Ill agree with that.
But I’m not referring to the Executive Offices.
Does the CEO of an airline push the drink trolley down the aisle?
Those guys don’t feed or muck stalls either.
1 Like
As I posted above the GM of the facility who was well liked quit abruptly a few weeks ago. The way LAEC works, you pay for basic board (water, cubes twice a day, stall cleaned) and the trainers or other businesses offer various other services like lunch hay, turnout etc. I am pretty sure they don’t even have access to the facilities feed or materials. You aren’t allowed just start running equipment or taking hay from the main storage. It’s a HUGE facility and they have not communicated at all with boarders.
6 Likes
A terrible situation. I don’t condone knowingly hiring undocumented labor. Probably better to fire them rather than have a violent raid on the grounds. Really absurd that there’s no legal path for these hardworking, kind, very skilled people who have been the backbone of California horsekeeping (and elsewhere).
IME even the non latino grooms I’ve encountered are typically document-challenged. (lol clinicians too.)
I know that boarders will pitch in but as noted facilities of this size don’t generally let boarders access the hay and bedding supplies. And boarders will not do it as well or as reliably as the workers they have lost.
In the grand scheme of things this is not even in my top 100 of ICE-related tragedies in the last month, but just another indication of how our quality of life is diminishing across the board for no good reason.
24 Likes
I understand where she’s coming from. There’s hundreds of horses there, and this throws everything into disarray. It’s not just two or three stalls at one’s own facility.
4 Likes
Understood.
But can there really be Not.One.Single.Person with access to feed?
If the store of bedding is inaccesible: buy bagged shavings.
As to boarders being inept feeders, is there also no horseowner with a clue?
Feeding in an emergency situation shouldn’t be Rocket Science.
Horse may not get the usual custom mix of grain/supplements, but forage/pellets & water should suffice until things get organized.
If special meds are needed, if it was my horse, I’d make it my business to be there*. Take off work, coordinate through trainer, whatever it took.
Can trainers with clients based there borrow help from other facilities?
- when I boarded 1h+ away from home & worked full-time, I had a horse recovering from a knee surgery requiring a bandage change twice a day.
Another time ( same facility, different horse) one needed daily handwalking.
For both I was able to enlist fellow boarders to cover for the 2 or 3 days I was unable to get to the barn.
Otherwise I made the drive, after work.
@Quincy Hundreds aren’t owned by 1 person.
Owners need to step up.
7 Likes
They. Didn’t. Tell. The. Owners.
Once people found out they organized and took care of it. But there are probably 1000 stalls there with private horses, polo ponies, stallions, temp stabled horses and trainer horses interspersed throughout the barns. The place is huge, no-one knows it all except the staff. People were out of town, some horses have entirely absentee owners. The way this was done was a total fail.
29 Likes
My daughter also told me that, LA being what it is, some owners drive an hour or more from home to get to LAEC. So the idea that everyone will be able to do self-care for any length of time is crazy.
14 Likes
To add to this, I heard (friend of horse owner) that a horse’s waterer broke and it was without water and standing in a flooded stall much of the day bc of some combo of no one noticing, no one being able to fix it, etc. Horse is not in training.
8 Likes
Look, it just sucks, right? The horse owners aren’t to blame. Absolutely everyone there will step up as best they can. They have before and they always do.
BUT. Yes, the reason most of these large facilities lock up feed and shavings is because owners never think enough is used, and help themselves, and then the barn is short at the end of the month. That is what is meant by “inept” - they use too much raw materials for the taste of management, and at this scale that can be a big problem.
Not every horse is in training, but there are fb groups and other ways that people are in contact with each other.
A situation like this, where no one is in charge, makes it hard to know if every horse is covered. There are hundreds of horses and it’s easy for one to slip through the cracks.
Owners had every reason to believe their horses would be fed and watered and cleaned, as they have been for years, as they pay to make happen. Tearing people down doesn’t help.
19 Likes
To add to the misery, the Center is in the middle of renovating and has relocated boarders feed storage areas. To clarify, LAEC provides alfalfa cubes included in board. Otherwise trainers and boarders buy their own or pay extra for hay. The guys who feed know which horse gets what, but it would be difficult for anyone else to figure out who gets what.
A solution going forward would be for trainers to hire the workers, and for all boarders to be associated with a trainer (whether they lesson with them or not) but that all takes time.
What a damn shame.
Horse care is backbreaking work. We don’t pay enough for what these people do for our horses. Then to be treated like this.
Hey, Stephen Miller, if all these people have jobs, it’s because they are needed. Give them a way to stay here.
33 Likes
Absentee owners are a real thing. I was talking with someone who said they owned a horse. She didn’t even know what they were feeding it at the barn. She pays the barn to do all that and would be clueless if she had to care for the horse herself.
Some of these owners will have the horse saddled and waiting when they arrive at the barn so they can ride. When they are done riding they hand the horse off to a groom to put away.
One of the barns I worked at had a boarder and she only came one weekend in 6 months. The rest of the time her horse was locked in a stall unless I put him in the roundpen and lunged him. What is the point of owning a horse you never see and rarely ride? And then keeping him locked in a stall his entire life? I really felt sorry for that horse.
If the owners are not in the country or on vacation, they may not hear about this in a timely manner to hire someone to cover for them.
5 Likes
Does this LA Equestrian Center not have turn out? I looked at the website and it’s a massive facility with hundreds of boarders??
I heard from a friend who boarded there for awhile that there are turnout corrals and sun pens. But turnout is limited to one hour at a time, and it’s solo. There are also hot walkers, and some trainers include daily hand walking as part of their boarding services.
There are individual “sun paddocks” which are small sandy lots where horses can go out for like an hour at a time. They can roll and move about at liberty for a bit. It requires someone to swap the horses in and out so it’s labor intensive and something you pay extra for.
LAEC is nicer than some options since it has access to the Griffith Park trail system.
This is pretty typical for horsekeeping in Southern California.
12 Likes
Oh. Well that’s kinda depressing
4 Likes
And this has all been coming and in the news for how long? And everyone had how long to get their or their workers s together and get their paperwork in order?
Yeah.
What is that about poor planning on one part not being an emergency on the other part?
4 Likes
George Steinbrenner is dead
It is unconscionable to hire workers without ensuring their paperwork is in process/in order. This should not have been a surprise.
If is also unconscionable to not have a back up plan for when the inevitable happens.
And everyone who hired these illegal
Workers should be arrested as well.
6 Likes
44 Likes
Oh, yes, I’m sure they listed those minimum wage stall cleaner jobs on Indeed and Monster on January 20, but turned down the hundreds of US-born applicants.
46 Likes
