Oh boy here we go...
Pros: Hours are 24/7 which helped with my work schedule. They have 1 big pasture in the back and 3 smaller (but still good sized) pastures up front, a decent sized indoor arena, 3 tack/wash stalls, and very good hay.
At first it wasn't bad at all. I was happy with being able to be out there in the early morning after I got off work around 5am-6am. I always check my horses' water buckets and usually empty, scrub, and refill them every time I'm there just because I love for them to have fresh water, and most of the time they would be out of water anyway or the water is gross from one of my horses dropping her grain in it when she's eating. This was not acceptable for the owner. She sends me a rude text talking about how they dump water buckets every morning at 8am. Cool, I'll just fill them halfway when I'm there in the morning so they don't have to dump a full bucket. I didn't receive any more texts for a little bit. Then I started getting text again where I was getting yelled at for water.... water. Not like its a necessity or anything...
The arena is a good size BUT there is barely any footing, all of the footing is in the middle. The arena isn't even flat, its wavy with dips and hills all throughout. My horses were constantly tripping and not being able to balance properly because of the wavy footing. I've never seen an arena that isn't flat. That's the least it has to be.
She would get mad at me for riding while she's teaching a lesson. I've never seen such pathetic lessons. It's a joke. I've never seen her give the kids any kind of instruction. She just lets them do whatever they want in the arena for 30 mins while she looks at them and calls that a lesson. The kids have no idea what they're doing and go about like banshees running the horses around.
There is so much water damage and water issues in that barn. The tack/wash rack stalls didn't drain properly at all and get the aisle ways wet and muddy all the time. The aisle walking up to the arena is constantly a mud pit.
The stalls get cleaned 6x a week but at first when I would pick my own stall out, I dug under the top coat of shavings and saw a layer probably a few inches deep of wet and piss that they don't get out at all which tremendously affects the horses' feet and overall health. They just skim the top of the sawdust and call it a day. The hook for one of my horse's water buckets was an open hook where if she bent her head down over it she could have cut her eye open, extremely unsafe.
They do not feed supplements. She says she does but I was there for 6 months and when I checked my supplements to refill them, they hadn't even been opened. So I had to come every day just to give my own horses supplements that I was paying them to give. Thank god my horses weren't on any medication or else there would have been some serious health issues arising. She also did not feed the amount of grain I said to. She overfeeds grain to make it seem like the horses are fat and healthy.
I specifically only wanted my horses out in the front pastures because one of my horses has an old leg injury and I didn't want him to reinjure himself in the back pasture since its all hills and ravines with mostly mud and little grass. After a month or two they closed the front pastures and put everyone in the back pasture. They never told me the front ones were only open 3 months out of the year during the summer.
She quite literally had a problem with me because I was out there so often. I'm at the barn 4-6 days a week for an extended period of time and that was a big no no for her I guess. She thinks "the best boarders are the ones who don't show up." That seemed to be the kind of people boarding there. I only ever saw 2 other boarders there and they were out maybe once or twice a week for 2 hours tops. But because I was out there so often she hated me.
I have a girl leasing one of my horses and I later found out that the plan was to kick me out of the barn and steal the girl who was leasing and have her lease one of their horses.
I decided after a while that this is not the place I want to be with all the unreasonable hostility towards me. I posted an add on some Facebook groups looking for other boarding options. A couple hours after I posted it, I get this nasty text with a screen shot of my post saying that I have 2 weeks to find a new place and get out. That she's not interested in the drama and chaos that I bring to the table. The "drama and chaos" was me giving my horses water in the mornings. As I was collecting my stuff one of the days before moving out, I was searching for my blankets that were on the stall doors but weren't at that time. She took them off and hid them somewhere. So I was searching around the barn for them and couldn't find them anywhere. Later that day she sends me video footage from the security camera saying I was going thru peoples stuff and said she's going to call the cops on me if I'm there again and inform read more
