Livery yard issues

[Goofygeldingowner]

Namechanged for this in case it’s recognised.

I moved to a big livery yard with amazing facilities recently- I am not a competitive rider and do a bit of everything. It’s owned by a big local landowner and the manager and staff are lovely.

But...I don’t like the atmosphere there, a few competing queen bee types who have been there years, some competition riders and a mix of happy hackers. I have had two incidents of conflict since being there for eight months, never had any at my previous yard (I moved for distance).

My question is that I would like to put the word out on Facebook that I am looking for a new livery yard but don’t want to alert the current yard in case I decide to stay.

Has anyone been in this situation? Should I set up a new account with a different name? How dodgy does that look though?

I don’t need the drama and it’s too cliquey for me but is this par for the course in all big yards?

Advertise as yard wanted on preloved? Then you can have a new identity 😁

Can you ask a friend to put a Facebook post up ‘asking for a friend’

Everything seems to be done on FB now, although I could put an ad on livery list I suppose.

You know what the horsey world is like-everyone knows each other and I don’t want to risk the yard I am at finding out.
I have been lucky not to experience the yard politics issue before now and it’s gone as a bit of a shock.

Thanks for replies

I would ask a friend to advertise. Write an advert and get him or her to post on the local horse face book pages. Good luck.

I've asked for a friend who was in your position. I framed it asking for someone moving to the area to avoid awkward questions.

I have been in the situation of wanting/needing to move (completely incompetent part livery).

Rather than posting a wanted I did some leg work and rang visited a load of local yards as to not alert the yo.

Could you do this instead?

I know the local big yards but there are lots of smaller more unknown ones that I was hoping to sniff out.
The worst bit about horse ownership is dealing with the people involved. Thanks for your suggestions.

I had this issue before. I found if you join loads of local horsey groups on FB and then run lots of broad searches for "livery", all conversations about any will come up then you can search and contact privately. There are very few, even the smaller ones that have never been mentioned in a FB group conversation, ever.