Spin off....things you never thought you had to tell your BM

[annese430]

Where do I start !

Don’t write on the contract stating you turn horses in when you leave them outside with no shelter just because “its nice out” 24/7

Don’t tell me my horse is getting turn out when you have her in a paddock that’s 14’ x 14’…

When I tell you my mare needs grass turnout everday and promised that she would, don’t give her grass turnout once a week.

Don’t scream at me for staying at the barn 10 mins late because I was cleaning out a cut that I wasn’t told about…

Don’t have me come to the barn to see my mare’s leg swollen, and having your barn workers walk by me saying that its been like that for two days.

Don’t get mad at me when I pull my mare out of your barn early because YOU haven’t abided by your own contract !!

Barn 2–

Don’t tell me my horse hasn’t lost weight when she was fat a month ago and now she is skin and bones

When you tell me you are going to up her hay, don’t just tell me you will, actually do it.

Don’t have YOUR nutritionist come in and do an analysis on my mare while I’m not there and tell me she’s getting the proper nutrition, and that she must be sick, that’s why she lost all her weight.

Don’t get mad at me for going to the barn and throwing her an extra flake, when I’m being told shes getting three flakes at 4:00, and having zero hay at 5:00…

Don’t get mad at me for leaving your barn because the cops have been there twice in one month and I no longer feel safe.

Thankfully,
I have left both of these places, and am at a wonderful barn now… It is sad how some of the barns out there have such terrible management… Stop being lazy, stop looking at your checkbook… Bring the horses in and out For there safety. A horse business is a horse business, each horse is built differently, thus require different needs. some will be more expensive then others.have a set amount of hay grain to be fed daily, and charge extra for the rest. DON’T SUGARCOAT people and instead just tell the owner you will feed them more and not stick to your word. I would gladly pay an extra (Set amount) so my mare is fed properly. Be aware of each horse’s condition… It’s really not that complicated.

[OneGrayPony]

Please fill the water troughs outside. Watering once a day isn’t going to cut it in the cold weather when my horse drinks his buckets dry because he hasn’t had enough water during the day. $5000 impaction colic there before I figured out what was going on.

[McGurk]

Learn to tell your client’s horses apart, specifically, learn to distinguish between the 14.3 chestnut grade/gaited gelding and the 16.2 bay TB gelding. Don’t reassure me that my pasture boarded horse is coming up to eat every day at feeding time when he, in fact, jumped out, ran loose and has been at a neighboring facility for 72 hours.

[OverandOnward]

Don’t go into the board business at all if you aren’t willing to work hard and do it properly.

Don’t go into the board business if you think 98% of all horse owners are over-doing their horse’s care, and the horses don’t really need everything they are getting, and no one will know the difference if you promise what all the “good” barns offer and don’t actually provide it.

Don’t go into the board business if you know very little (or nothing) about horses but you DO have the money to buy a local barn that is on the market. And you think it would be cool to own a horse barn.

Don’t list all the upscale services on your contract (blanketing/unblanketing, supplements, etc.) because that is what gets people to pay premium rates if you haven’t got the first clue how to provide those services, and would not know if they were being done properly or not.

Don’t assume you can hire someone to do the real work and to figure out the knotty horsey issues if you have no idea how to know if said person is doing a good job, or even if they are qualified.

[B]Don’t go into the board business if you think it will be easy. Especially the easy way you intend to do it. Don’t.

:)[/B]

[Dee-Vee]

[QUOTE=CdnQH;7926665]
Please do not use my show mare to help collect your stud “because he thinks she’s pretty nice”.

This still makes me beyond angry when I think about it.[/QUOTE]

And from the same files, please do not turn my show mare out beside your rank stallion who is known to breed through the fences.

Sad…but some horses did not come out alive.

[BilyandJack]

These are things I thought I never had to tell the BO. The BM was very good at this barn.

You actually have to plug in the trough heaters in -20 degree weather. Yes, that’s why the waters frozen

You actually have to drag the arena once a week. Yes, that’s why it’s rock hard.

No you cannot put water on the dusty indoor with the leaky roof in winter. Yes, that’s why it looks like a skating rink.

Please stop feeding the moldy hay

No my horse is not skinny because I ride him “to much” (3x per week) he is skinny because you give one flake of hay for the 18 hour period he is in a stall

If I bring in supplements for my horse please feed them to him.

Yes you have too seed the paddocks. Yes, that’s why there is only weeds in them

Please respect my request and let me have a vet out (I had one out and got kicked off the property with 24hr to get my horse and stuff out)

Please do not hide your strangles outbreak from boarders and continue to let them go to shows and bring new horses in etc.

Please put hay in the paddocks in the winter when there is no grass

I could go on for awhile. And yes this was all one place. Tbh I was relived when I was forced to leave as I was scared to put in my notice. Which leads me to another one…

Please don’t bad mouth boarders who have left or make up excuses such as they put their horse down…grr!

[The_Blood_Bay_Mare]

I went to a facility with an indoor for the winter. The BO was wonderful, BM was incredibly frustrating.

Feed the horse. Just… feed the horse. “I don’t want to feed her more because it will make her hot” is not a good excuse when I ask you to feed my horse enough to keep her in good weight. I am paying you $700 a month for board. I prefer a hot horse to a scrawny one.

Please do not tell other boarders that my horse’s severe weight loss is my fault because I’ve been working her too hard and not riding her correctly. This animal gained weight in race training and I’m only riding her 3x a week.

Eating the same insufficient amount of food more slowly is not going to make my horse gain weight. Please stop telling me that her weight loss is my fault because I don’t like hay nets. That is not how calories work.

The dramatic weight loss of a young, healthy horse that you feed is not the owner’s fault.

Needless to say, we departed, and will be staying at the summer place this winter, despite the fact that sadly it does not have an indoor.

[Gainer]

Don’t tell me my horse is a little lame. That he laid on the ground ALL DAY LONG in the POURING RAIN, so you thought maybe you should check on him.

Horse had a horrible case of cellulitis and laid in the rain all day because BO was too lazy, stupid, whatever to notice something was wrong.

[IndysMom]

Don’t dump your buckets of manure in the indoor ring because it’s too cold out to run the tractor.

Don’t feed my horse less and less as I bring more and more feed from home. Yes, I did notice that he was getting thinner anyway!

Don’t turn my navicular horse who has aluminum shoes which MUST STAY on out onto a solid sheet of ice and then wonder why he won’t move from the gate. Apparently he’s smarter than you.

Don’t close up the barn at 2pm on a 99 degree day just because you don’t want to go out and close the doors later. Yes, temps of over 100 degrees in the stall may KILL him.

Please take care of the groundhog problem because the giant holes along the indoor could cause a serious injury.

Thank heavens I don’t board there anymore and she is now out of business!

[quietann]

If almost every horse at a boarding barn develops the same issue (tail rubbing, in this case), don’t just leave it to the individual boarders to treat, not treat, consult with a vet, consult with other boarders, etc. There is clearly something common to all these horses and it’s worth, at the very least, communicating to the boarders about it. It would be even better to have the barn vet give everyone some options, or even a schedule of treatments to try until something that works is found.

I love this barn, but my mare has lost a great deal of her beautiful tail this summer. I’ve tried different treatments, even paid for a skin scraping (no bugs. Just dry skin.) There are 2 or 3 horses out of 15 who have not rubbed.

[dotneko]

Hey quietann - did you ever find the problem? We have a few doing it also and we have tried everything!

[Dee-Vee]

My gosh this thread makes me grateful for everything my current BO is not. So very hard to find. Worth her weight in gold.

[trubandloki]

My mare rubs her tail when she needs between her teats cleaned or there are bug bits in that area.

[bingbingbing]

Please if you are a vet clinic charging me $65 a day board to breed my mare, please turn her and her month old foal out daily. If you can’t manage that, please at least clean the stall and give them water.
I showed up to check on these two and the mare was up against the back wall on tippy toes trying to get out of the soaking wet muck. There was not one dry spot in the stall. The foal and his four white socks were covered in filth. It was hot out and the buckets were bone dry. I about blew a gasket. I had the barn girl fill the water buckets and both the mare and young foal guzzled the water down. I proceeded to tell her I was going taking them home. SO had left when we saw the conditions to get the trailer.
Vet showed up and had no excuse. What could he say.

[Aeternitee]

[QUOTE=californianinkansas;7908610]

I was one of those boarders that stops by to check on her horse Every. Single. Day, so its not like I wasn’t going to notice.[/QUOTE]

One of the reasons I’ve let horses go for the time being is that I’ve never had a huge budget for boarding, and usually can only afford to board someplace where there are Major Flaws. Like…the water troughs running dry in summer, or freezing solid in winter.

I ended up getting so exhausted from having to second-guess the care that it was a relief to sell my last horse and let all the worrying go. With deeper pockets, i’d have been able to buy some better peace of mind.

But no, even when ‘free choice decent water’ is something every horseperson knows is the most crucial factor in horsekeeping…naw, somehow it can’t get covered. In the dead of summer or winter.

[IPEsq]

Don’t leave the wheelbarrow full of wet, hot, moldy hay in the barn. Please continue to roll it to the dump pile. What, were you going to feed it?

It’s 9pm, are the horses going to have dinner tonight?

I provide hay nets so that horse won’t just pee and dance on his hay making your mucking job harder, wasting money, and giving him ulcers. Please use them. Please also muck the wet hay out from under his buckets every day and don’t just cover it up with new shavings. Black, rancid, moldy, composting hay goo is not good. He doesn’t even need to have shavings under his buckets.

I know there is a chance of rain and it is less than 70 degrees out and I don’t want him to wear a rain sheet. It’s ok, he won’t melt.

If it’s snowing/snowy but the ground is not dangerously slick or icy, yes, he can go outside. That’s what his blanket is for.

[cschattner]

I have been at quite a few places and now I am finally getting my own place ready to bring my horse home to.

1. When I call you at 7am to tell you that a horse is missing I expect you to show up within 5min not a half hour later. I may be your barn staff but this is your problem too. I found the house down the bridle path flirting with the mares. Thankfully this guy was old and had serious hock issues so he didn’t make it far.

2. Other barn staff “missing” the food bucket and throwing the grain into the full water bucket makes the water undrinkable, really.

3. Please tell me when you move my horse to a private pasture. I do not like almost having a panic attack when I walk out into the big pasture with all the other horses and I cant find my horse when said pasture is right next to a major highway.

4. a 30 day quarantine is not optional even when my horse has not been away from the other boarding facility in a year. The vet had been to that facility and can bring in diseases. (I should have just ran from that facility then and there, would of saved me so much trouble)

5. Racking up board because you will be using heated water buckets in the winter that the boarders have to purchase and bring in because it raises your electric bill is not a good excuse. Especially when the board goes down in the summer when EVERYONE has fans running on their stalls 24/7. The raising the board twice in two months. Ya people leave, you should not be surprised.

6. Feeding my horse 1 flake at night and nothing during the day is not acceptable.

7. Only feeding sweet feed to all the horses especially thoroughbreds is not a good idea. When my easy keeper arab looses weight, you have a problem. How you did not notice this problem when all your horses have ribs showing, I don’t know.

8. Complaining about feeding my grain to my horse that I provide and you agreed to feed before I got. Bad enough when you complain but when you stop feeding it because you don’t like it, that is overstepping.

9. Telling me I am delusional about my horses known and documented gnat allergy. No those puss filled hives are just there for funzies. Feed the [edit] meds I give you and pay you to give to him…I ended up going out 2xs a day to give my horse his meds.

10. Use the hay net I paid a lot of money for and went through the trouble of asking if you will use before I got it. I do not like coming out to see my horse and finding an empty net and hay sitting next to it.
    I even went through the trouble of paying the extra money for the metal ring for the net so all you have to do is unclip it, throw the hay in and clip it shut again. No fighting the net open and trying to shove the hay in the round opening with one hand, no fighting with the billion tiny ropes to cinch it shut again. Just clip, drop and clip.

I have more but I am just going to revel in my soon to be no BO free life style.

[cschattner]

I just remembered this one

No turning your just purchased from an auction an hour ago horse out with my horse is not a good idea. She did it anyways.

[shea_smom]

Gainer, holy mother. I’d totally lose it. How freaking stupid is that BM?!

[Quartercrazy]

When I ask you to feed more hay to my 800 pound air fern large pony because he’s getting skinny on your “2 flakes” (aka 2 inches) of hay fed twice daily, please don’t instead decide to quadruple his grain and leave me to figure it out when my saintly pony is spooking and bolting when twigs crack and jumping out of his skin when he’s usually asleep in the crossties. super fun to wonder if he’s lost his marbles until I identify his pony bowl filled to the brim with grain. Apparently hay is too annoying to store and it’s better to high grain and hay stretcher every horse at the barn.
Also not really sold on the fact that I pay for full stall board but it is cheaper for you to leave them out 24/7 9 mths of the year so you don’t have to buy shavings so you just do that without discussing it with the boarders.
Also not buying that snow is a suitable substitute for water in the winter so you can just leave all the buckets empty outside whenever it’s present.
It also doesn’t instill confidence that while I’m riding my horse around the ring you tell me your staff isn’t “sure” whether there was any poop in my horses stall overnight, and do i think he’s colicing? (Yes it’s late afternoon and the first I’m hearing about it). Or maybe she forgot she’d already cleaned it…
Seriously???
Thanks for the memories, treasuring having my horses at home!!