Michael Leone is currently working out of Southland Farm 2581 Kanan Rd Agoura - as the BARN MANAGER!!! Unbelieveable someone would bring him in at all, yet “promote” him to the BM??
All I can say is user beware!!!
Here’s the kicker—
The barn owners were warned about him and took him in anyway. Then he ran off one of the other trainers who had been there for a long time.
He is a very.bad.man. on many levels.
I really cannot understand the sheer nastiness by some of you horse riders and enthusiasts. Micheal Leon has been at Southland Farms now for just shy of 2 years. He is not “barn manager” - and never has been - but runs his own barn within the Southlands complex. All of his horses are beautifully cared for, well managed and trained and many of his current list of clients and students have been with him for a number of years. As someone who has been at Southlands for nearly 9 years, I can guarantee that he has run no-one off the premises and gets along very well with the other training professionals at the barn. Other, and often embittered, riders and trainers seem to take great comfort in spreading false and malicious rumors about someone more successful. Michael has made many improvements to Southlands and continues to be a great trainer and a very nice person. If you want to check him out come down and see for yourself and don’t rely on unfounded comments made on the internet.
[QUOTE=phellana;4738635]
I really cannot understand the sheer nastiness by some of you horse riders and enthusiasts. Micheal Leon has been at Southland Farms now for just shy of 2 years. He is not “barn manager” - and never has been - but runs his own barn within the Southlands complex. All of his horses are beautifully cared for, well managed and trained and many of his current list of clients and students have been with him for a number of years. As someone who has been at Southlands for nearly 9 years, I can guarantee that he has run no-one off the premises and gets along very well with the other training professionals at the barn. Other, and often embittered, riders and trainers seem to take great comfort in spreading false and malicious rumors about someone more successful. Michael has made many improvements to Southlands and continues to be a great trainer and a very nice person. If you want to check him out come down and see for yourself and don’t rely on unfounded comments made on the internet.[/QUOTE]
I am very glad that you and the other customers at “Southland” are pleased with Michael. That does not negate all the wrong doings of Michael’s past. He has created a horrible reputation for himself in this industry. People did not make these things up on this board, I promise you. They are not rumors; Michael has done some truly horrible and illegal things in the past. I can only hope for his current clients that he is cleaning up his act.
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The credibility of these statements cannot be taken seriously when such nonsense is posted that is 100% untrue -
Fact - Renee and Larry Bowers have not been involved with endurance horses for over 2 years now. Larry no longer rides and Renee has been training in both dressage and jumping.
Fact - Michael Leon is not Barn Manager and never has been.
Fact - Michael Leon has never run any other trainers off Southlands. Other trainers have come and gone for their own personal reasons.
Fact - Michael Leon has been at Southlands for nearly 2 years.
If these “rumors” are incorrect how can any of the other malicious gossip be believed.
If none of you can say anything nice about a person you clearly don’t know its better not to say anything at all!
i love watching the fireworks that ensue when someone registers and starts posting here for the sole purpose of defending the person being discussed. things that make you go hmmmm… lol
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Ditto. :lol:
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Yes indeed - it just shows what nasty people you are - and it is rather sad that you get such pleasure from such mindless nonsense.
Perhaps you should all take a look at your own life and think what kind of people take relish in attempting to destroy someone else.
Character assassination of this type is normally posted by someone with a troubled life and mind … and nothing better to do with their time …
So - perhaps people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones!
Look Phellana, don’t get your jods in a bunch :eek:
…someone asked about M.L. and people posted their own experiences they had with him or what they had heard…take it with a grain or a pound of salt but it is not character assassination or mindless nonsense to issue warnings. I am glad your experience with him has been positive. Other’s have a different opinion because they have apparently had different experiences. People can take these opinions as well as yours and do what they will with it…
I quickly did some googling and came up with a past COTH thread on Michael Leon:
http://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/showthread.php?t=220451.
He has also been suspended more than once by the USEF for drug related incidences.
You can believe whatever you like about stories people have to share, but what it all boils down to is this: he has been suspended previously, and does not have a sterling reputation. Does every trainer, or person (have a sterling reputation) for that matter? No, of course not. But it stands that you asked, and people on COTH answered. If you don’t like what they have to say or feel offended then I apologize, but I do believe that people are answering you honestly.
[quote=phellana;4738635 Micheal Leon has been at Southland Farms now for just shy of 2 years. He is not “barn manager” - and never has been - but runs his own barn within the Southlands complex t.[/quote
ooh la la, calling Southland a complex and Michael Leon a trainer is tantamount to calling Tiger Woods a family man.
Suit yourself.
dealings with Mleon
I googled Michael Leon name and got this (coth)and saw these post. The reason I did this is because I just had a incident come up with this person involved. I thank all of you who posted your dealings with this person. It only helps and makes people aware of the character of someone they may potentially do business with or choose not to do business with. I am so glad I read this. It has confirmed what I believe to be true and what other professionals have told me. Any person dealing with this person I would suggest you use caution. As with anybody in the horse world get everything in writing and make it real clear.
Back to my OP…For those of you that know ML or have competed against him…I’m still looking for a pony that I am told was sold to one of his clients in 2003. She is a 14.2h gray mare (probably flea bitten now) and is now 14 or 15 years old. Virginia bred and registered VPBA as ‘Dress Rehearsal’ - was reg. USEF as ‘Dress Rehearsal’. Barn name was ‘Sprite’. By Sailor’s Delight out of Coca Cola Classic.
Please PM if you think you’ve seen this pony. Now that my OP has resurfaced and so many have said such negative things about ML, I’m now more determined than ever to find this pony. I’ll sleep better knowing she is in a safe, loving home.
Thanks.
I, too, like to deal in facts…and, hopefully, am known on COTH for doing so. And since you want facts then I suggest the following…
Fact - check with the USEF…his name will show up
Fact - check with the Clerk of the Courts in CA…or look on a legal document website. If you do not have access to one, perhaps ask a lawyer friend to do so. Again, his name will surface.
Fact - there are posters to this thread who have indeed taken legal actions.
Fact - I have no trouble posting my name as I do not believe in hiding behind a screen name. I also know the real names of many of the posters. If you want to be taken seriously, then I suggest you do the same.
I have absolutely NO tolerance for individuals in this industry who see horses only as dollar signs and continually misrepresent, pad/inflate prices, charge double commissions, lie, cheat and steal.
Debbie Hanson
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Yeah, but Debbie, what do you REALLY think? No need to hold back or pull your punches on our account! :lol:
Not sure you guys are ready to hear what I REALLY think!!! :winkgrin:
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I’ve PM’d the OP with what little information that I did have on Sprite and I sincerely hope that she does find her. She was a cutie and was well treated from what I remember (Michael was too big to ride her so I remember an assistant riding her until she was sold to her new owner).
Like Debbie I am not afraid to stand behind my words about my experiences with Michael. I came into contact with him when he was at Imperial Equestrian Center in South Gate several years ago. During this time I personally witnessed him overworking horses to the point of exhaustion, drugging them (who needs 18 bottles of Dex plus other tranquilizers?), over jumping them, over facing his clients, trying to run his clients into other riders trying to share an arena, putting horses in turn out all night with no water, cranking horses heads to one side and tying them like that overnight, not paying board, board checks bouncing, selling horses and changing the sales price to pad his pockets more while cheating his clients and yes - even horse theft which he ended up in court over.
At one point during all of this I purchased a horse just to make sure that he wouldn’t destroy her. He was saddling her up for his test ride and I couldn’t stand it - she was a good mare and deserved better.
Should I go on or has everyone curious enough to still be reading fully understand that these are all things that I personally witnessed?
Phellana - I’ve long since gotten over the terrible time we went through when he was stabling at the same place that I was but somehow people keep coming back with more bad stories - many of them very similar. I don’t know if Michael has changed - I sure hope that he has. For his sake as well as for his clients and the horses under his care. Not to mention the fact that he’s burned so many bridges - I don’t know of many other places he can go to train. All I know is of my personal experiences with him which were terrible. As such, I would never train with him or put my horse in his care - EVER. That’s my very well educated decision and I’m standing by it.
I know that I’m new here but I think that the more people give positive or negative feedback on trainers, the more informed that we become as horse owners. This helps us to make informed choices regarding our and our horses training.
Oh… and no one may have gotten a photo of the police pulling him off a horse but I did get several of the South Gate Police department kicking him out of Imperial. It was the end of some really terrible drama for that stable.
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The Truth
I was at Southland Farms for almost six years, where as several trainers came and went…but in all my years there did I ever experience someone as deceitful and dis-honorable as Michael Leon. I have witnessed many things from him drugging horses regularly, to taking abusive measures as a method in working his clients horses to accomplish goals for each individual horses that were both unfair and not natural. Furthermore I was fooled personally at Southland by Michael and his sneaky snake like behavior. I am one of the many who was a victim of his lies. Not only did Michael pretend to be my friend and act as if he had my best interests at heart; he actually plotted over a year as to how to run me out of the barn, but not without first trying to tarnish my name and mark me as a thief with no witness of this except for his word. To then have it miraculously show up the day after I had been run off the facility. At the same time as he ran me off the facility, he also stole one of my horses which in turn we had to obtain legal council to take the measures necessary to get our horse back. I have documentation of this in writing. I have separate documentation in writing from a previous situation where I was instructed by him not to tell his client how much he was buying a such horse for, from a colleague of mine, so he could inflate the horse’s value and make himself more money that his clients wouldn’t know about. Before he tricked me I let him lease a horse from me for 2 months and the reason this leased lasted only 2 months was because my horse started to go lame and show stiffness. It was brought to my attention by his assistant and one of his students that he had been using my horse up to 3-4 times a day. He also was using a horse of mine for his camp that had lung issues after surviving an almost deadly case pneumonia 3 and 4 times a day again behind my back. Rene works full time and Larry works on the property most of his time…I heard Michael call himself the BM many times as untrue as that always was. But with Rene’s full time schedule, she did give Michael a lot of freedom to do what he pleased.
I have nothing against Southland Farms, Rene or Larry. There are also many good people left over there. Michael is not one of them!
my guess, the person who wrote the above…one of his students moms who works for him…S*** P****e?? …biased much or just still so fooled?
For the record Michael still has equipment of mine, and one of my students…gone to the wind.
in all fairness I had been warned not to trust this man from MANY people i trust in the horse world. I didn’t listen and they were right!!
in summation, not only was I run out of the barn. Myself and two other trainers were as well.
Cheers 
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Is he still up to his old tricks!!! :mad: Click on the link in my sig line and rate him…and get others who have had dealings with him to do the same.
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Even though this thread is from quite a few years ago, I feel compelled to post this note, just in case anyone is looking at it now, in 2017. Sadly, nothing has changed. The post by Gullblex10, as well as most of the others, is spot on. He is, sadly, still engaging in the same behavior. Even his worst detractors admit he is a very, very good rider. He is extremely charming, fun to be around, and makes you feel like his best friend; he certainly did that with me. He also keeps his customers slightly wary of each other by slightly bad-mouthing each one behind their back to the other clients. Sometimes it isn’t even slightly bad-mouthing; it’s out and out lies, as I’ve subsequently found out. I could go on at length relating my own experiences, but I’ll try to do a short summary. When I left his barn after about three years, the three horses that were with him were all lame. One had a torn back muscle; it took about 8 months to get him back. One had laminitis so severely, she could hardly walk. The other - well, a year later, we still don’t know what is wrong. The sad thing is that I live out of state, and I completely trusted him with my horses because he had me convinced that he truly cared for them. I found out much later that his attitude is that they are machines and you just use them until they break. Also, a lot of my tack and other things disappeared. I won’t even go into that. In the summer of 2016, without my knowledge or consent, he ran up a $975 bill with the equine spa guy who goes around to the shows. Once, when I had bought a couple of videos at a show (so the vendor had my card number) he tried to charge videos on my card. I didn’t pay it, but when I asked him about it, he convinced me that it was all their fault and he had done nothing. Because he is so likable and convincing, of course I believed him. Because I must have had some sort of prescience, I had notified the local feed store and the local tack shop that he could not charge anything on my account unless they spoke to me first, so I was, unlike some others, able to prevent him from buying things for himself on my dime. With some of his other customers who were buying or leasing horses - he lied about what the horses cost. Although I bought some horses when I was with him, I dealt directly with the owners so he didn’t get to pull anything. I could go on and on, but I can fortunately say that I got off cheaper than most of the others. The truly sad thing is that, because of his charm and extreme likability, you really are convinced to trust him. And inevitably, it seems, he breaches that trust. An example that I will touch on did not happen to me; it happened to longtime customers who truly treated him as a member of their family. The financial repercussions of what he did were pretty awful, but what was so much worse was the breach of that family’s trust. Anyhow, as much as I really hate to say this - because there were some really good times - all the behavior in this thread - the lying, stealing, nonpayment of bills, etc, etc - is an ongoing pattern and I would recommend that one stay as far away as possible.
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