pasture play. But everyone at the barn has been happy to give me tips, advice, and even demonstrations on how to do the things I don’t know how to do – and with nary an eyeroll. If you’re open to learning, then I doubt you’re being mocked. *Everyone* had to start out with no experience or knowledge, at some point!”
Me too, Mabelicious!!! And I’ve also learned that most of the experienced people appreciate sharing their knowledge with us newbies who acknowledge that we’re know-nothing newbies
I can’t believe how much I’ve learned in a few short years thanks to all of the kind people I’ve been fortunate enough to cross paths with.
hee hee… I have to learn how to clean a sheath now – I’ve only ever OWNED mares. And the BO always did the worming – we’ll see if this one does, or if I will have to learn.
Never had to deal with splint boots, bell boots or skid boots until relatively late in my horsey life … bell boots are easy enough, but I was a little freaky learning about the others b/c I didn’t want to, you know, destroy the horse’s legs!
People will always have weird gaps in their knowledge. That’s part of being human. I remember reading an interview in PH after the 2000 or 2004 Olympics, one member of the US team, a show jumper, saw her first dressage EVER at the Games.
When I was in college, I left my horse at home for a bit, and like anybody who leaves her friends behind, started to feel like we were “growing apart.” So, the next semester, I brought the trailer (and Ann, of course) along. We started out at the stable where the equestrian team kept their horses. The board was cheap, being a student, but, we were a square peg in a round hole. I even borrowed an English getup from my cousin Kate but it wasn’t long before I was missing chrome, sequins, and fringe. The barn also had this terrible requirement that if you kept your horse there, you had to pay for a minimum of one lesson a week. What was I going to do with this fine, equestrian training? There was not a pole or a barrel to be found in the whole place, so I started looking for a new barn.
I settled on a decently priced place that seemed to be a fit (on first glance) for us. The BO/BM had just purchased the place in the past year or so, and she came from a gaming background herself. It was in a lovely location with fruit orchards, ponds, and altogether stunning florals and foliage… this is where the problem begins. Ride anywhere, anytime? You betcha.
Really, the only problem I had at first was this first-time teenage horse owner whose parents had so ignorantly purchased a 2 yr old, barely halter broke, and have the BO break her out nice in 90 days. That’s pretty normal, right? Except green plus green equals black and blue. The girl herself would come over to spend some time with this horse, and want to do a little w/t action in the ring, and the BO or Trainer would say “Can you keep an eye on her a minute?” should I happen to be doing a little ring work of my own. I don’t know HOW MANY TIMES I was acting pickup pony for those two.
One sunny day, after a rainy week of forced arena work, I lunged my girl on a flat piece of ground on the back end of the barn, towards the pond. It’s grass, it’s a farm, we’ll just stomp down some divets so that nobody else steps in them. Right? Right! Wrong. The BO/BM’s 300lb cityslicker husband comes stomping up to me (in his shorts, zip-up sweater, socks and sandals, might I add) as I am leading Ann back up to the barn, and proceeds to yell at me as though I shot his dog. I apologized (not exactly sure what I’d done wrong), and he continued to scream “YOU WILL FIX IT!!! YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS!!! THAT HORSE IS OUT OF HERE!!!!” Apparently, the idea of lunging out a horse on flat ground was unfathomable to this man. A trainer who worked at the barn then told me that Mike (was that his name?) told her to talk to me about lunging in the mud, because APPARENTLY they CHARGE PEOPLE MONEY to hold weddings near that particular spot. This pretty much blew my mind, but I let it go. The BO/BM came out and said she’d smooth it over, not to worry, but just stay out of that particular area.
I think it was the next weekend, I parked my truck and came walking into the barn, I tied Ann in the aisle and started throwing my tack out of my locker, fixing to go do some riding. The BO comes hauling ass up to me telling me “YOU CAN’T RIDE TODAY!!!” I’m thinking “What in the world?” “We’re having a wedding, we can’t have horses running all over the place.” Again, I let it go, gave Ann a thorough grooming and headed home. It happened again the next weekend. And the weekend after that. God forbid anybody should want to ride on a weekend, of all times!!!
Nobody ever took a liking to riding my horse while I was gone, like several of you mentioned, BUT I’ll be damned if I didn’t catch students (even the BO) riding in my very, very hard-earned, well-won, and immaculately maintained barrel saddle AT LEAST a dozen times, even after mentioning that I didn’t really enjoy loaning out my stuff. I also had about a dozen lead ropes and cinches go missing (cinches, really?).
I toughed it out until something better came along. I ended up moving in with a girl originally from about 5 miles from school, and it turned out her mother had a couple of horses. Ann went out there, and she stayed for free so long as I mucked stalls and fed on the weekends. It was a PLEASURE to board with this woman. She would go riding with me, I even ended up breaking (or at least giving my best effort to breaking) a 7 year old she’d had since birth. I at least had the thing lungeing (rather than charging me like we started out) and making smooth lead changes, even being ponied, by the time I turned her over to more skilled hands.
I’d have shot that guy for chasing my horse around making it lamer! What an ass…”because I could” Anyways I had my stallion boarded at one place that used their hay to feed him for about 2 weeks in return I would pay them back when I got my hay bought and delivered. I bought 2 tons of 130 lb 3-tie bales which should have lasted him through the winter and it was all gone in 3 weeks. This was for 1 horse that went through about a bale a week minus the couple of bales to pay back for what he had already used. Did I mention that the owner had 5 horses?! Moved him out of there and the next place thought it was funny to sic the dogs on the horses to make them run, and yes they were ‘playing’ with the horses. Only problem with that is their dogs didn’t know which horses belonged to who and they ended up running mine into the fence, of course there was no phone call to me and a couple days later went out to see him and asked what had happened because he had cuts all over his chest, leg and neck. My boy did get revenge and the next time they tried chasing him he nailed the one good, they didn’t think it was going to make it but it did and only chased from the outside of the fence then…yay, not really. Another time I had my horses boarded, they let another boarders horses into the aisleway to eat the grass down, only problem was these horses had NO manners at all and I had to deal with them to get to mine, they also ended up getting into my hay stack and ate a bunch of my hay that had been tarped and basically made a mess of it.
fhotd said “OT: Anybody in Seattle or thereabouts have a narrow tree western saddle for sale? I have a swaybacked TB mare”
I have one that I used for my now basically retired swaybacked gelding. It has a small seat ( I can measure it if you want) but a very high and narrow tree. I bought it from my old vet who said it was made in the 1940′s so it’s old but very well built and not in bad shape, I can take pics if you want and send them to you if you’re interested.
Just a tidbit of information on bad, dangerous behavior at a boarding facility. We boarded three horses at The Anaheim Equestrian Center/Rancho Del Rio here in Southern California. I experienced dangerous things that you would never believe every day. Things that put not only horses but their owners and trainer’s students in deep danger. If you can imagine a horror story happening it happened at Rancho Del Rio every day, every hour, every minute. Seeing children particularly put in danger all the time was the most disturbing for me. I was the Western Trainer there for five long, scary, frantic, Zantac years.
All of this can be attributed to the lease holder’s wife. We will refer to her as Jane Doe. She has the obvious IQ of a marble. Jane Doe herself let her two dogs out running loose at the stable tethered together by a single leash. Of course the dogs clotheslined an older lady on a young horse. Jane Doe adopted a pot-belled pig which was free to roam the stable area and arenas because she was too lazy to walk it on a leash. Many of my riding lessons ended in disaster due to this roaming pig. The pig’s tail eventually fell off due to Jan Doe’s neglect. One of my students broke her wrist when one of Jane’s dogs nipped at her horse’s heels and my student was thrown. When my student’s husband complained to Jane she threw them out of the stable and they had to move their six horses to another stable. If any boarder complained about her ignorance or behavior she just kicked them out! She was too stupid to get vaccination records from a new boarder once and the entire stable was put on quarantine for West Nile Virous.
I remember another tragic incident: An expensive young quarter horse was in a box stall and it’sowner went on vacation. The stable was told to watch out for the horse while the owner was gone. The very first night the horse pooped in its automatic waterer. The stable help are to clean the stalls every day and did not on this particular occasion. Because of the poop in the water the horse would not drink any water. It went all weekend without water before this was discovered and the horse went into severe colic and died! No one at Rancho Del Rio will dare to talk about this incident, not even to each other. If Jane had even suspected that it was being talked about the boarder would be asked to leave.
I like to describe her as the evil child in the Twilight Zone series. When someone did not agree with him he would “wish them into the cornfield”. Thank the Lord that I got out of there and into a more “stable” environment. Based on my experiences at The Anaheim Equestrian Center/Rancho Del Rio I could write a book on what not to do when you own a boarding stable. And this all goes on right under the noses of the City of Anaheim. Mickey Mouse would be ashamed.
Zwarte that makes me very sad. I am 18 and work at a lesson/boarding barn. I show two of the boarders who are pretty new to horses things all the time and I don’t mind at all.. I’m sorry they are harsh instead of understanding and make you feel upset. Hang in there; maybe find a different barn that’s willing to guide you instead of always being strict.
Oh my. I am reading these and they are….. they leave me with a loss for words. I am in a boarding situation of my own. My barn owner is a lunatique (Sp?) She got drunk (what else is new) took my horse and tack (completly on backwards) and decided to jump her 4 feet. She did this when I wasn’t there, but when I came to the barn, I look in the ring and see my horse jumping with her on I’m like ummm….. I went over and my poor little mare who is a saint just looked at me and was like “Help me please” This was right after I got her. She was a western horse and I was just teaching her how to jump and she was no where near ready for this. I just told her calmly to get off and leave my horse alone. She started screaming at me but got off. I am still with her and the craziness continues. From putting 1/8th a bag of shavings in non matted stalls to changing feed every time it runs out, I am through with this. She tries to brag about all the benefits I get at her barn. for $420 a month I get- to clean all the horses stalls and feed the, yelled at for nothing 24/7, and not giving my horse bute when she is lame due to her taking her out to the rockiest trail without permission, and horrible facilities. I am leaving in November for a barn that has an indoor, qualified for lessons, immaculate barns, and many ribbons under their belt
cattypex- do you go to my barn? or did you? you exactly described my BO excpet I don’t know about the “taking care of horses” XD
Oh where to begin with the memorable boarding experiences. I have had so many bad ones that I’ll probably leave some out, but here goes.
At the first barn where I worked and boarded my first horse, a boarder and her boyfriend had a bad break up. Boyfriends way of payback was sneaking onto the ranch late one night and cutting off the tails of the girl’s horses… REALLY short. I’m talking up to the tail bone here. The kicker was that he even cut the tails of other boarders horses too, who had NOTHING to do with their lovers quarreling! I sympathized with all whose horses were targeted, but super relieved my mare wasn’t one them. She was in a stall not far from the girl’s horses and had a tail that nearly dragged the ground. This same barn is also located right across the street from a large condo complex, which meant non horsey visitors coming over to feed “treats” to the horses. Some of the treats I busted these people with were onions, parsley, potato chips, and candy bars! I’m sure there were other surprises being fed when I or the barn manager weren’t around, and dealing with the unwelcomed visitors was an ongoing issue. I left this place after it was bought and managed by a real estate developer who knew little about horses. He proceeded to jack up the boarding rates, hire staff who did not feed properly and had zero horse knowledge, and he stole some of my tack when he told me he was moving my things to a newly built and better tack room (so the old one could be torn down) when I wasn’t there.
I moved to a ranch with awesome facilities on state park property which meant the added perk of miles of great riding trails. Things were great and I worked there part time for a while. This ranch had around 40 horses that were owned by the land leasor and were used as trail rental, summer camp, and lesson horses. Often the poor horses were doing all three jobs at the same time and their care and condition suffered as a result. The owner didn’t care because the money was rolling in, but little of it went back into the horses for good feed, vet, or farrier care. I along with some of the other hired help did the best we could for the horses. I grew attached to one particular senior Arab mare and rehabbed her on my own time and money due to her poor health and being skin and bones. That didn’t stop her from still being ridden regularly to earn her keep in the owner/ ranch leasors view. I had her looking like a brand new horse in a few months, but had to quit my job there and her care when I accepted a full time job somewhere else. The trainer at the ranch took advantage of this new and improved old girl and leased her out to a young girl who was one of her students. This girl proceed to ride this 25 year old plus special needs mare into the ground and the trainer was aware of it all along. Several boarders told me about how she was being ridden hard daily for hours, being jumped often, and even the girl’s 6 ft 200 lb father was riding her. All of this on a 14.1 hand barely 800 lb old mare! When I returned to boarding there ( I had only been given updates for a while by boarder friends), I was in tears and angry as hell at the sight of the mare when I saw her. She looked worse than ever, back to skin and bones, and was tired looking and withdrawn. When she saw me she perked up with wide eyes, nickered, and came to me like “where the hell have you been!” I interupted the trainer’s lesson with the responsible girl and her parents the next day and left them all stunned with a heated tongue lashing. They couldn’t even defend their actions. The trainer felt so guilty, she helped in getting the owner to sell the mare cheap to my boyfriend who gave me the mare as a gift. I had problems still when I found out the girl was sneaking the mare out to spend time with her. She was caught and reprimanded by other boarders who were keeping an eye on her. I had to curse out the girl and her parents again and brought it to the attention of the trainer who was responsible her students while on the ranch. It stopped after that, and the trainer leased the girl another little mare with bad hocks, who she then ruined after putting her through the same abuse as my old Arab girl.
From there I boarded at a place where I had to witness charro training methods including whipping horses to train to “dance”, horses standing tied with heads high for hours where they were DARED to move, and horses having the crap spurred out of them while ridden in harsh bits for “training sessions”. It goes on from there but it’s so disturbing I’d rather not rehash it. Again in this case, the BO didn’t care because they paid their board on time and didn’t give him any trouble. The barn manager shared the same opinion…. surprise surprise.
I’m now at a place with problem boarders who were all friends, shared the same harsh training methods, had beer drinking parties every Friday and urinated everywhere ( there is a restroom available). It wasn’t safe to be female and around them during the evenings of these parties, so I had to be in and out of there quick when checking in on my horses. Fortunately the barn manager cracked down on these guys and they moved out. Another troublesome boarder with her two out of control mares were always hogging the turn out pasture. Yes it is possible to do in and several acre pasture, when these two mare would chase, bite, and kick most any other horse put out there when they were out. They were literally a tag team. NO ONE would put there horses out with these two, and the girl didn’t care and had them out there six out of seven days a week, all day. Fortunately her personal troubles forced her to give up the mares and leave. Finally I’m at a boarding stable with little drama!
OMG, do I have so much to say!
First, Hi Fugly, I adore your blog! Second, all my experience comes from my teen years 13-16 when I was a barn brat at several stable absorbing every horsey experience I could in the hopes of one day owning my own. After a few years working at barns and taking every lesson I could afford outside things ended up preventing this, and eventually I couldn’t even manage to make it out to the barn anymore, something I very much want to change.
When I was 13 my whole horse experience started when I volunteered at a stable run out of a city park. Volunteers groomed and saddled horses, which were then used for public trail rides (we also fetched the horses, gave the riders instructions etc.) in exchange for a free ride every day we worked. The BM/BO was a wonderful, cheerful but crusty old cowboy who could never turn down a charity case, be it four legged or a teen girl desperate to be around horses. The only ill treatment I ever witnessed there was the horrible state of the trails, which were bad muddy, but were outside of the control of the BM because it was a city park. (And the BO sprayed all the mud off the horses legs every night and made us pick their hooves clean every night and every morning.)
They ended up rescuing an adorable, gentle draft cross and bought a carriage and did carriage rides during other park events (like Shakespeare in the Park). One of the mares who was otherwise completely kid sound hated the carriage. One day when the BO wasn’t there one of the cowboys climbed on her and literally tried to beat her into walking up to it instead of spooking away. Luckily he got fired for it when the BO found out the next day.
I ended up leaving that barn after about a year because it attracted a lot of volunteers and there were so cliques forming and I suffered some pretty bad, and increasingly dangerous (to me and the horses) bullying. I feared for myself and the horses when the main perpetrator pulled a kicker deliberately between the horse I was holding and the horse the person in front of me was holding. The mare lashed out bad, because to her my horse was suddenly too close to her, and I only escaped a hoof to the head because the horse I was holding jumped back, pulling me with him. I was not willing to mess with that anymore, but it was a heart breaking choice because I had nowhere else to go.
About a year and half later I found out about a barn opening at another city park and I called up, asking if they needed any volunteers. As it turned out the BO was the ex-wife of the previous BO I worked for and a few of my favorite horses had even moved to the new park! I worked there for two years (14-16 yrs old), but it was an exhausting experience.
The woman was a horse person, only because she’d been around them so long and run two businesses dealing with them. She hated the trouble and was going to school to become a nurse so she could do something else. but she was contractually stuck at the business, and she liked having the pull over her ex because the barns were both one business. She always kept the horses fed and fixed stall flooding problems (The city build the barn, but she owned the horses and the business. But they didn’t exactly cover all the bases so she had to make changes to the barn and parts of the land. There was a 20 stall barn, a round ring and a an outdoor arena but no turn out areas.) and she took good care of their feet, but there were some other really serious problems.
She owned varying numbers of horses, almost all bought at auction, and again the public could come in and pay their $20 or so and go on a trail ride. My job was a lot more intensive (which I loved) and included feeding according to her instructions, cleaning stalls and tack, grooming and saddling, occasionally taking small groups out, exercising the horses in the winter and grounds management, like raking, picking up trash, cleaning the tack room, etc. She had a few spaces for boarders, and it was $375 a month for full board or you could get a reduced rate if you did your own care, or let her use your horse on the trails (It was a little disturbing how many people let complete strangers ride their horses all day long for $100 a month board.)
When I started working there there were two boarders who paid reduce rates for self care and never came out to take care of their horses. So the BO just fed them and left them in their stalls. There were never mucked, never turned out or anything. It was so horrible, and because of insurance reasons I wasn’t allowed to handle them, not even to muck out the stalls, because the BO didn’t want the boarder angry if their horse hurt me. I understand the legalese, but these horses were standing in their own mess for three months when I started. In eight months I saw the gelding’s owner (a man who bought him for his daughter, because a girl should have a horse, but none of them knew anything about horses, and he was a big tall QH/Thoroughbred cross who acted up a little–high stepping and wanting to job, not bucking or kicking or the like–when they did come out and ride him) three times, and the mare’s owner once. The BO’s daughter ended up looking for a new barrel racer (hers was 23 yrs old and had a thyroid and arthritis problems making him too thin to ride or too stiff to ride in events anymore.) and took an interest in the gelding, so of course the BO stared mucking the stall and asked the owner for permission to “see if he’d be good on the trails”. The owners ended up selling him to someone else, but at least he was out of that situation. The BO actually did buy the mare from her owner as a trail horse and suddenly she got care again.
One weekend we came in to discover one of the horses had cut off part of his eyelid. It was dangling by less than an inch of skin and the BO was so furious that she had to pay a vet to stitch it up. Two days later another horse did the same thing and she refused to have that horse stitched. She let the wound heal on its own and the dangling skin just rot and fall off. She discovered the horses were cutting themselves on the water buckets (which were five gallon pickle buckets commonly filler, but rarely cleaned out. She replaced every bucked with soft rubber ones, clipped onto O-rings so they could be removed and cleaned off and the metal bends where the handle attaches to bucket were plastic covered so the metal edges didn’t cut anymore horses. But I can’t believe she refused treatment to that one horse.
Over winter she had the great idea to save herself some time and order a massive load of hay so she didn’t have to reorder every two weeks. She had no storage area, so she filled the hay loft, then two of the stalls, then a large section of the back of the barn, blocking the back doors. She had 21 horses in a 20 horse barn before that and suddenly lost 2 stalls! So one horse was moved permanently out to the round pen (and she did not keep rugs for her horses because they “weren’t essential equipment for the business”) and two were kept tied in the aisle! One she sold after about two weeks because of lameness (again, no vet. She just let it rest and when it didn’t go away she took the horse to auction) but that pony stayed in the aisle all winter until one of the stalls was clear of hay and the round pen horse could be moved in and the pony was moved out to the round pen.
The worst, though I think was one of the people who owned a horse and let it be used on trail rides, but was romantically interested in the BO so he hung around a lot. That spring we had four cats that had litters (BO couldn’t be bothered to pay $25 each to get them fixed at vet) and the BO complained about it, so the guy poisoned the cats! It was so horrible. The BO yelled at him in front of a bunch of the other barn people. Three cats died and all of them got sick. The guy took his horses (one of which he’d only bought 3 weeks ago) to the auction the next night it ran and left the barn for good.
That summer I got involved with a lady I knew from volunteering at the zoo who was a nurse and worked with a doctor who owned a donkey show farm. She said he had a retired race horse just thrown into the back pasture and she thought I could convince him to sell her to me. She was only 6 and literally had been put in the pasture and left after her last race, so I thought she’d be too much for me, but there would be no harm in checking her out. So I went out there to look at her.
She was rough, physically, but she was gorgeously built, flame-red chestnut and best of all despite no handling (she was in a pasture with a mare used to breed mules and a Shetland stallion used to tease the jennies. Food was literally tossed to them, but no handling of her was done because she was useless to them) she was gentle and happy to get attention. She gave me no problems at all with any ground work, led, picked up her feet, no signs of lameness, even let me practice lead her onto a trailer and even lunged for me (though I had little experience with it because the barns I’d worked at never did it, she knew what to do and did it). I totally fell in love (and I’m sure you all know where this is going) and offered to buy her. The owner refused to name a price, telling me she was useless and I didn’t really want her. She was sick and in bad shape, he said, and pretty much laughed me off.
His idea was completely ridiculous. She was in a pasture with no care, not sickly or injured or anything. So I kept going out to the farm. I worked with her more, again, never a problem and I was so hopeful that I even wormed her (after much instruction for people who knew more than me) and had arranged to borrow a saddle for the other barn to see how she rode.
And that’s when my friend called me to tell me she wasn’t going to take me out to the donkey farm again. She said the owner went out to visit, saw the results of the work I’d done with the mare (she was back up to a healthy weight after I’d wormed her) decided she was looking good and sent her off to a Thoroughbred farm to be bred. My friend was furious with him for doing it, knowing I was working with her to try to buy her, and that she’d done nothing on the track and needed a nice calm loving home, not to pop out babies for the rest of her life.
I should have known better than to spend any of my own money on her, but I don’t regret it, because she needed the help. She was healthier in the end and finally got better care because she was finally worth something to him.
But the combined experiences of losing the mare and the reoccurring neglect issues at the city park barn broke me from wanting to work with other people’s horses. So I said I’d give it a break and get back into it when I could buy my own horse. That’s never happened at this point, and isn’t likely to happen. I would love to work at a barn again though, doing anything with horses. I have no desire to show or compete at anything I’d just love to get to be around horses, maybe ride a bit, and definitely get to do some more learning.