Agree, for horses or staff.
Imo turnout is training. If you’re not able to keep them on the straight and narrow, then you’re teaching them its ok to be naughty.
That’s never good.
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I’m the lifetime boarder, but if I do ever end up with a farm I’ll fly you out to help design and organize it. lol 
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Ditto!
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Me too. Best decision ever.
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Whelp. File this one under “posts which did not age well.”
Just found out that BO gave trainer notice that he’s terminating the lease effective April 1st. Apparently all the drama with staff and other boarders while Trainer’s been on maternity leave has done him in. I can’t blame him, it’s been ridiculous. I’ve missed most of it since by the time I show up to ride, almost everyone is gone for the day, but what I’ve heard hasn’t been pretty.
I got through the initial panic and started making some calls… looks like the Resident Gray Menace and I will land on our feet thanks to a great support network, but damn.
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Endless climb, I’m hurt. 
Says the owner of a horse who really would spook at purple chrysanthemums, only. White, maroon, yellow, unbloomed were all fine. The minute a purple bloom appeared, horse decompensated. She also took issue when a nearby field of wildflowers would change from one major blooming phase to another, over the course of the Spring/summer. Cars, trucks, fire engines, school buses, cranes moving things overhead, kayaks, bridges, rivers, dogs, bicycles, carriages, helicopters, wildfires … all got a mild pricking of the ears. But, the wrong flower…
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OK, so having read all about the color perception of horses and yada yada …
My late previous horse had strong opinions about jump pole colors. Jump poles should be the standard traditional white with properly placed sections of blue, or green, or red. That’s it. Very traditional, very old-fashioned lesson-arena style. Those he had no complaint about and cantered right up & over.
Unfortunately everyone wants to dress up their jump poles and not be boring. My horse expressed strong exceptions to combinations such as dark-orange and yellow, or fuschia and lavender. Color combos with lots of colors were terrible, to his way of thinking. Cantering around the corner to the next line he took a hard look to begin a fuss about the lime-green and blue-aqua pattern. When the set of purple spiral jump poles turned up he nearly lost his mind.
He was not worried about flowers or other jump dress. Hanging flower baskets were fine with him. Coops in conservative colors, brick walls, all that stuff was ok. It was the fancy poles that made his brain go zinging around in his skull. According to horse eyesight experts he shouldn’t have even perceived those colors.
I told him constantly “we are not here to critique the pole decor, our only question is how-high how-wide”. But he was not putting his opinions aside. He could be convinced into jumping all this prettiness, but he was against it, on some sort of principal, I guess. Another one of those horse things I’ll probably never figure out.
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My only dealbreakers are 1) unsafe for humans or horses (including correct feeding program); 2) lack of quality training.
Maybe also a too-long of a drive (currently, it’s 30 min).
I couldn’t afford a barn with some of the amenities others consider dealbreakers and since I have lofty showing goals, good training is essential.
“Hi. I’m calling about the available stall. Oh! Two hundred bucks monthly for 4x daily feeding, no charge for supplements or blanketing, private turnout, Olympic indoor, night checks, heated/AC tack room, infrared wash stalls, trail access, one owner is a farrier and the other a vet and they both live on site? Sure, I could do that. But first, could you describe the colors of your jumps?”
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Actually it was my horse who needed to change, not the jumps. But he never did. 
(Wherever that board barn is with $200/month for all that, I will move multi-state to board there. 
)
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I had a mare who would stop hard…but usually only at yellow jumps.
My current horse lost his mind about an electrical box painted bright like green. No idea. He walked by all the rest of the electrical boxes at that facility that were the typical gray color.
But that green was not ok. At all.
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My WB schoolmaster could not care less about jump color or style. He’d jump anything from anywhere. Imagine my surprise when we cantered up to a totally normal crossrail warming up in the show ring and he sat down, spun, and deposited me in the footing. We’d jumped it the other way previously with no issue.
Why? Someone in their infinite wisdom at this local schooling show had decided to run a bright orange extension cord for the PA system directly along the ground line for this crossrail. Jumping it the other way, said horse-eating extension cord was on the landing side, so he never saw it.
To this day I can’t figure out what offended him so greatly about that. 
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I boarded at several barns before I got my own place. Not high end training barns, but middle of the road barns. All included feed, hay and turnout. All had arenas as well as limited trails. Only one barn provided free access to hay. The others provided “reasonable” hay, but not unlimited. Quality of hay varied, though all were in the same geographic area. Brand of feed varied, but was comparable. Who provided care ranged from owner/manager to teenage children of same. All of the barns had cliques. All had a great deal of drama. Each barn owner/manager proved on more than one occasion that they were not trustworthy. Different issues for each, differing levels of importance.
A lot of times I go with my gut. What is the general vibe? Is it a place I’d enjoy spending time chitchatting with other boarders or come ride my horse and leave? I’m a pretty social person and my barn time is for relaxing and being in my happy place. If I don’t enjoy being there and go and leave, I’m more likely to move on. Of course, quality of care is paramount but sometimes, even the most beautiful barns with stellar care come up short in other areas.
Unruly kids running up and down the aisles, barking dogs who won’t shut up, very busy lesson programs that take up a premium of arena time, I prefer a quieter, smaller environment personally.
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Animals can react suddenly and strongly anything snake-y looking.
We humans (some of us) are not the only ones who react that way to snakes. And non-snake things that make us think “SNAKE !!!”.
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That makes sense. In 5 years with him, I could count on one hand the number of times he stopped at a jump. All of them were pilot error except this one. I was literally and figuratively floored by his reaction.
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He saved both of you from a highly-poisonous constrictor of some kind. Just ask him, no doubt he remembers this vividly.
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Thank goodness he did stop. Imagine if he caught his toe and got hung up in it. What goober strings an extension cord across a schooling ring?
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right? like I’m usually game to be flexible with herds and turnout, but just check with me first, because the only time I’ll say no is the day before a boyd martin clinic.
Well in our area most boarding barns are owned by the gentle woman farmer type. Even after many years of owning the boarding barn the attitude is: if you do not like something: you need to leave. They do well with the beginner horse owner as they can flash whatever they know and they all kiss the ground these woman walk on.
Issues are many, but as they are all the same in this area and I do have a difficult to move horse, one takes a real low profile, comment on nothing and does the work ones self. right now we have pretty good staff, therefore we count our blessings.
It does make for pretty strange situations, where if you want a shelter in your horse’s paddock you need to pay for having one built. I would not, but others have and have since left. Pretty sweet deal for the BO.
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