Exactly.
I hope all the posters who think this is unreasonable or that the OP is overreacting don’t move to my neighborhood, because you’ll get land closed to horses that I’ve been working diligently to keep open the entire time I’ve lived here.
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I have a coworker that is also a bike rider that frequents our metroparks often. She has been very vocal about her dislike of dodging or having to ride through 
piles on the trail. I’ve told her to find trails that aren’t shared by horses then 
, because we have loads of bridle trails around and some do allow bikes. There are plenty of non bridle bike trails to ride.
With that said. One of the boarding barns I was at was on a road with other houses that we would ride along. Just about all of the boarders would make an effort to remove if their horse dropped it on a neighbors driveway, myself included.
Most barns I’ve been at have a freak out fest if you don’t pick your horses up out of the arena or driveway. Our very residential neighbors complain to the HOA of someone lets their dog touch a yard that doesn’t belong to them even just to pee.
Coexisting is good.
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I would have come back and yeeted it into the woods. I also hop off and kick poop off the trail. I like the idea of a little sign, a muck bucket, and a manure fork at the end of your driveway.
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There’s a wrinkle I can sympathize with 
My drylot is graveled & picking fresh manure from there is a lot harder than when it’s sat a while & dried.
I’ll usually just kick a fresh pile to scatter it, but I can see that solution won’t work for your driveway.
Sounds like talking to the barn owner & any riders you can is your only recourse.
@George_T_Mule My manure pile & the stuff I spread on my garden composts so well it sometimes smokes when I turn it & steams in Winter. The bottommost layer is ash.
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Yea it’s really kinda surprising, I’m definitely seeing 2 very different sides of horse riders. I would think a better looking place would be a plus for all the neighbors. Especially where I’m fixing up the oldest house on the street when every other place is much newer. The yard was overgrown badly and it looked like hell before I started in on it, it has been a lot of work too. I just want to keep it looking decent without horse poop allover my hard and costly work.
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When you talk to the barn manager, make allowances that the home has been empty for a couple years, and riders might not have thought about it, but now that you are there and just refinished your driveway, could they notify the boarders that they have a responsibility to clean up poop on private property.
Also,could it be that the direction equestrians are riding is not the same direction as when they leave the barn a couple hours later to go home? In which case I can see that it completely escapes their mind after untacking and caring for their horse. That retraining will take some patience.
And although I wouldn’t want a muck bucket, fork and mounting block at the end of my driveway, it might be enough of a reminder/deterrent that unwanted deposits will start to disappear, and the muck bucket, fork and mounting block can be removed.
I have to agree that moving into horse country comes with some acceptance that horses are going to be around. Not sure how to get around that.
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I mean I guess a bucket but I really don’t want to go there, I think they should have to deal with it. I don’t really want to go mess with horse poop not owning a horse.
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I agree that the riders should deal with the poop on your driveway. I suggested a bucket and fork as a hint and a convenience to the riders. My friend and I have trained our horses to point their bums into the woods and off the path when they poop, but sometimes they miss. When they do, we hop off and kick the poo into the woods because we don’t want horses to get kicked out of the park.
I think it’s really rude to leave a big steaming pile in someone’s driveway.
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They tend to favor my side of the street because there is more of a shoulder the other side is a pretty good drop off with a guard rail running along for a ways that is right on the edge of the hot top, Someone had said that the riders favored the shoulder because the hot top is not great to ride down. Not a super lot of traffic as the road has no outlet and mabey only 12 or so houses after my place.
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This is a VERY valid point and a great way to remind people how important it is to be a good neighbor.
Eons ago (Heck, I am old now), I walked out of the house after a neighbor was once again letting her large dog leave a pile in the front yard and said basically that to her - If I wanted to clean up dog poop from my yard, I would get a dog. Please clean up after your dog.
I think it is very fair that you do not want to clean up manure.
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I agree, dumping the muck tub at the end of your driveway isn’t a chore you should be doing.
What if you just left a manure shovel or fork at the end of the driveway but not a muck tub? Is there a place that the manure can be thrown easily where it’s not as visible and a nuisance? A ditch, a patch of woods, etc.?
For the record, I am really shocked by some of the attitudes expressed by people in this thread. I implore you, if open space to ride is important you, please re-think some of the things expressed in this thread. Non horse people and non agricultural people moving to formerly rural areas is not going to stop because we think it should. Telling people to go back to the city if they don’t want to deal with manure, or that “it’s just fertilizer” is not going to keep land open to ride on. Starting a adversarial relationship with a new neighbor is never going to end well for the horse owners.
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Another vote for the OP. The OP should not have to clean a large pile of poop from the middle of their driveway. It doesn’t matter if it’s hard to get down from your horse. It doesn’t matter if we think a pile of manure, however quick-to-dry-and-disintegrate, is not a big deal. The courteous, neighborly, and “share the road” thing to do if a horse poops in a driveway or on a manicured lawn is to either be able to deal with getting on and off our horses, or come back in a few hours and clean up. And if we forget, or if the property owner beats us to it, we can go back the next time with a bottle of wine or a box of candy or whatever and apologize.
This focus on it being difficult to get on and off our horses surprises me (and I’m old and fat). We can do it, even if it’s difficult. What if we fall off? What if we need to get off and pee? What if we dropped something? Chances are there will be a rock or a wall or a log or a ditch within a few yards that you can use to get back on your horse, people. Or, we can get one of those portable mounting stools designed for just this purpose. The OP is supposed to put out a mounting block, at their own expense, for someone to steal? I think not.
OP, welcome to your family’s property. Good for you for fixing it up and keeping in the family as makes sense to you over time. The manure shouldn’t be too much of a problem because horses don’t always poop in the same spot so I think you just got a “winner” that day, but, if it does continue and it does bother you, just ask the barn manager (known as BM, interesting in this context) to loan you a muck fork (the thing we use to scoop and fling poop) and a mounting block. Ask the BM to ask the boarders, via email and a posted sign on the barn’s property near where riders head out, to clean up poop and move it completely off your property if horses poop in your driveway. Or ask the BM to supply you with a muck bucket for riders to put their horses’ poop in, in which case the barn staff should come exchange it for an empty one, every few days.
And finally, OP, thank you for preserving your property and not selling it to some developer who will put 30 McMansions on the property.
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I am one of those people who struggles if they have to get off and there is not a good solid log or rock or ditch near by. And I have a horse that does not have a good sense of humor about me trying to pull my fat backside up onto them with out a proper mounting tool.
But then, I typically do not ride alone so I am in luck because my friends can get the things off the ground if I drop something.
I will add that for a pile in a driveway, unless there are tools there, getting off at the time it happens is not going to help much.
When it has happened to me, as I said above, I scurry home, put my horse away and come back and clean it up. I am not sure if my neighbors think I am weird for pushing a wheel barrow down the road or not.
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OP has a life. Horse poop smells. Your rudeness is unkind.
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I am with those who believe the OP should not have to clean up other people’s horses’ manure, and it’s nervy of the riders to think she should. They should get used to coming back and removing their horses’ waste from the OP’s property.
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Fresh manure will “burn” plants. It has to be composted and dug in to beds. My neighbour begs for my “black gold”. Surely just asking riders to use the shoulder (easement) on the opposite side of the road would solve your problem. (What is a hot top ?)
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Wow! We need a separate thread for horses whose poop doesn’t stink. I want what Luseride has!
For all the horses I have known, their fresh poop does have a strong smell, love it or hate it. I do agree that it decomposes quickly --and if not removed will make a swampy mess the next time it rains.
It appears to me that the OP does have a perfectly full life, just one that doesn’t include wanting horse poop in their driveway.
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Janitors broom with nylon brushes, add an extension to make it extra long. Plastic long canister set on its side. You’ll need a place where the broom can rest in an upright position.
Add a sign,
“How trail broke/handy is YOUR horse? Can he pull this behind (1 pt ) AND collect the manure (3 pts) 10 Extra points for scoring it into the container. See barn xyz for the prize”.
Then you speak to barn about providing a bag of carrots for the winners. In this scenario, riders could be motivated to pick up anyone’s manure.
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Of course I would ask permission to grab a manure fork so I could clean up my horse’s manure (if I were boarding and didn’t own the equipment). But sometimes it can be hard to find someone to ask…barns are busy places…owners/managers may not be available at the time…of course I could just grab the tool without permission…then would have to go all the way back to the barn to return the fork.
And so many horse people are so crunched for time (as most people are) that I could see why maybe folks wouldn’t (or couldn’t) take the time. But if you had a manure fork at the end of your driveway it would make it a lot easier…
Not sure how many solutions there are going to be for you.
If the riders do not have enough time after their ride to go pick up, then they need to cut their rider shorter so they have time.
The OP should not have to come up with a creative way to fix this. The barn owner should come up with a way for their boarders to not cause the whole barn to ruin their riding privileges on private land.
I say if the barn owner acts like the riders the OP should install a fence along the road edge of their property that make the riders ride on the other side of the road, where they don’t want to ride.
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