Little livery rant

[pandora69]

I have a stable yard with 3 stables, 2 tack rooms and a feed shed. It is L shaped with a concrete yard with drain in the middle. I rent out one of the stables and a tack room to a lady I know, she has rented it for 2 years.

Now she is a very precious woman, with a very precious horse! She is a pupil of a very well known Natural Horsemanship guru, and worships every word she says. She finds it hard to fit in on big yards as she goes on and on and on about her guru and his teachings. I find her mostly harmless, so she rents from me and keeps herself to herself. That's the background.

Today we have about 18" of snow. I put my two in the field (her's can't go out - he may fall over,) and filled the water but from my kitchen tap with a hosepipe so we would have water when the taps freeze. By 9.30am I had heard nothing from my livery, so I fed her horse and gave him water, and texted her to tell her this. She replied saying she was nearly there - she was walking! It had taken her nearly 3 hours!

She arrived with her husband, and I told her she was daft for venturing out and that I would do her horse for her. But while she and her husband were here could they start to shovel some of the snow off the concrete so that 18" of snow doesn't freeze solid and stay there for the next 2 weeks or however long till it thaws. Cue much muttering. They started to shovel though. I went inside for a few minutes thinking I would come back out and we would clear the yard, and they had gone. They had cleared about a metre from in front of their stable door, moving it in front of my stable door. I cleared the yard this afternoon by myself - it took me about half and hour at the most.

To cap it all off she rang this evening to tell me just how to bed her horse down and make sure he was cosy for the night.

I'm a bit narked I have to do everything. They live in their own little world and don't lift a finger on the yard to do anything except stuff which only affects them. I know I am the yard owner, but they only pay a notional livery for DIY, but constantly ask for me to fix things (fence her horse knocked down,) and provide things ('can't get any hay - hope you don't mind I borrowed some of yours while you were out at work so you need to get some more now because we've nearly run out. I'll pay you later.' Never did.) Just getting a bit fed up.

she is taking advantage, could suggest you tell her that as it now a new year you are reviewing the way the arrangement works and then draw up a list of rights/responsibilities , i.e. no using other peoples hay, a rota for cleaning yard /poo pick up etc. it is easy to feel taken advantage off , you sound very good natured about htings generally .

blimey, and I thought I was an annoying livery customer (leave small trail of destruction behind me, bit erratic with payments, encourage people to stand on the frozen water butt) but think you will be well rid of this one!

What strikes me is that if she is really massively into NH, shouldn't her horse be living out as near to 24/7 as possible all year round unclipped and unrugged? This is what we do at my work which is very into NH... after that is the natural approach . Our ponies do come in sometimes because we have to protect the grazing (and also they have to work) but as much as possible they are out.

She sounds to me as if she is one of those liveries who resent being a livery because really they want their own land and they sadly can't afford it. We had a few of these at my old work and they are always a PITA, they 'keep themselves to themselves' in that they don't join in with other liveries or be friendly (except to dispense, usually not very good, advice and lecture newbies), they moan constantly about every little thing from a sticky gate to a frozen drinker (I mean, how is the WEATHER the YO's fault?) and they keep their own area spotlessly clean, bitching at anyone who doesn't and never bothering to help sweep up or tidy and inch of the yard that isn't directly related to their stabling area.

Very tiresome, get rid and replace with someone friendly who who wants to chat and takes pride in looking after the yard with you.

She sounds an utter pain in the neck tbh. You really should all muck in together, especially in such a small yard. However, I do think that as the landowner you should be responsible for repairing fences, etc., whoever's horse damaged them.

The rest of it is just unreasonable on her part. I would lay down some ground rules if I were you.

The not letting the horse out in case it falls over made me laugh. I used to work for an Italian show jumper who wouldn't let his horses out in the rain! I got to thinking perhaps he painted them and so was worried the paint would wash off in the rain!

Glad it's not just me that thinks she is a pain then.

I should just add that I do do all of the repairs, but I also work away from home for up to 5 days at a time and sometimes it is a physical impossibility for me to fix something the second it happens. Her husband is a carpenter, so I do sometimes think it wouldn't be too difficult for him to put a couple of screws in something her horse broke rather than moaning for 5 days to my mother about it till I get back.

Latest thing that's my fault - the hay supplier can't get his lorry out of the yard, so we are out of hay. Or rather, she is out of hay. I drove down to the suppliers and picked a few bales up for myself, and she is hinting she would like me to pop out and get her some. Er, no.

Ah, point taken about the repairs

Some people are just piss takers, and I am afraid you have one of them at your yard. I can only see this getting worse, so perhaps it's time to serve notice?

I wish we could come to your yard, we are very helpful. My stepdad is always repairing fencing and gates that the owner is too lazy to do and whenever we are the first to arrive in bad weather we go round and break the ice on every single trough. No one else ever bothers. In fact the fields have now been reorganised so the troughs are all shared (ie the fence goes across the top so each trough serves two paddocks). Can you believe the people each side of us have only broken the ice on their bits, leaving our sides still frozen?! I mean, how could anyone be that lazy and selfish when they know the horses are waiting for a drink? We have also been giving hay to some horses whose owners can't get over, yet when one of ours was caught up in the electric fencing he had to wait until my mum could get there to free him as all the other people did was phone her. You'd think about 5 'experienced'(so called, I wouldn't trust them with mine) horse people could manage to free one docile cob between them wouldn't you? I've managed to do it by myself plenty of times when other peoples' horses have been in trouble.
Pandora, we have to put up with people like this but you don't. I'm sure you could find someone with a much better attitude!

I am helpful too

pulped and mixed almost ALL the feeds last night and only dropped two of them

Where are you Pandora? And do you want 2 new liveries?

Our yard is great, i am the only person there (no, i am not that bad) but the yard owner is a bit clueless. Obviously taps etc have been frozen, so i keep my kettle filled up and it takes about 10mins for the tap and pipe to defrost fully - no problem. However, the yard owner has decided to wrap the pipe up so i can't get to it and have the tap trickling 24/7. We now have a skating rink for a yard with ice about 4inches thick. He thinks he is genius for sorting out the water 'problem'