It’s not warranted, sorry.
I responded to your post. Please don’t act surprised. Look at the post of yours I’m responding to.
Don’t you live in the same community? Why not blanket your own horse for the short amount of time the BOs were away during a difficult time for them?
Then, after the BOs come home and settle in, discuss changing the blanketing situation.
I believe you said the hot wire was installed b/c of something your horse did, so I’m guessing they won’t remove it. But you can discuss feeding in a different area and blanketing details.
But, only after you [see bolded portion of RhythmNCruise’s post. Far from nonsense, they had excellent points including that you should have prioritized their difficulty over your horse’s blanketing situation. You could have 100% avoided any potential harm to their daughter by blanketing yourself for the very short period of time.
These are your friends, so you say. Be generous and kind to them in their time of difficulty. Be flexible in your approach to issues. Be collaborative. Don’t be defensive and combative as you are here. No one will respond to that and no one needs that in their lives. It seems they’ve enough to contend with without this drama. Keep it simple and low key.
You keep mocking people saying, oh, I’m glad you don’t care if the daughter is hurt. Stop that. You know that’s bull. And your concern for the daughter does not negate the fact that you handled this poorly.
Stop. Think. Listen. Learn. Do better next time.
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You have no real idea about what you’re posting and are posting falsehoods, but you’ll post it anyway.
Such is COTH. Only certain COTHers call people defending people against BS posts "bull. I call your post “bull” because you clearly don’t understand the situation and post falsehoods.
The joys of the COTH pile-on. None of you do your homework.
Ummm, no, the hot wire was not installed because of “something my horse did”. 
What a bizarre statement that you feel comfy posting.
Please make sure you go above and beyond to appreciate your current BO - gauging by your replies in this thread, I sure as heck would not want to deal with you.
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I surely wouldn’t board with you.
What a idiotic post about multiple horses. COTH peeps at their “finest”. What exactly is your point bringing up random posts I made? WTF?
So, this was not true? Can you explain how what I wrote was ‘a bizarre statement that [I] feel comfy posting’ since you posted it first?
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Well, you already responded to this post of mine once but you’re back again. Did I strike a nerve?
It seems like everyone but you understood why I posted those links. No [poop] they’re about other horses.
The horses are not the point. There’s one thing common to all these threads. YOU.
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You should probably dial it down. .
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This post sums up how I feel (and is a great response) 1000%
Plus, this incident happened on a Christmas weekend? Honestly, even at a fancy pants show barn, you’re not necessarily going to get people with PhDs in equine science and courses in Natural Horsemanship mucking out and doing blanket changes. I mean, sometimes barns find unicorn employees–kids who are crazy about horses and who are crazy-responsible and will go above and beyond–but this isn’t something you can expect. What you can expect is the work gets done, and when it doesn’t (as long as the behavior isn’t super-risky) to be polite about bringing it up.
A good barn–backyard or show–will have good rules put into place and make employees aware of how to do things safely. This barn does not and didn’t give the girl fair warning. But even for a non-family member, what is usually a minimum wage job, done in all weathers (even on holidays) is often going to mean you’re getting whoever the barn can find to do the work, period. Some barns don’t even muck out on Christmas (not justifying that, just saying that some don’t) much less do blanket changes. Like I mentioned and others have said, unless your horse really runs hot/cold, you could take over most of the blanketing yourself, if you’re there a lot.
But you have to be gracious, polite, and professional when you communicate. Also echoing other posters, this is a business relationship, and you need to treat it as such, which means focusing on actionable, reasonable changes you want for the future (removing the hot wire, doing your own blankets, haltering your horses) rather than focusing on what you can’t (only “professionals” doing the blanket changes) and taking things personally.
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Which is exactly why asked these questions:
- What do you think the daughter did to cause your horse to touch the hot wire?
- Did she get the horse blanketed?
- How close is the hot wire to where the horse is fed and blanketed?
- Has the horse’s feed bucket recently been relocated?
And for the record, I don’t think it’s anyone’s “fault.” I think it was an accident. You seem to blame the daughter. I’m trying to understand why by asking the questions above.
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I haven’t posted in quite awhile, yet she’s so upset someone saw a common theme with all her posts that she brought it up AGAIN, saying how stupid I was.
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@J-Lu, you have evidenced no interest in other’s perspectives on the event that happened. @RhythmNCruise asked a series of reasonable questions and your response was dismissive and unkind.
I don’t know why you started this thread, as there’s no evidence you wanted to bounce this off anyone at all. You could have saved yourself a lot of grief (posting at midnight last night?) if you’d just journaled the event in your private diary.
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I am going to stop replying to this thread, but I have one parting thought.
I just don’t understand how the OP’s horse can be deemed one of the easiest on the farm to blanket, but also require a “qualified” and experienced handler to be blanketed. Those two things don’t go together to me.
I blanketed my first horse about 36 years ago. I was 14 and I don’t remember, even the very first time, it being all that difficult. Once you figure out which part of the blanket goes which way on the horse, it’s just not that hard. I have blanketed a LOT of horses over the past 36 years. I’ve blanketed my own horses, other people’s horses, entire barns full of horses. I’ve blanketed geldings, mares, and stallions. I’ve layered blankets, put on blankets and hoods, body slinkies, I mean there is no type of blanket I haven’t put on and no type of horse I haven’t blanketed. Quiet horses, reactive horses, tall horses, short horses…you get the idea. Sometimes the horses are haltered and “ground tied” (sort of). Sometimes they’re in their stalls. Sometimes they’re in the pasture. Sometimes they’re in the cross-ties, straight tied, etc. Sometimes they’re loose in a huge field with other horses. I’ve blanketed in every scenario.
All of that to say, even with all of my blanketing qualifications and experience, what happened with the OP’s horse and the young woman could happen to me. Yesterday, I went to heave my horse’s blanket up onto him (loose in the pasture with another horse eating hay) and a huge gust of wind caught it and blew it back on me. I kind of threw myself aginst my horse to keep the blanket there, and I had it kind of halfway over him, somewhat twisted around the wrong way, cold wind blowing me in the face, and he moseyed off toward another pile of hay with me shuffling along beside him, trying to both keep the blanket in contact with his (walking) body and get it positioned correctly so that I could buckle and snap accordingly. At no point were either of us in danger as this was hardly the first time that blanketing has been…less than graceful. He IS an easy horse to blanket, and as long as you have the physical ability to put a blanket on his back and can do up buckles and snaps once it’s in position, you’re “qualified” to blanket him. He doesn’t care how it gets done. He just ignores me while I struggle and shift and pull and tug and throw and yank it all over his body.
Not all horses are this tolerant. Heck, my own horse might not be that tolerant if something else has his skirts blown up for whatever reason. You read the situation and adjust accordingly (put a halter and lead on the horse if it’s obviously a bit “up” at blanketing time).
Knowing what I do about the situation with the OP’s horse and her previous posts regarding him, I would not blanket him loose near hot wire. (I wouldn’t blanket ANY horse near hot wire). I’d halter him and keep him away from the hot wire until his blanket was on and then release him. That doesn’t mean he’s a fault for what happened. He’s a horse. It doesn’t mean the daughter is at fault for what happened. She is relatively inexperienced and was filling in during a holiday and difficult time for the family. It’s just one of those things. Several factors contributed, no one needs to be blamed, and thankfully everything is okay.
I hope everyone is having a nice weekend and if you have tomorrow off (I do!) I hope you have a great day.
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I love this entire post! Especially the description of blanketing your horse, it brought a smile to my face because I can empathize!
(I board retirees, average age is about 28, a few are 30+. I blanket in the field, without halters, and while it almost always goes smoothly, I have been known put a blanket on just as @RhythmNCruise cruise described 
)
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Picturing your Blanket Pas de Deux!
Thought bubble over your horses head: "Room Service is needing a refresher course… 
My Personal Best in over 40yrs of blanketing was literally tossing a blanket over my TB’s back as he stood in the aisle of a boarding barn.
Buckle hit the fluorescent fixture above & shattered a bulb 
TG the POP! didn’t spook him, the sudden lack of light either & blanket had covered his back & kept the broken glass off him 
I’m still guilty of the occasional blanket toss, but try to avoid the fluorescents in my own barn 
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Oh lord! LOL! I can imagine doing something like that too though. I don’t know why I go at blanketing with such wild abandon, LOL.
If I had any sense, I’d do up the velcro and buckles at the front and just put the blanket over his head. That’s always the easiest way to get it on quickly, especially when it’s windy. Or I should at least figure out which direction the wind is blowing and let it help me (though I’ve tossed the blanket completely over him and missed the entire horse with the wind’s help before).
Once we had a freaky cold snap in late spring after the horses were shed out and it was in the 40’s and raining (when usually in the 70’s-80’s) My guy was shivering, so I went out with his sheet to pop it on him. He was a little “up” because of the cold and rain, and when I came walking toward him with the sheet, he looked at me like I was a murderous fiend and ran off (chasing his pasture mate away too). They ran and ran and I had to go get his halter, catch his goofy butt, and hold him still while putting on his sheet with one hand. I finally got him dressed and released him to go back to winging around the field like a nut.
Horses. The only thing predictable about them is that they’re unpredictable.
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