attn: boarding barn owners & employees! Boarders, you too!

If you own or work for a boarding facility or even rent out your own personal stalls, I want to hear about your "Boarders from Hell"

And Boarders, if you have a fellow boarder who seems oblivious to Barn Etiquette, I want to hear about that too.

Of course, please change names or if they've earned a nickname (that they aren't aware of) use that.

I've encountered my fair share of Boarders from Hell. I want to hear yall's stories, so we can see what the most common problems are, and what the best thing to do about it is. Aside from hitching their horse to the front gate and throwing their belongings out in the parking lot...

I've been at both ends: a boarder and a boarding stable employee.

No real bad experiences as a boarder. I've been pretty happy all the places I've been at. Just moved around because a) I moved or b) barn owners decided to sell farm and downsize. I was invited to go with them, but I wanted an indoor arena and trail access.

As an employee... I've worked at 6 different barns from my teenage years until the present day.




Ages 13-15. Cleaned stalls, worked shows and assisted at a horse camp. Small, family owned place that bred and trained Arabians. No real bad experiences here as there were only a few boarders and we were pretty close-knit.

Ages 15-16. Worked at a larger facility. Main adventure here was that the stable owner was very foul-mouthed and racist and didn't understand why I couldn't drive to the store and buy cigarettes for her.

Ages 17-19. Place bred and trained Arabs. No boarding.

Ages 19. Large facility. 45 stalls, and 39 of them were boarders. A woman used to call to make sure we would bring her horse in if it was under 50 degrees outside. Teenage girls decided to ride to friend's house 10 miles away. Didn't tell anyone where they were going. Basically had a posse looking for them. They rode in about 10pm that night, oblivious to the fact that they caused so much worry. Also crossed 2 busy state hwys. Another boarder that was the supplement queen: Rusty needs 1/2 oz of RedCell twice a day, a scoop of MSM once a day in the morning, 1 oz of CortaFlex in the PM, 1 scoop of WeightGain in the AM ...

Ages 19-23. Large in land, small in horse facility. When I first got there, there were only 2 boarders, me and a family with a little Quarter Horse/Arab mare. Parents of that family would drop daughter off with no plan for picking her up (she lived near me so I got stuck doing that more than once). Would ride horse a few times a year and wonder why she would be raring to go. Eventually sold horse. Had another boarder later in time who was chronically behind on her board. Used to brag what a wonderful horse and rider they were, yet she would get bucked off with regularity and she couldn't control him on the trail. Eventually bought property of her own to keep horse at home.

Took some years off and went to college, had a career, lost career, etc...

Present day ... Now working at a medium sized place a few days a week. Mostly baby-sit trainer's kids, but I also barn sit when they go to shows and do some odds and ends for them. Ie, "While I nurse the baby, could you take Sam out and put him in the pasture at the bottom of the hill and grab the buckskin Fox Trotter and start brushing him down?"

She has had a number of interesting clients. She specializes in gaited horse training but will work with trotting horses. Some clients refuse to change saddles on a horse, even if it is causing him pain. We have another supplement queen who has just started boarding there. For some reason, ALL girls under the age of 25 who come there for board or lessons are driven to distraction by the cats and the desire to pet them. To the point where they forget to brush their own horse. She and I joke about it all the time as we never thought that "Put the cat down and go ride the horse" would become such a stock phrase. I'm constantly harping at my DD and stepdaughter about it and she has to constantly remind her lesson students that they are there for horses, not cats.

Another training client who friended all the boarders on Facebook began badmouthing the trainer on Facebook. Since all of us are pretty happy where we are at, we all chewed her out and most of us unfriended her.

I have more stories, but I need to remember more of them

In one barn, there was another boarder ('Tina') that would groom my horse, and who knows what else (and I didn't keep my grooming tools at the barn, which meant she was using hers, risking passing along things - especially if she did this with other horses...). I told her to stay away from my horses but she kept doing it. Another boarder couldn't understand why that got me so upset - until she caught 'Tina' trimming her horses hooves!! ('Tina' was not a farrier). I had left the barn by then.

Some boarders act like 'know-everything trainers'. I'm not the type to butt in to a conversation, but I always cringed when one of them started telling someone what they 'had to do' with their horse. Once, a couple came to check out a place I boarded at. The wife was a novice horseowner, and was talking about how her horse was sometimes a handful. This self-styled 'trainer' started telling her she needed to put a chain through the horses mouth and lunge the H*** out of it, and she'd have to do it a lot, that's the only way she'd get that horse to respect her. I managed to get the couple alone before they left, and told them there's many different training methods, and suggested they check into trainers like John Lyons and a few others for ideas.

One barn offered 'clean your own stall' as a lower cost option to board. There didn't seem to be any controls on it, though - some stalls went uncleaned week after week. Once, several boarders and I got so fed up and sorry for one horse, we cleaned his stall, piled at least a couple feet thick with manure.

One barn ran out of hay. I bought and transported 20 bales of hay, and was reimbursed. After I had to buy hay a second time, I moved.

I have my horses on my own property now. I miss some of the amenities, and some of the social aspects, but stuff like the above I don't miss at all!

I've only worked at two different places so far. The first place was a lovely facility and the owners were great folks. They treated the barn crew like family. They ran a tight ship but I admire that.

One boarder would come and lunge the owners young stallion occasionally and one day she asked if she could "trim" the stallions forelock... let me just mention this stallion was about 6 yrs old, Beautiful, full, well kept forelock, never cut. Au natural. The longest part of it just reached his nostrils. Well, this boarder decided to Cut it and leave about 4 inches of it. I've never been so afraid of a sweet little old German lady in my life She was furious! This case is where I got the "hitch your horse to the front gate" reference.

That was the worst experience there, and that's pretty mild compared to what I've seen since I started where I currently work

I had to board my horses because of a move after I always had kept th myself. This was the only place I could find within a 80 mile circumference. I just paid for the place, since I bought my own feed.
One horse previously had an ulcer, but the barn owner didn't heed my feeding advice about her having to have hay at all times. She came down with an ulcer again. Even after I built a slow feeder that always has to be filled to work as intended, he let the hay run out all the time. His idea of feeding his own horses was 1 flake alfalfa each twice a day and otherwise they stood on a dirt lot. Every four month or so he decided to ride, even when his horse was off for some reason, and then it always was a marathon of several hours. He prided himself to be self-taught and it showed in his riding style; endangering his horse and other riders. I ended up going to my horses later, so it was to late for trail riding and I didn't have to find excuses not to ride with him. I was glad when he sold his farm and gave his horses away.
Then I did find another boarding place in the area, a so-called horse rescue; they were really nice, but the relative frequent coming in of rescue horses withoit quarantine and vet checks took a mental toll on my horses. I also don't think it was good for them having to watch 2 horses getting shot right in front of them and then seeing the carcass in the distance. Also my horses ended up having each a relative serious injury and the barn owner didn't even notice and call me.
At the time I had no other options; finally living somewhere again, where I can keep my horses myself again.

I'm in the FFA, and my school has a ten foot fence surrounding this half acre of grass and trees with a barn area and a feed room. Kids are expected to remove their animals from campus as soon as (or before) they graduate, however we've had several kids leave their animals. Often these kids will come back (occasionally) to feed their animals, and eventually they end up taking them, sometimes months after the deadline. Sometimes we even end up having to take it upon ourselves to sell their animals, for the animals' well being. Recently our Ag teacher implemented new requirements in the contract to prevent people from digging their heels in, but it looks like this one girl is going to leave her chickens anyway. Once, one guy left his Lamancha doe for months, and our Ag teacher ended up having to sell her to a private farm.

Anyway, that's my boarding disaster story. In the new contract we're trying to weed out the irresponsible people by requiring them to be an active FFA member when it comes to competitions, but we have yet to see if it'll work. After all, this year's graduating chicken girl did a lot of competitions, but she graduated yesterday and her chickens are still here.

On top of this, if bad husbandry is reported, our entire program could be closed down, and then nobody would be able to have animals. It's just a bad situation overall, with us "good ones" and the Ag teacher scrambling around trying to keep the others in check.