Barn 1:
“Oh, by the way, your board goes up $100 TOMORROW” isn’t an appropriate way to increase board.
Perhaps the reason the herd keeps breaking out of the pasture for the hayfield is because you haven’t put out round bales in week, nor have you grained any of them. I suspected you weren’t feeding, so I came out to check at random times during the day and made note of exactly how the buckets were lined up and how much grain was in the bin. If you don’t want boarders any more, you don’t have to starve our horses. Just give us 30 days to find new accommodations. We’ll understand.
Barn 2:
Don’t tell me that pellets absorb all the water and that’s why my elderly gelding is in the auto waterer in the pasture first thing in the morning. When I tell you that the reason that he’s so thirsty is that his bucket smells like swamp from the rotting grain his toothless mouth left behind, don’t ask me if I’ve cleaned it out yet. I’m paying full stall board on 3 horses. Your hired staff isn’t doing her job. Ask HER why she’s not checking buckets, not me.
Don’t tell my 13 year old son that he’ll be on the hook for stud fees if your stallion breaks out of his paddock and covers his pony mare without consent. No, the kid wasn’t teasing the stallion. He was quietly walking his pony down the only path from pasture to barn, the path that also went past the stallion’s paddock.
Don’t tell me that my mare is getting proper turn out, because I will show up at random times during the day and find her standing in her stall, in the dark barn, when everyone else is outside.
Don’t wait till the barn is full of boarders who haven’t bothered to show up all winter to tell me I’ve “not locked the gate six times” over the past month, when I know damn well it was locked because the barn is next to a major highway and I don’t want my horses dead on it. Also, if I did somehow screw up, tell me immediately. Don’t let it keep happening.
Don’t tell me you’ll give my long yearling his antibiotics while I take ONE day to attend my grandmother’s funeral if you have no intention of medicating him. I can count pills, you know.
Don’t tell me you’ll keep my elderly gelding inside when it’s a cold, wet snow and he’s (a) unblanketed and (b) obviously unable to cope with cold weather any more, then turn him out anyway. Don’t let your mother accuse my dear friend of trying to steal the most worthless horse in the entire barn with a sports car, when she kindly comes out to the barn to put the old horse in his stall so he doesn’t get ill and die (BO and I were at an event miles from home when she let it slip that my horse was out in the storm. I called my friend in front of the BO.)
Don’t tell me (voice on camera) that you’ll feed the grain mixes I have prepared for each of my 3 horses (stored in handy buckets outside their stalls, and only temporarily until the last bag I bought prior to moving in is gone) while I’m out of town for 3 days, then tell my husband that you refuse to feed them, and, when I return, tell me with straight face that you never agreed to feed my grain because you don’t know if it’s rancid. I have you on camera. With witnesses.
Don’t tell me you have no idea why my long yearling has long, narrow marks on his fur that resemble burn marks and are the precise diameter of your favorite whip’s lash when the other boarders have cornered me in the tack room and told me to GET OUT NOW because you’re abusing my horses behind my back.
That’s just a fraction of the crap she pulled. I lasted 6 months there. I emptied my tack space at night when she wasn’t around and left without notice. I had back up plans to load the horses on the street in front of the barn if she wasn’t going to let my friend’s trailer on her property. There was no drama. She sucked up to me in public for years afterward.
Barn 4:
Don’t tell me that my pony mare ran my 4 year old gelding into the woven wire fence and that’s how he fatally severed his REAR flexor tendon. Don’t tell me that you tied up the “broken” fence, when I’m the one who tied it up three weeks ago and you haven’t bothered to fix it yet. Don’t insult my intelligence: that’s rust, not blood, on the fence and there are no skid marks in the dirt, but there are bloody steps leading from the shed where the rusted partial hay ring was, the one I wanted removed and you refused. WAS because I know damn-well you pulled it out AFTER my horse was hurt.
DO tell me that you’ve put your stallion down so that I don’t search high and low for him when I come to feed.
Don’t demand that I move my stuff out of the tack room because you have new boarders coming in. After I move out in 3 weeks. Don’t shut my remaining horses off the pasture I’m still paying for just because you want it longer for the “new boarders.”
I had only my trailer, halters, and horses on the property after she demanded I vacate the tack room, and was prepared be hitched, loaded and off the property in 10-15 minutes. I ended up temporarily moving back to Barn 3 until Barn 5 was ready for me to move in.
Barn 5:
Please don’t play Pepperoni Games with my show horses, the ones that can be handled by small children, then tell me that they “need more training” because they drag you across the icy paddock.
She’s a dear friend. My elderly horse is buried on her farm and her care was impeccable. But my horses are anti-pepperonis, so I moved for the sake of our friendship.
Barn 6:
Please don’t grain my horses. They’re air fern half-Arabs, not hard-keeper TBs. Are you trying to kill them?
My current barn is lovely. They love both my horses and take good care of them 
