Very difficult experience.
We found the farm manager to be difficult pretty much from the get-go, but we enjoyed the other boarders and the quality of the facilities. We had a number of incidents with the farm manager but ignored them.
In July, my filly developed allergies to a large volume of flies, shredded her fly sheet, was rubbing herself madly, and self injuring (biting her skin). I got anti-histamines from the vet, but also texted the farm manager. I explicitly asked that the fans in the barn be left on (the farm is solar powered). Not only did the farm manager not offer any support or suggestions, the fans were not left on. It became apparent to us that we were not receiving the same level of service as other borders. We also found ourselves stuck one day unable to turn out our horses. The farm manager had no time to turn out our horses. She did not suggest others who could help. I ended up calling around and found a someone to help me out. I shared a copy of the texts between the farm manager and myself with the owner indicating that we felt service was unhelpful. No response.
In early August an elderly horse was euthanized on site and the body was left laying outside the back entry to the barn, untarped or roped off, for two hours. I had followed in the vet on my way to see my horses. The dead horse was laying with eyes bulging, lips pulled back in rictus, in close proximity to a field with a family of coyotes. There were also children riding on site at that time. I was riding my horse Bandit down the back trail when he saw the dead horse and immediately went nuts. He reared, and spun, almost fell over the bank. I almost came off twice, but got him under control when he attempted to bolt. Leaving, I saw the farm manager. I pulled in and explain what happened. She dismissed what I said. I rephrased and asked if it was PTF's policy to tarp dead horses. She glared at me, so I gave up.
Alan left a message for the owner saying that I had had an upsetting incident with the farm manager, and that we would like him to waive 30 day notice as we no longer felt comfortable at PTF. The boarding contract says we are required to give 30 days notice, otherwise we are responsible for paying fees for that period if we leave early.
Rick Tompane, the owner, texted Alan back, clearly not interested in knowing what went on, agreeing that he waived the 30 days but he expected us to be out by Sept 1. Fortunately we were able to get two stalls the next day. I don't believe Rick, or ourselves, believed we could be out that quickly (August 15). We calculated what the board and deed rebate would be for August and added security deposits to that figure and asked if we could settle that week.
Rick immediately reneged on the 30 days notice, said we were only entitled to feed, and indicated that per contract, we would get out deposits back 45? days from month end.
Alan and I were aghast. We reminded Rick that we had our agreement captured in text, and that we would have to go to small claims if we couldn't settle this.
Rick dug in future and indicated that he was assuming we were rejecting his courteous offer of refunding feed we didn't use, and that, per contract, if we refused this offer, we were entitled to nothing. No refund of security deposit, nothing.
After a week we re-approached Rick to see if he had settled down and he indicated that we were the ones being threatening and hostile and he had been willing to settle all along. As it turns out, a new horse had already moved into one of our vacated stalls, so Rick was not losing the money he claimed he was. He is clearly not willing to accept responsibility for the poor service extended to us by his farm manager.
So we're here - out $1,600 and on our way to small claims court. read more
