Endlessclimb I am glad I’m not the only one who thinks that way!! Mcgurk your barn is lovely I am sure, if that’s how you roll. But somebody grooming my horse for me? Hard no. Cleaning my tack for me? Uhhh no. 
. Noticing loose shoes injuries etc yes please. I consider that to be common sense barn-man-ship (which we all know is in short supply).
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I’m in the same boat. Don’t touch my stuff! 
I definitely appreciate people noticing cuts/scrapes/loose shoes and especially appreciate people who are aware enough to see that my horse isn’t acting his normal self, or is shivering in winter, etc.
I certainly wouldn’t want someone catching and tacking up my horse. But, that’s me!
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As listed, this sounds a lot like both the barns I’ve been at. The details after…not even close and thank goodness because that would be a hard stop for me. Same as @endlessclimb in that I am more than happy to help on the labor side of things for the barn but it ends there. I like the people I board with and am casually social with them, but emphasis on the casual for most 
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I think what @McGurk was getting at is that it can be difficult to find a barn that isn’t show-focused, but which has riders who are actively learning about horses, ride regularly, and still want to progress as riders, even if they aren’t gunning for the Maclay.
At one barn I was at, which did go to shows, there was a pony mom who used to organize a sign-up sheet and make everyone bring snacks, so there was a ridiculous amount of food (and despite the fact there were food trucks on the premises and people could pack their own stuff), none of which I wanted to eat, because it was all “pony kid-friendly” stuff like ring pops, gushers, doughnuts, sugary soda, and so forth. The barn for her was being about being a perfect mom. But the last thing I felt like worrying about as a single adult was finding the right flavor of junk food I wasn’t going to eat that I was supposed to buy and bringing a case of it on show day.
At another barn, there was a dear, sweet lady, who would quite literally talk nonstop from the moment she arrived to the time she left, and also put her arms around my horse and kiss him as I groomed him. Horses for her were about socializing, not riding. It was almost impossible for me to focus in her presence on my horse.
I think an ideal barn community is when most people are in horses for the same reasons. If everyone is super-competitive, great, if everyone just comes to groom and hang out, great, but if you’re the odd one out, it can get uncomfortable.
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Yeah I felt some of that too lol, and mostly because I can’t be the boarder who is there at 1 pm on Tuesday cleaning stuff. I have a demanding job, kids, etc, so I’m usually there in the evening when everyone else has gone home. Also, when I’ve been in that type of environment (parties, socializing, etc) for some reason I am ALWAYS the one left out lol, so yeah hard pass for me dawg.
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I want to be the one left out (please dont invite the person who says no every time lol), but 99% of the time that will turn into the assumption I’m not nice or whatever.
I just don’t “do” that stuff, with anyone, ever. Not just with barn folks. It’s just not my jam.
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Well said, @Impractical_Horsewoman!
A majority of the riders/boarders/leasors at this barn are middle aged and post middle aged re-riders (mostly female, a few guys) so the supportive atmosphere is amazing. People running cold drinks out to the ring on hot days, people texting me “Atta girls!” when I did something new on my new horse…it’s great.
I survived an absolutely cutthroat A rated show barn as a junior, a drama filled lesson and show program as a working student and ran my own lesson and boarding barn with it’s fair share of teen and adult drama, so this feels like heaven. Oh, and a couple of co-op barns. (shudder - enough said!)
If it means I chip in for every group gift, I’m okay with it. At least it’s not like my corporate life where at least one quarter of the people didn’t pony up and I frequently got stuck with the bill.
The original post asks “How much of a community are your boarding barns?” and my answer was “A tight knit one. A family.” And I thoroughly enjoy it.
If I was still a working adult, trying to squeeze in a ride around my schedule, I might not feel the same. It is all about what works for you.
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This is a perfect example of there is no one way to do things right and you will always offend someone no matter what you do.
Being an introvert who is exhausted after a full day of work, interacting with everyone about so much stuff, I am one who is frequently “too busy” for social activities. But not being invited really sucks.
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I agree with this too.
The two main social circles I had prior to Covid were not really my jam; colleagues from work and a tabletop gaming group that I became friends with through my ex husband (I got them in the divorce). While they are all decent people, they were never really “my” people or anyone I talked very regularly to outside of a happy hour or game night. Covid was a good time to take a couple steps back to reassess what I needed in friendships and getting my horse in 2020 really 180ed my life for the better. Coming back out of it, not being included is fine and is better for me. Anytime I would get invited it felt like a chore, even to say no and it did feel uncomfortable for a period, but I have “my” people now even if they are in lesser numbers. Which is just fine by me.
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The hard part of boarding for me has always been specific aspects of the care that are just very difficult to find in a boarding barn. I’d love to board at a barn that offered pasture with run in sheds and still had an arena, and that isn’t about the cost. I don’t like the number of hours most near me have them stalled and the amount of time they don’t have forage moving through.
As a generally extroverted person, I enjoy the social aspect. Obviously we all miss some of it, but what I like about boarding most of all is just having other people around - even if we are paying attention to our horses and not interacting.
One of the hardest boarding situations I’ve been at had some good and bad points, but for a while it was so lonely. There’s nothing better to me than arriving at the barn early with coffee on a busy day and take my time grooming and riding.
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I remember one summer my sister and I were working at a barn for the summer. The BO said to rake and sweep up the loose hay and put it in the boxes. We’re were like huh? Seems kind of inefficient…why not just put it in the stalls?? Lol we were looking around for boxes and the riding instructor that worked there got super annoyed at us and said with the frown and eye roll “she means the stalls.” Lol ooops ok yeh that seems reasonable!
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Regarding being asked to participate in barn social occasions…I was once at a barn where the barn owner did not like me (I had an outside trainer coming in) and very clearly had favorites who she did and did not do outside stuff with. Like she asked only half of the boarders to accompany her to spectate at Dressage at Devon or to go on trail rides off-property.
Once, she was loading up to trail ride with another boarder, and I was walking out with my horse to the outdoor to mount up. She took the plastic mounting block WHILE I WAS IN THE ARENA, put in her trailer, and drove off.
I did speak up, saying “hey, I was going to use that,” and she told me to go to the indoor, mount up there, and ride then ride over to the outdoor.
“Use your head for a change and take the initiative,” she said.
I am no longer at that barn.
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I am LOLing, not at you, but at what a wide-open witch your old BO was. WOW!
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It was, in retrospect, a hilarious picture, because I was so stupidly taken aback (in real life, I am not always that quick on the uptake). She could have quite literally waited five minutes for me to mount before taking the block, or even warned me, “hey, hurry up, because I’m going to load the block in my trailer to go riding.”
She did know her stuff, riding-wise and horse-wise, I must confess, but she was one of those burnt-out barn owners that had quite literally ZERO people skills. Even her favorites admitted, “she’s mean, thank God she likes me, she doesn’t like you.”
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Brought back a memory from years ago! One Friday evening a barn friend and I were schooling the arena jumps as a last prep before a show the next day. We weren’t going to jump for long, just some reinforcement and confidence for both us and our horses.
The BO and her husband came out and started to take down all of the jumps to put them away. While we were riding towards them to jump them. It’s like we didn’t even exist. The jumps had been set up in the arena for weeks, but suddenly right now they wanted to put them away.
My friend and I called out of course … in a very cheerful hopeful tone of voice, because this BO & husband were well known for being quick to take offense. “Hey could we have just 15 more minutes? We have a show tomorrow and we’re just getting ready! We’ll help you take them down as soon as we are finished!”
The BO and husband looked at us with absolutely blank expressions. What we were doing meant nothing to either of them. They had already known that we were taking our horses away from the property the next day to show.
My friend used her cutest prettiest little-girl voice to wheedle a bit and the two apparently decided they could find something else to do for 15 minutes. After we were done we did put our horses in the cross-ties and come back to help right away. Had they been quick about finishing taking jumps down on their own, they would have silently labeled us as unreliable liars who take advantage because we didn’t help immediately, horses be damned. They often expressed skepticism about the characters of every human but themselves.
That was a nice barn in terms of the facilities and the other boarders who enjoyed competing with horses but weren’t hyper about it. Supportive of each other, but not intrusive, everyone was living their own lives and doing their own thing. We did all use the same trainer which was a connecting point, and we trailered together to the same horse trials as some boarders had trailers and others did not.
But the BO’s were kind of a strange pair. They didn’t seem to particularly like running the barn and it was hard to figure out why they chose to do this, and why they continued for years. Their interactions with boarders were inconsistent, could be friendly, abrupt, or defensive. The boarders usually didn’t know why. The BO’s showed no interest in what boarders did with their horses. They never seemed to figure out that they themselves were the reason for the regular turnover of boarders.
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omg! That’s hilarious! And yet, I can TOTALLY see it happening. The BO who disliked me similarly acted as if I wasn’t there most of the time. Even if I was having a conversation with another boarder, she’d talk over me, butting into the conversation, and purposefully ignore everything I said.
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Well, that tired old trope about people getting into horses because they’re misanthropes with poor people skills has SOME basis in reality.
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I do have to admit that the MOST terrifying barns are the ones where the barn owners are charming but really don’t have the knowledge or horse skills to run a barn, but still have boarders and riders because they seem sweet/nice/charismatic. (Since they also seem to attract first-time horse owners with little knowledge.) I actually stayed for a long time at the barn with mean mounting block lady (who did know her stuff horse-wise, even though I quite literally had to remain silent in her presence and crawl around to avoid her because she hated me so much).
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You’re right, that is more terrifying. I would actually put up with a lot if I trusted the person’s horsemanship and standard of care.
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