I agree with RockinHorse. You don’t want HER reputation to tarnish YOUR reputation
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But look at how many times we encounter just exactly this type giving it a try! I have long held the opinion that a lot of the wrong people set up in the horse business simply because they are unemployable and want to be ‘the boss’. On paper, the perfect fit. Besides, anyone who thinks they will recoup a huge capital investment (eg beautiful facility and big new house) by means of the income from boarding alone very likely hasn’t much idea of what it takes to run a stable irl.
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So- are we talking “sweep up in aisle”, “pick up manure from wash stall” and (as a boarder) ignoring it and leaving manure on the crossties? I can see a BO losing her mind over that. As a BO who had a boarder that constantly ignored my requests- I can see resorting to a sign- not that it would make a difference, as you can see from responses on this thread. People are going to do what they want apparently. I did not go the sign route- I gave her plenty of notice and helped her find a more suitable situation.
Not that this is what OP is doing, but some barns do like to keep the area clean, track as little manure etc in to tack rooms, sweep up the dust from your groom. Yes, pick up the manure before you ride, it takes 30 seconds. Put the saddle rack down if it is in the aisle, hook cross ties back up so they don’t lay on the ground. If the rules are basic, I’d expect people to abide by them.
Are the BOs requests reasonable?
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DId you read her posts, those of the OP?
Today you can hand graze HERE.
Tomorrow there’s a sign in that exact spot that says no hand grazing HERE.
The next day the mounting block is HERE, where the BO put it.
Tomorrow it’s over there, where the BO put it, with a big sign that reads DO NOT MOVE. The thing is no one moved it, ever, other than the BO.
Today it’s pick out the horse’s feet at the ingate to the arena so you do that.
Tomorrow it’s pick out their feet in the grooming bay because you made an unholy mess at the ingate.
That’s crazyland.
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And some BO’s just love to stir up drama, then sit back and see what happens.
Been at a barn like this. Bent over backwards to keep BO “happy”, which as I found was impossible, as nothing no one and nowhere was ever going to change her.
Rules were there for some people and not for others, then she’d complain.
I packed up and left.
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Tbmares hit the nail! I’m constantly aiming for a moving target. Listen, again I consider myself a golden boarder. No drama, clean by nature, pony club trained, and willing to deal with her BS rule changes. Her rules, but not everyone has to follow.
I’m still working on other options. The BO has acted like nothing happened and so did I. Sooo… just waiting for the next door to open so I can move on.
Also, I would never want her as a landlord. She would be a nightmare.
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You’ll laugh at this, KDW. I drove from central AL to N GA over a hot as Hades holiday weekend to participate in a clinic. Got hung up on ATL traffic, hot hot hot- and upon arrival at very fancy farm, the BO met me to check me in - and would not let me unload a single animal out of my trailer until we addressed the abject horror of two square bales of Bermuda hay that were sitting there, bare ass naked, on my flatbed. I had committed the unpardonable sin of not placing them in hay bags. Now the farm has 5 pages of rules for visitors, but that wasn’t on the list.
She was beside herself about the mess they would make once unloaded and their strings cut. We went in circles until she could produce contractor bags and duct tape for aforementioned undressed hay. I had kitchen trash bags in my LQ, but in 40 years of horses I’ve never encountered Thou Shalt Not Have Naked Hay.
Crisis averted, I brought my poor horses in the barn to rinse them off and settle them in. There I found nearly every horizontal surface coated in pigeon poop. I was every so grateful that I could lock my horses out of their stalls and make them stay outside in the shaded run-ins, the barn was that bad.
It takes ALL KINDS.
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reading threads like these makes me shudder. DH and I have talked about moving south but I dread the thought of having to find a new place for my horse! Yikes!
What a nut-job!!!
I firmly believe a lot of these people have control issues and like to make themselves feel important by behaving that wya towards others. yuck.
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I was at a barn like this for 17 months. Owner was absentee but retiring and moving to the farm as soon as other property sold; owner’s local BFF was the barn manager.
At one point barn was full (9 stalled + 3 pasture board). Then boarders were asked to leave - show horses required too much attention; mare was too messy in her stall; etc. My draft was too big, but I could stay if I paid to hotwire a pasture (which two other horses broke the fencing on), and followed the owner’s schedule of when to come out and play with and ride MY horse. The straw that broke the camel’s back was being told Dobbin had to wear a breakway halter. Nopity nope nope.
So this full, successful boarding barn was compeltely dismantled in 12 months, and less than six months after the owner moved to the property, it is now on the market – for $150,000 more than they paid for it, bless their hearts.
Move. It will never improve - it is massive insecurity + lack of knowledge and business skills on the owner’s part. It literally is not about you at all.
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If the OP takes this defiant approach, she is very likely to get tossed. OP has already made the decision to move, I think she prefers to set her own timeline.
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@OneTwoMany If you refer back, you’ll see that I posted that BEFORE she updated the thread that she was working on options for moving.
:rolleyes:
I took post #5 to indicate she had already made the decision to move on.
OP: You have my deepest sympathies. I am going through something very similar now and have decided the best thing to do is just find someplace else. It’s not worth negotiating or begging explanation. Just do the best you can for as long as it lasts, put of the with changing rules and risky behavior, and move the moment something worthwhile comes up. And have a back-up plan once you get THERE.
Priority number ONE is keep.your.horse.safe. At all costs.
Just because someone can afford to buy horse property does not mean they have the personality or management skills to run a barn.
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Amen to that!
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I guess I’m feeling a bit subversive for a moment, but I think I would line up boarding wherever I had to – even if it’s someplace you can only get to on the weekend. Or field board – any safe option that would give me a place to land temporarily if I got evicted. And then: I would proceed to completely ignore her signs. :lol: I mean, continue being neat, safe, don’t cause damage, etc. But stuff like dictating where the mounting block can be? Phhhhpt, I’d move it with a big grin on my face.
I know, it’s a scorched earth approach, but since it’s a foregone conclusion that you’ll have to leave this boarding situation sooner rather than later, might as well do what the heck you want. Frankly, I think I’d enjoy watching the signs get bigger with more and more capital letters and exclamation points in them. Like I said, just feeling a bit subversive today. :lol: This is all terrible advice that you should not follow. But it’d be fun, ya gotta admit.
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I had a situation like this a few months ago. Barn owner was extremely rude to me and anyone who came out to the barn with me. Every day there was a new complaint about something my horse did that made her life the teeniest bit harder. My horse only went outside 2 or 3 days a week because she was too lazy to put the horses outside. There was always a different excuse about why they were in all day. My already skinny horse started rapidly dropping weight from anxiously standing alone in his stall all day.Finally after hearing rumors about embezzlement lawsuits being filed against her, I decided to get my horse out of there as soon as possible.
The problem? I didn’t have an updated Coggins and the new barn wouldn’t take my horse without one. So I had to call the vet (in February) and ask for a Coggins test. Well the barn owner figured out pretty quick that I must be leaving because nobody would do a Coggins test so early. After that, she told me about how horrible of a person I was and I had taken advantage of her ‘kindness’ by boarding with her and then choosing to go somewhere else. I think she was just mad because I did a ton of the work around the barn for her, and she is one of the laziest people I’ve ever met. She told me I was no longer allowed on the property. While my horse was still there. Her barn, her rules.
It ended fine for me, I got my horse out of there as soon as the Coggins results came back and we’re much happier at the new barn. It sucks when people try to take the joy of being a horse owner away from you like that.
My advice is to get out of there as soon as possible. Don’t tell them you’re planning on leaving before you have a place to go. If there’s any drama, just pick up your horses and get them out of there right away. Pay whatever you owe to get out of your boarding contract. The safety of your horses is the most important thing.
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I used to work for several someone’s like this BO. Then I googled “covert narcissism” and it suddenly all made sense
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I have been diligently planning an exit strategy, but do to the circumstances, my exit will probably be a couple
months away. I have multiple places that I can exit to quickly if needed.
Most of you will ask why aren’t I leaving now. Here’s why. Most of the farms in my area are private. And people talk and everyone knows the BO. I’m not worried about the backlash,everyone appearently already knows the BO disposition. (I should have seen the signs) But, because they are a private and close knit community, they don’t want to get involved. Everyone knows where I board. It’s no secret.
There never was an issue with horse care. I am primarily involved with all of my geldings needs other than feeding. I see him once if not twice a day. I’ve never questioned the BO horse care… only her ridiculous horse management skills of her own horses.
Since I started the original thread, it’s been interesting dealing with BO. One of her redundant signs fell, I stepped on it and threw it in the muck bucket full of poop. (Am I bitter? Enough to have fun with the situation.)
She told me that one of the schooling horses I use of hers will die if she eats grass. And then I was accused of letting the horse graze. Luckily, my very confident adult student jumped in before I could responded With a very stern you were wrong statement. And BO backed down like a beat puppy. Not even mentioning, I know this horses background… die after eating grass is ridiculous.
Im going to continue to make light of the situation in my own sarcastic but non threatening way. Maybe I should add some signs? (Chime in her COTHErs…I’d love to hear your ideas about what kind of snarky signs would you post)? I refuse to made feel uncomfortable when I pay her a lot of money. I still am a customer until the day I leave.
I’ve worked for basically this exact person.
She wouldnt let us have curtains in our apartments (which had plate glass looking out into the tack room and indoor)so that she could always look in and make sure we were keeping them clean.
She and her husband would let themselves in to the apartment to store food in our fridges or check on how full out recycling bins were.
She stomped and cried on a fairly regular basis, at one point she put up a sign that there was no talking allowed in the grooming areas, she told the lower apartment that they weren’t allowed to hang Christmas decorations and their tree ornaments could only be made of wood, we were not allowed to eat lunch, the list goes on.
It drove her absolutely bananas that I was always unfailingly polite to her. She also hated the fact that I had a really great boyfriend who would come to barn events (the Christmas pas de deux, for example) and be tall and charming and so incredibly nice and helpful and polite. It made her visibly angry to be confronted with decency and also that I who she basically regarded as vermin could be dating such a clearly great guy.
The thing about crazy people is they aren’t rational. There is absolutely nothing you can do to change them sort of leaving or buying the facility. You modifying your behavior for better (or worse) isn’t going to change theirs.
Either play by her ridiculous rules or go somewhere else.
And no, you can’t go putting signs up in someone else’s barn, nor questioning their management of THEIR OWN horses. If she doesnt want her one horse eating grass then don’t give it grass OR indicate you think she is being ridiculous. If she wants to think grass is lethal it’s not your place to reeducate her. Your answer is, “Yep, got it. No grass for this one.”
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