What’s the shortest amount of time you’ve stayed at a new barn after realizing despite your research it was not a good fit, especially for your horse’s well being?
1 Like
Well, Logistically you have to give notice so you have the month you show up and the months notice, not that you have to stay for the second 30 days, you just have to pay for it.
Personally it was six months. The barn seemed normal when I got there and it took a bit for their true colors to show thru.
1 Like
The shortest stint I ever had at a barn was 3 months, and it was after relocating to a new state. The trainer was going to work with my horse, but was fairly recently postpartum, not looking for any big projects, and didn’t feel it was a good fit after evaluating my horse. She referred me elsewhere. But as far as a time I really wanted to leave a barn and felt it was a bad fit, I tried to stick it out a year, sort of like you’d do with a job you hate. All I can say about that experience is that I wouldn’t repeat it. Things did not get better. I should have left at the first sign of a bad fit, but I blamed myself, chalked it up to my poor communication, and let the staff essentially gaslight me for months while I told myself things would still be bad no matter where I moved. I watched my horse become less and less rideable, and eventually less and less handleable, until we got to a point where she had to be medicated daily just for basic handling and to avoid damaging herself in her paddock. When things finally got bad enough that I moved, I fully expected the issues to persist, and yet they literally went away overnight… no more drugs, no more aggression, no more weird psychotic behavior. I have some idea what the issues were at previous barn, but I’m still legitimately shocked at what a difference it made to move her. Definitely makes me regret that I didn’t trust my gut and do it sooner.
6 Likes
About 3 mos. Took about that long to see that no matter what, things would not improve. I wasn’t about to try being there over the winter season.
1 Like
Under 1 month. I needed an emergency landing spot when I discovered newly moved into place was not giving the care they offered. A friend squeezed my horse into her not-a-boarding stable until I could find a new spot close enough to home - her place was not close enough for a daily commute.
2 Likes
3 months. That was the amount of time to realize the depth of the problems, and that they were likely to get worse.
Not a new barn, but new management. A toxic idiot was brought in after an excellent BM left.
She had very good credentials – on paper. A lot of horse experience in barn settings. Had also been an assistant trainer with a BNT in her discipline for a few years.
It was her behavior, attitude and expectations of the horses that were beyond boundaries. Made me wonder what went on at BNT’s place. Basically, that horses maliciously take advantage of humans, and need to learn lessons that will improve their character. And that it shows how devious horses are that they never learn.
Lady was weird, IMO, although she presented herself attractively (might be why she got the job from non-horsey property owner).
It took a while to realize how much was going on. I was already barn shopping when the ultimate last straw was after she changed the pasture groupings, putting together horses that were known not to get along and were fighting and hurting each other. So they could all learn their lessons re behavior. The horses were fairly dinged up, including mine who was not a fighter and had never before had bloody abrasions. All over him. That lost several boarders, including me. Actually I’m not sure any were left. And the conversation that I had with her about it – calmly, if mystified – did not include any rational thought on her part.
6 Likes
About six hours - moved two horses into a facility we thought would be good, then realized almost immediately it was not. Told them not to feed the horses, we would be back in a few hours to feed ourselves, but found out - by accident - that they had let their toddler(!) feed them both a huge serving of oats. Which they had never eaten. Cue colic on one horse, and we just loaded both and headed to the vet clinic. Left both overnight (colic resolved on the trailer, of course) as they were kind enough to let us pay a stall fee to keep them there, then moved them to a wonderful place that they recommended that next day.
16 Likes
It depends…is it something you can work with? In the sense that xyz isn’t working for your horse, but abc may work, and there are options to try to make it a better fit? The more you can try different things and the more willing the BO and staff are, the longer I’d stay to try to figure it out.
Or is it something that will not work period—like horse care issue (no water, moldy hay, no turn out) that isn’t going to be fixed and/or raises serious concerns, then I’d be out ASAP.
Edited because i realized I didn’t answer the question 
About a month in to a new place I knew it wasn’t working for my horse. But it was a short-term deal with an end date in 3 months, I could go out often to check on him, and had no other options at that point. So my horse and I just had to suck it up and I turned it into a partial-self care kind of situation.
2 Likes
Something similar happened to me! The explanation was always that horses should be able to deal with these things, and therefore these things would continue until the horses got with the program. It would be like someone telling my brother that his working line GSD should be able to go to any random doggie daycare and not try to eviscerate any little white dogs, and therefore turning him loose in an enclosed area with a pack of little white dogs and watching what happens next. Such a weird philosophy. Like, yes, I can see there is an argument to be made that horses should be sane and obedient even when thrust into stressful circumstances—just like well-behaved dogs shouldn’t try to eviscerate other dogs—but surely there’s a more reasonable way to make that happen than just say “well they should be able to deal with this so we’re going to force them to and just stand by and wring our hands over the fallout.”
10 Likes
I am an absolute menace about manners while in the vicinity of humans. There is no biting, kicking, striking, rearing, doing anything more than flicking ears back momentarily at another horse and even that should not happen under saddle. I don’t care if another horse crashes into them (and it’s happened), there is absolutely no rudeness allowed. Ever.
BUT, expecting that level of behaviour when horses are on their own free time in pasture or paddock? 
Ain’t gonna happen and it’s absolutely batshizzle to expect that.
I knew a BO who expected this and approached the owner of the offending horse to train the horse better because it was causing issues while turned out. Not on the way to/from/at the gate, DURING turnout. Um? Whu? The horse was well trained and impeccably mannered and never put a foot wrong. Owner came to me asking what to do. I, like any sane horse person, had no answer beyond, “They WHAT??? No. There is no kind of training that holds over to the horse’s free time in a herd.”
6 Likes
One month. I moved there so a trainer I was acquainted with could work with one of my horses. But somehow in the first week the trainer pissed off the barn owner and she was banned from any further training at that barn. I learned the banned part after the fact; the trainer just said she was moving to work at a new barn and wanted me to move my horse along with her. So I moved the horse to a new barn, but somehow again within a couple of weeks the trainer was again asked to leave. I began to suspect a pattern with her. 
Luckily the owner of the new barn hooked me up with another trainer, and that worked out extremely well. I’ve been with that trainer for more than ten years now,
7 Likes
3 weeks. I was there on a temporary basis, waiting for a stall to open up at a different facility. This one was in hacking distance of the other barn, so I was able to ride over and take lessons. It was a beautiful farm staffed by people who had a similar horsekeeping philosophy as I do, although it was a fairly rough and ready, county 4H type of clientele. All people who wanted to do well by their horses, so no complaints there. Just made it hard to share a ring, because it’s a bit hard to school when you have kids practicing pole bending and doing handstands off their horses in the ring at the same time. My horse had a sense of humor about it but between the chaos and what it did to the footing I spent a lot of time trail riding and flatting in a field while we were there. They had expansive and beautiful trail riding so this was lovely, and we supervised some of those same goofball kids hacking out, which was also lovely as they were nice kids who had the right kind of horses for their ambitions and my horse liked the company. We moved on good terms when a stall opened up at the other barn. Apparently just in time for the manager to lose her marbles, if the grapevine is to be believed, and the place lost all its good competent staff and turned into looney tunes. Allegedly the manager had a substance abuse problem and something in her life triggered a relapse. The farm changed ownership a year later. Can’t find who owns it now, or what they’re doing with it.
I learned to include questions about ring hours and management in my barn interviews.
1 Like
Because horses learn so well from their own mistakes, and revise their inner thinking. Oh wait — they don’t! They do the same silly stuff for a lifetime. Unless a human intervenes and manages the situation, because the horse is an animal, not a human.
(That’s what I didn’t get across to the snotty barn manager, although she came away very clear that I expected a lot more from a barn manager than her performance to that point.)
Horses can be taught behavior to follow around humans. A responsible, knowledgeable human (or several) is/are part of the process to train horse behavior. Otherwise they just stay instinctively wired, as animals do.
And, as pointed out, what they learn goes for their human time, not their pasture time without humans around. I won’t say that thoroughly domesticated horses go entirely wild in a pasture/herd setting, but they are a lot closer to it, and more likely to trigger that way.
Horses can’t be de-horsified to not act like horses any more. Although there are certain high-profile high-marketing trainers who erroneously try to teach that.
Nothing in nature tells a horse to instinctively hold their foot up for a farrier, be calm in a trailer, don’t steal food from herd members, don’t pace the fence or pen or stall because you’re bored, don’t kick the horse who is annoying the hell out of you in pasture. That’s on us to manage as best we can by making changes in their circumstances, when we can’t be with them.
6 Likes
I had been at one barn for 5 years when I had to move long distance for work. Within two weeks at the new location, I moved one of my mares within 3 days from one barn, and then within a week from a second barn.
I found a third barn and stayed there for 4 years until I again had to move long distance for work.
Just to let you know I wasn’t a problem, or fly-by-night boarder, once I retired, my barn history was 10 years at one barn, then a move to our retirement location and 8 years at one barn until the death of my last horse.
In my two cases, I had visited the first barn before relocating but found some serious safety issues upon our arrival as well as poor management.
At the second, it was poor management that led to my horse escaping in a panic from her stall (at 10 p.m. in hilly, wooded country that she didn’t know) for 4 hours. There is nothing more scary than searching a pitch black countryside that you and the horse don’t know thinking you’ll never see her alive again. I still have nightmares about that night.
If there are safety/health issues that are not immediately addressed by barn management, I would get out as soon as possible and mitigate the danger as much as you can until you get out.
8 Likes
17 days.
Realized it was a huge mistake on day 2. My young horse was getting beat up, wasn’t getting enough food, was stressed, and losing weight. He was turned out with 5 other horses, which I did NOT agree to before I moved him there. Learned that another horse had shipped in and was thrown out with him on the same day it showed up 
Apparently the barn owner didn’t think about infectious disease control or finding out a horse’s personality before it got into group turnout.
The place was a mud pit with too many horses in paddocks. I said “*&%^ this, I’m out”. Moved my horse ASAP, lost a lot of sleep and over $1500 that month in board and trailering fees. Ahhhh the joys of horse boarding!
1 Like
About 2 months. I moved my horse to a barn closer to my college campus and deeply regretted it. Barn owner fed virtually no hay, and suddenly my previously easy keeper needed 6lbs of grain a day. Add in that the turnout was sketchy, the stalls were small (10x10 for a 16.3hh, 1400lb horse), and that her idea of cleaning stalls was sweeping the wet pellet bedding up against the walls to “dry out”… when they got fresh bedding it was 1 3qt scoop of dry pellets per day. Oh, and she was big mad that I wouldn’t allow my schoolmaster WB to be used in her lesson program.
I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
1 Like
Knowing ahead of time what a board barn will truly be like after move-in, after a few weeks of the horse living there, can be difficult. Trouble signs aren’t always obvious.
It helps a great deal to be able to get an honest assessment from someone who knows the barn well, other than barn management. A current or recent-past boarder. A good friend of a boarder who hears all of the complaints. Maybe a recent-past employee – or even a current employee who is willing to be forthcoming.
But, pre-move-in, it often isn’t possible to have those contacts. Especially when one is moving to a new area.
If one is plugged in to the horse community that is boarding in the local barns, maybe keep up with the gossip on an ongoing basis. 
I don’t think it is a fault or failing by the horse owner to learn fairly early on that this choice was a mistake. Better to acknowledge that and act accordingly.
6 Likes
3 months. The farm was actually awesome and so was the manager but it was just not a fit for my horse. I felt I gave her enough time to settle in and she just wasn’t herself. Spooky and scared and uncomfortable. I questioned my decision to move up until the last day (I even talked to an animal communicator about it lol) but was so validated when the first time I went to visit her at the new farm I immediately had my horse back 
7 Likes
(to greywithchrome… sorry I don’t know how to do the quote box 
)
May I ask how long you gave your horse to settle in this case? I just moved barns and have a similar issue as the poster… My pretty chill gelding is suddenly noticeably not himself, though to be fair it could be that the routine at the new barn is quite different and he needs time to settle.
7 days. Left but paid what I owed. Then 6 weeks. Then found somewhere more permanent.
