I don’t think so, the barn owner makes her living off of the income from full board. I might be able to negotiate a slightly lower rate where she’s not paying the barn staff to do any of the other care besides what she does which is doing the feedings she does herself and still providing the grain and hay and shavings so that she was still earning.
I might be able to do this to a degree… besides my program of 12 horses, there are about 10 other full boarders and then barn owner has 6 horses so I wouldn’t be able to take over the whole barn is part of what makes things a little tricky, she’d still be having to pay her own barnstaff for the care for the rest.
I have considered other careers and almost went into teaching high school before I started my own business teaching/training.
I’m not cut out for an office job unfortunately, and I’d be making a good deal less than I currently am if I went into teaching. I have waitressed before and liked it but again earnings aren’t really super high and the hours for fine dining are hard with doing horse care and shows on the weekends.
I think my ideal would be if I could do the horse stuff 1/2-2/3 time which I don’t think is feasible unless I just freelanced as a traveling trainer/instructor, and then found another way to supplement my income but I have no ideas as to well paying part time jobs.
That’s interesting to hear. My clients are great as well, and when I got into the business I was more expecting to have some difficult clients and not so much have the issues with the barns.
I am progressing with both my own horse and a clients horse thankfully, more so on the clients horse since I have more time to ride him than my own haha. The extras that I’ve been having to do that I think should be the barns responsibilities just push me over the edge timewise and energy wise so I have nothing left for my own horse most days.
Have you ever looked into what the requirements and pay are like for substitute teaching in your state? That might be something you could easily combine with horses time-wise. I know some people who do it here (in PA) and you have the flexibility of deciding whether or not you work on any given day. You would also be done at the school early enough in the day to teach lessons or train horses afterward, and wouldn’t have all the prep and grading and etc that full-time teachers do.
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Talk to your clients. Tell them that the current situation isn’t tenable. Ask if they would rather drive further to a different barn with better care or start paying you for your extra provided services. Even if the needs should be provided by the barn that isn’t happening so something has to give for you. Talking to the barn owner to try and renegotiate amount of rough stalls is a good option too. Tell them you are going to need to do a certain program for your training horses and need their care 100% in your hands. It’s hard to work with someone that isn’t good at the business and in this case that is your barn owner. Get creative in the way you can make it worth it for you.
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I mean… you were clearly warned. I don’t know a single young pro who did it more than 10 years. It sucks, it pays pennies (or fractions of pennies), it’s mind-bogglingly tough customer service coupled with animals with their own agenda, market flux, etc.
This. Move. If you think you can continue and want to continue in the horse world, go to another barn, maybe another area. It never matters how good of an instructor or trainer you are if the facilities are falling flat. You need to find an arrangement where the accommodations fit the service you want to provide. You could be Beezie freakin Madden and I won’t stay at a barn that has lazy help that leave poo in paddocks, don’t check waters, and is rundown and probably cutting corners in other places too (hay quality jumps to mind, nothing like throwing hay and finding beer cans and McD’s wrappers in it).
But stop working for free first, point out the things not being done, and bring a proposal to the BO. Going from two hired hands to one with higher pay would be a great suggestion, to get and keep better class of worker. Maybe tell the BO that they need a handyman type on “call” so to speak or have him/her come in once a week to deal with anything like boards that need replacing, broken water lines, manure piles that need turned or moved - you can get a worker in who knows horses and feeding and bandaging and is willing to muck and do all the things, and that person may not know how to do something like PVC repair and it not be a deal-breaker.
Just some thoughts. You sound like you want to make the current location work because of being near family, but if you are at the barn 16 hours a day, what good is that? It’s up to you set boundaries.
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My first thought is to hire someone to do the extra stuff for the full board horses. Or at least part of it.
Another thought is to hire someone (chartered accountant?) to review your financials and see if there’s a way to reduce the manual involvement (your time).
Next thought is to really examine what you are doing day to day, figure out where your time is going. Keep notes on your phone for a week.
When you swap tasks make a note (use the voice to text - it’s not a polished document, just notes for yourself). Then really assess each task you do - how much time does it take (include
the 5-10minute tidy up after/prep for the next time), is that task is worth the time involved, does it have to be done at the time you do it, and is it something you need to do personally, or is it something you could hire out (work the financials out too). All too often we get stuck doing something a certain way, or at all, because we always have done it that way.
Do you have a sacrosanct day off every week? Having a day to yourself is important, and when building a recreational, off hours (to the client) business it is easy to get sucked into working part of every day. You don’t have to tell anyone, just say that day is booked solid/unavailable/what have you.
If you want to continue in the industry THIS is your warning to figure out and set in place the boundaries between work and the rest of your life. Have a set day off. Have work hours, outside of which you won’t respond to texts, calls, etc unless it’s a genuine emergency. Limit the extras you’re willing to provide (and charge for the ones you do provide).
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OP the core issue you are discussing is control. Your control over horse care, for the most part, as well as barn management generally.
When I suggested taking over the barn, I meant all of it. Your horses and their horses. Every square inch, every stall, the other boarders who don’t work with you and the barn owner’s horses. So that all care is consistent.
That’s why I was thinking that a barn manager paid by you manages all care, working for you. Performs some tasks themselves, but has enough non-task time to plan the work and manage some workers.
You would need to find out what the barn owner currently receives in monthly income from the barn. Hopefully they are honest about it so you can figure out your own financial profile. If you take over all supplies as well it gives you total control. But of course you are also on the hook for 100% of everything.
The board checks would come to you and the barn owner would get a reliable monthly income. Don’t do it if the board checks go to the barn owner. You have no way to hold the barn owner accountable.
This is the way to get control, which is what you are lacking now.
You do have to decide what you want for a horse career. If you have a future ideal of running your own barn then someday you will be doing all of this anyway. This might be that step.
You would not be the first in-barn trainer to take over a board barn. Give yourself a promotion, as it were. It does take a lot of finesse with the actual owner to ease them out of the decision-making and responsibilities when they have been in the habit for a long time. And it is a good idea to listen to their guidance and suggestions. It might save some learning experiences they already had.
Have an exit plan. If it doesn’t work, if you have given it several months but can’t make it happen financially or any other way, what do you do then? Return to your former status of independent trainer who is not running barn? Go elsewhere? Or what?
A very big step. But this is how some trainers do elevate themselves to their own trainer-barn. Even though in your case you would have some non-client boarders as well – for now, anyway. 
Again … pencil, paper, calculator. Get some experienced advice from trainers in your area who manage the barn themselves. And put all advice through the filter of knowing that person’s tendency to be forward with their horse career – or not.
It’s worth some consideration. Making a plan doesn’t mean you have to follow through. Even if you don’t, a plan will add information to your decisions.
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If you have to move for a job, you have to move for a job. Lots of people do it. Many don’t want to, but they do it any way.
I agree with whomever said that do what you love and you will never work a day is a load of crap.
Do you have anyone you can unload on? I joke that one of the reasons I get reduced board is because my trainer calls at least once a week to bitch & moan. I’m not local, I don’t do Facebook or Twitter or whatever so whatever he tells me doesn’t go any further.
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I think the easiest solution is to lay out for your clients the extra services that you have thus far been providing for free. Explain you are no longer able to provide those services for free effective immediately. Poll your clients to see which services you are no longer providing for free are important to them. Determine a price point for those services with / for your clients and then hire you a hand to do the work. Easy peasy.
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And if they all (or most) say “nah we don’t need it” – that may be your answer.
If by whatever means the barn care upgrades, it will be more expensive in any case. If the bottom line is that these boarders care more about the low cost than the low-quality care, that may be all you need to know, OP.
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It’s easy for us to say this on the board, but I’m guessing it will be hard for the OP to not turn out horses, not scrub outdoor buckets, leave horses sweating in too-heavy blankets when the temperature goes up, and all the other things she’s been doing as favors or is under-compensated for–I mean, she can, and should out of self-interest, but it can be hard to see. Or clients might just leave, losing her income, if the care really goes downhill.
This is one of the hard parts of being the person who cares and is always at the barn. It also sounds like it’s not just the money, but the OP is doing more than she can reasonably do without getting overtired and being overcommitted, given she is doing so much care on top of training.
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Agreed. And I think that is the point that several posters are making. If OP can’t or is unwilling to make a change to make this worthwhile for her time & effort, it may be time for OP to separate herself from this situation.
It is hard to leave the horses behind knowing that no one is looking after them as she is doing. But it is no one’s job to spend their life’s energy making up for the lack of effort of others, for no reward. It’s hard, but it is.
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No doubt it may be very difficult to just leave the things OP has been doing undone.
From my perspective the OP is propping up the barn owner’s boarding business in a way by providing this extra care for free.
We only have the OP’s info to go on, but it’s sounds like the areas of care that aren’t up to the OP’s standards are items that are SOP for this barn owner. From what I understand from the OP’s posts, if the boarders don’t like the level of care at current barn they can move to a more expensive barn, a barn further away, a barn that doesn’t have an indoor OR pay OP to provide the extra care.
I know that horse culture varies wildly, but in my area it wouldn’t be unusual for a trainer that was working out of a larger board barn to have extra services provided to their clients as part of the “package” of being with that trainer’s program.
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This was my thought, the BO reminds me of my biomom, who ran off more than one young pro and many boarders because she had a gorgeous facility but expect her “employees” to provide a ton of free labor for the pleasure of working for her, and when the trainer left or the BO had too many boarders and personal horses that there was just too much work for one or two people and things didn’t get done, boarders left.
I know it was suggested the OP hire her own employee to work and do the things she is currently doing for free, and if she did and passed charges on to the boarders - would the BO want part of the action? Because the BO might see it as something that the OP was doing free and is now getting “paid” (despite now hiring a person) and want a facility percentage. My mother got so petty that she started charging me facility use when I was paid for exercise rides on anything other than horses in her sale string, body clipping, mane pulling, etc. She is/was batshit crazy but also super representative of a lot of BOs in the level of petty, drama, and wanting free things.
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Ya it’s totes possible that the BO is crazy enough to ruin any sensible plan OP might come up with. That’d be one of them “here’s your sign” moments.
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I’ve been a trainer, barn manager, and now barn owner for 30+ years.
It is time for a meeting with all of your clients. In person.
Make a detailed list in writing of all the services that you’re currently providing in order to give them the quality of horse care and attention that you feel matches your ethics. Explain to them that you cannot longer do these things for free, and give them a choice. You can provide the complete service, or they can accept the limited services in the current facilities plan.
You can offer working student position, and potentially trade lessons for the completion of some of the additional services. I know that that’s at times a management nightmare, but it is a time honored our tradition in our industry, and it does “work“ depending on the people involved.
You can also suggest an alternative to the people who want those services but don’t want to pay. They can organize amongst themselves and get these things done, which might entail a discussion with the barn owner. But that’s their problem and not yours. If they can’t pay you, or they’re too cheap, then they can bloody well organized themselves to take better care of their horses. Scrubbing their horses buckets and other peoples buckets once or twice a week is NBD to lots of folks. Organizing turnout is also something they can do the,selves… And maybe they should try it for a while, and then value your services enough to pay for it.
So what it boils down to as you’ve got to take care of yourself in the situation. If you can’t move come up with plan A, B C.
A) You keep doing what you’re doing but you charge for it. You charge for it even if you have a Working Student doing part of the work. The cash flow is not their business. You change your business model and have full care only as your base.
B) You charge for what you’re doing for the people who want that additional service, and you quit doing it for people who don’t. This takes willpower I know. The non-full-service clients have to get their act together themselves and join forces.
C) Meet with the barn owner, see if they are open to you running your business separately out of their barn for a per stall rate per month. Possibly unlikely, but if you haven’t had a conversation you don’t know what the answer will be. Maybe you can come to a meeting of the minds.
This takes great delicacy, because you could poison your relationship with the barn owner by suggesting that their care is subpar. You have to present this as a positive for everyone. Do you want to upgrade your business, and it will be less work for them. Somehow you have to This takes great delicacy, because you could poison your relationship with the barn owner by suggesting that their care is subpar. You have to present this as a positive for everyone: You want to upgrade your business, and it will be less work for them. Somehow you have to make this sound like a good thing for them one way or the other.
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I read this as the OP is charging. Which is actually a great business model for a trainer working out of a boarding barn.
As a professional, I will say that unless you have the ability to hire very good help, and even then, the “extras” are a huge part of the job. I don’t think a lot of young professionals get that. You’re going to spend just as much time either supervising or doing horse care and barn/ring maintenance etc. as you are teaching and riding. Whether it’s your own barn or you work out of someone else’s. Your own horse and own stuff come last and most professionals will tell you they either can’t manage a personal horse or that theirs is evergreen from sitting on the back burner. And yes, it can be frustrating and overwhelming.
I blame social media a little bit for this when top trainers all post win pictures and pretty barn setups, but no one posts the actual behind the scenes every day unglamorous minutiae that goes into being a trainer. You don’t really get that perspective unless you grow up with a professional in the industry, and I think a lot of young people have a really skewed vision of what being a horse professional really means. I had a blog half written on this, maybe I’ll revisit.
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OP, I thought of you yesterday while I was driving and listening to Karen Rohlf’s “Dressage Naturally” podcast. I’m not a dressage rider, but I occasionally listen to the pod because she’s got a cool mindset. I also heard her speak at a conference recently and she was even better in person.
Anyway, she has a two-day virtual program coming up that may appeal to you - it’s specifically about horse professionals who want to transform or grow their business. Here’s a link if it’s of interest to you:
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