Owning a horse boarding facility is a lot of fun!

[riderinthestorm]

One of my clients just sent me this youtube link. I've actually had conversations like this with horse owners before. My top story was a family who came through the doors of my barn acting like they owned the place, they'd just won a 3 year old Arabian stallion at a raffle. I'm in IL and the horse was in Florida. They'd never seen it, or ever owned a horse before but the dialogue we had went something along the lines of this youtube video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4HRkAwN_oA&feature=share

Depressing, humorous, true. This is my life and people wonder why I'm such a curmudgeon. My business typifies the mantra that the customer is NOT always right! (In fact, people come to us specifically so we can tell them how wrong they are....)

[MiddleFingerMom]

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[Kali]

2. I don't know how people can stand dealing with "the public" on a regular basis

I try to be a good neighbor and sometimes let people from the neighbor ride on us (guest ranch without enough land for riders who want to go more than a 90 minute circle)

but my GOD they are idiots. Last week after spending literally several hours on the phone, emailing, copying maps, meeting to sign liability waivers and having only ONE request of these assholes - that they stop on the hill above the HQTRS and not come down around the corrals, as I have a stallion out on pasture and he might be in to water and will want to fight (plus our privacy, dammit) - what happens? They blithely ride right by, get a little way down below the house, see the stud horse and turn around pretty quick go back the way they came. meanwhile I try to call the "leader" on her cell phone to say WTF? but of course no answer, no thanks, no acknowledgment whatsoever for the effort I put just for their fucking recreation.

dickheads!

[MiddleFingerMom]

4. If I sign a liability waiver, can I stop by and fight your stallion? n/t

[Kali]

6. ...

:spray: :rofl:



:spank:

[riderinthestorm]

7. I suspect Kali has the long form 1000 page liability waiver too! nt

[riderinthestorm]

9. I dunno, you never know when someone's going to score a great deal on Parelli tapes off Ebay!

And maybe they'll give them to you in gratitude!!111!!



:woohoo: kinda makes it all worthwhile eh? :rofl:

[marzipanni]

3. That's crazy,

and I thought buying ducklings or bunnies for easter was bad! Anyone who would have a raffle with a a horse as the prize should be sternly spoken to by the ASPCA, at the very least.

[riderinthestorm]

8. Oh this was at least 15 years ago so it's past history.

While the whole horse raffle thing was bad enough for me to contemplate, the family that came was worse if possible. They entered the raffle because their 10 year old daughter REALLY wanted that horse - it looked just like a "Barbie"! horse, with a really long mane and tail! So the family thought it would be really neat to win a "free" horse.

What's even more bizarre is that they ended up boarding at my neighbor's farm, bringing the horse up by a very expensive commercial van, and then proceeded to turn the poor animal into a monster. 3 years later they came back to us and wanted to give US the horse. They actually had a clue now as to who was really trying to "help" them and who wasn't. And they had finally realized that even though we must have come across as harsh as the cute little kitty in the video at our first encounter, we'd been brutally honest and they now "got it".

So we turned them down again, (yes we did turn them down in the first place because my husband who is the primary trainer isn't into gaited Arabians, we're eventers if that means anything to anyone) BUT we did give the family some phone numbers of Arabian breeders and told them to give the horse to one of them.

We never saw them again but their ridiculous badmouthing of us did cease and for that I guess I'm grateful??!

[Patiod]

5. One of my girlfriends in HS lost her virginity at a horse barn

A friend now was going on about how glad she is that her daughter has a hobby that keeps her away from boys -- riding -- and I told her about my friend and the stablehand. The story was NOT appreciated.

I can just imagine how annoying it must be to deal with some of these people - I'm thinking of some of my friends and how obnoxious they are about their kids....

[csziggy]

10. I had a similar conversation with a "potential" client

But he wanted to buy one of our colts. I have the policy that I do not sell untrained horses of ours to first time horse buyers. This guy had never owned a horse or ridden one but wanted to buy one of our colts because he was black and the man had just seen "The Black Stallion".

I refused to sell the colt to him at any price under any circumstances once the man was adamant that he was not going to pay a trainer but would train the colt himself. Sounds real familiar, doesn't it?

I later learned that he went to the feed store and started complaining about me being unreasonable then got pissed because he got no sympathy. He later bought a fully trained gelding, ruined it and had to give it away to someone capable of re-training it.

When I was running my boarding business I seldom had problems with the horses, just the screwed up owners!