So… you know… horses…
I remember a cautionary tale - person was doing as you described, back to front. Horse took off and a belly strap buckle got caught in his sheath. A freak thing. He proceeded to panic. The horse was pretty badly injured because he also ran into stuff. For that reason, the person’s advice was always front to back. The back to front sounds better to me, though, than front to back when outside with no halter.
I did this too… was horrifying to watch.
Good call… I had boarders at one point a few years ago. Once they left I have not replaced them. I get asked occasionally as well and I just can’t bring myself to do it again
I’ve read this whole thread and I’m still confused!
The OP and J-Lu have exactly the same experience and barn set-up? Down to the details of hot wire by the food, and a BO who uses her inexperienced daughter to blanket, causing the horse to endanger itself and the person blanketing by hitting the wire?
That’s a really specific coincidence if true.
The OP here is J-Lu.
Do you mean it caught in the sheath while the surcingle was loose. Horses! they really do try to kill themselves.
Well, I’m embarrassed. I would have sworn on a stack of bibles that the OP had an orange avatar.
NM! 
That’s the way I read it… not 100% sure, but really- horses!
A few years ago, I knew of a woman who was changing blankets in the field, where her horse was the submissive, lowest in the herd, and the big dominant guy came up, so of course he wants to run away. While doing so, he barrel kicked and got her by accident, right in the chest. She died. Never blanket in the field with other horses, and always halter and lead rope after that! Horrible lesson to learn.
Same horse, another time, with the help of the others, managed to rip his blanket enough that it was almost off, but hanging and caught on his tail. It took about thirty minutes for the herd to calm down enough that we could untangle that mess. Being chased by a blanket around the paddock was clearly very scary. He would finally stop, someone else would start running, he would start, the blanket still attached, and scare himself silly again. It was extremely funny to watch on one hand, but my heart was in my mouth and you bet I was praying no one got hurt!
Horses!!
I was thinking about this thread last night as I was blanketing the two I take care of (mine and his girlfriend). I always blanket them loose in their pasture or stalls (which they have free access to). The arctic blast was coming in yesterday evening (nothing like some of you have, but cold for here) and it was cold with the wind really whipping. I was feeding in the stalls, which I mainly do because the hay blows into the next pasture if I don’t. My guy is dominant, so he kind of moves around with the confidence that nothing is going to bother him. His girlfriend is wary of him even though they will stand together peacefully in the same stall munching hay. By the time I was blanketing, they were done with their “main course” and starting in on the hay. Plenty of hay in each stall, but my doofus is determined to cram himself in with his lady for nightly hay munching. I was in the middle of blanketing her when he comes sauntering in. She retreats to the back of the stall and bless her, she stands like a statue while I finish up her buckles. I then grab him by the noggin and take him to the other stall and get him almost completely blanketed before he strolls back out with me fumbling and shuffling along again. I finally shout “Whoa, damint!” and he does. I have to have Yosemite Sam energy with him sometimes. (“When I say whoa…I mean WHOA!”) I finish his buckles and he goes and crams himself back in with his mare (much to her chagrin, I’m sure).
I actually thought I was going to have to halter, and it did make me think that if the situation presents itself again like that, I probably will. I might actually close them in their stalls just until blankets are securely in place. Then they can do whatever the heck they want.
It’s easy to say horses are always good when blanketed. So far, mine (and my friend’s mare) have been. I’ve never questioned their ability to be blanketed safely while loose. Heck, I tie my gelding up and groom and tack with the mare loose in the field with us. I split a pad of hay between them while I groom and tack up, which keeps her away a bit. But when we return, she meets us at the gate and follows us back to where I tie up. She stands there with her nose pretty much on him and he ignores her. Sometimes I have to move her just to be able to get to the saddle, etc. She’s like a giant dog. I’d never do that with just any horse, and sometimes I think about how crazy it is. But because he’s boss hoss and she’s so respectful of him, and he’s so chill about it all, it just doesn’t bother me. Been like that for a year now.
Still…it’ll just take the right combination of factors to make what I think of as safe and normal to suddenly become dangerous. It doesn’t matter how many times it’s gone right. Horses “go wrong” all too often.
I tried this when we were still building our horse facilities, and it did not work well. I was harnessing a pony gelding, and my mare was the dominant horse. She’d come try to boss him around while I was harnessing. We quickly learned that we needed hitching posts outside the corral and pastures.
I did groom, pick out feet, and blanket in the pasture without halters. They all tended to come to me for blanketing because they wanted those suckers on. For some reason, the mare kept her distance while I was working on the two geldings, and the boys would never bother Her Majesty, the Queen of all she surveyed.
Rebecca
I change lots of horse clothing in the fields. I tend to try to do things up from front to back, and undo from back to front. I always use a halter and lead. That said – the simplest solution to the OP’s situation (to me) just seems to be to unplug the fence during the period that horse is dealing with humans – and plug it back in when humans leave. 
Yeah, in the reverse, if it were the mare being messed with and my gelding loose, it wouldn’t work. He’s too bossy and thinks it should all be about him. He gets shut up in a stall if maresy needs extensive solo attention.
I’m one who has never blanketed a horse that wasn’t in a stall or tied with a halter on. Too much can go wrong.
If a pasture horse needed blanketing they were brought out from the herd and tied for blanketing. No way would I try to blanket with loose horses around.
Hot wire near a feed tub is asking for trouble IMHO.
I do the same. I asked, that’s not an option.
Well with every boarding situation you have to weigh the pros and cons. Most people are not wealthy enough to board at places that have only pros….and if so they might still choose to buy their own property and pay someone to manage it exactly the way they want.
Safe, adequate feed and turnout are my top 3. If feed and turnout are awesome, a string of hotwire might not be so worrying as to make me move.
I just had to quote this… because I can just see Yosemite Sam jumping up and down and yelling…
I’m a current barn owner and previously boarded for 25+ years in both private and high-quality training barns throughout NC and the midwest. I will provide some feedback that might be helpful. But, first a few pieces of information that should you feel comfortable sharing, might be helpful.
1 > What are you paying for board?
2 > Does your horse chew wood? I’ve never seen anyone run hot wire into a run-in unless the horses chew wood or they have fractious horses sharing a fence line.
3 > You said your horse is good for blanketing if he’s eating. But he eats near the hot-wire. Is he difficult to catch or blanket when not eating?
10 years is a very long time to board at a facility and it sounds like a good situation that has worked out for everyone. If you haven’t looked for other boarding options in approx. that same period of time (10 years), you may not be as aware of labor impacts to the industry. There’s absolutely no way you can fully understand the labor shortages and lack of qualified help until you move around to a few barns and see it in action. It is very, very difficult (if not impossible) to find knowledgeable, reliable help and if your horse is used to professional handling or needs it for whatever reason, you are unlikely to find that outside of a small private barn where the owner is a horse person who does all the work or in a full-training situation with board costs alone in excess of $1,000/month and a training requirement on top. I’m in NC if that helps for price comparison.
I know you’re likely reading this and thinking, yes of course I know this. But trust me, unless you’ve been IN the market in the last 24 months, you just can’t fully experience it. It’s like repairs or remodeling to homes. It’s exorbitant and the quality of work has dropped tremendously.
Given all of the above, and w/o knowing the answers to the questions I pose above, my impression would be that your timing was poor and your feedback wasn’t appreciated. It’s wet, it’s rainy, it’s cold and they’re going through their own personal challenges. I would apologize for your timing and tone (i.e. making an assumption that their daughter was at fault without being there personally) which may read as patronizing. If I had concern about the daughter and when she told me about the incident in question, I would have demonstrated to her how to blanket my horse if there was a concern. Or I’d take the blanket off my horse and personally blanket during very cold periods unless he’s clipped and I had no other choice.
I would also repeat (although as a boarder I didn’t truly understand this until I had my own facility and cared for my own and other horses 24/7/365), boarding horses is a thankless business. You may be the nicest, easiest-going boarder in the entire world with the nicest horse to boot, and it’s still just a business that will grind you into the ground. I have worked professionally in the industry caring for barns with upwards of 30+ horses on site during periods of my life and it’s still not as much of a grind as being a small boarding barn owner. The texts, emails, calls will drive you batty. It’s like taking orders from a well-meaning but clueless boss who isn’t on-site enough to know what’s actually occurring but sends orders down to make your life needlessly more difficult. This is not a personal dig at you - we’re all guilty of it - it’s just the dynamic since as boarders, we see our horses a FRACTION of the time our barn owners do. In my area of NC, I know several barn owners leaving stalls empty as opposed to filling them with boarders who would have been considered ‘normal but a little annoying’ five years ago. Just not worth it. I really think the 24/7 access (email/text/etc) has been the straw that broke the camel’s back.
The best thing you can do if you want to stay is apologize and let as much as you possibly can, go. Given the nature of boarding and business today, my view would be that asking for someone knowledgeable to blanket your horses 365 days a year or when temps are appropriate is no longer (sadly!) a reasonable ask unless you’re paying in excess of $1,000 for board.
I have a friend who has a small boarding facility. When asked she never, ever announces or advertises that she has stalls available. She’ll say she might have an opening coming up, and then meets the potential boarder and learns how potential boarder was referred to her barn, etc. Weeds out the lunatics and the desperate.
Same. I went through a rough patch in my life and asked the only boarding barn I trust within a 30 miles about boarding. $800 a month, and I’m in a cheap area, relatively speaking. Close to the triangle in NC, I would fully expect to pay 1k a month.
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