Livery 'perks'.. I think not!

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Dovorian

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Pleasant lady calls.. wants assisted livery for 20yo NF pony, first pony for her 10yo daughter. Seems very sensible, wants to be assured that there would be some support and availability of further tuition etc etc. Agree prices, all happy and dates to collect pony arranged. THEN, second visit...... expects 10yo child & autistic 15yo son to be left with us to 'ride and enjoy the pony'. Whilst we certainly understand how difficult it must be for the family, we are not qualified to babysit and actually only offer care for the pony.

Is this a common thread, do folk expect to use livery as child care/respite care?
 
Lol if you don't ask you don't get!! ;) on a serious note I suppose she probably struggles to get any time to herself and saw this as a perfect solution!! When I was a kid (30yrs ago) we used to get dropped off at the stables at 8am and picked up again at 5pm - how the poor YO coped goodness knows.

Explain that to have children there unsupervised you would need police checks and suchlike and as you're a livery yard and not a registered childcare establishment .. it aint gonna happen :D

xx
 
This happened to me but I took on the livery as didn't know the 11 year old was going to be left here, often with her friend in tow for hours, on her own. I didn't really mind as she was such a sensible well behaved girl, but worried about the legal side of things. So I wrote it into the livery contract that no children were to be left unsupervised and that if they were, that the yard owners had no responsibility for their supervision or safety. They still left her as we had a mutual understanding that they were doing it 'against the rules'. But I guess I would not recommend this to anyone as I am probably still liable for the girl should anything happen. She is sixteen though now.
 
Its hard luck on them, BUT I cannot see any circumstances in which you could let this happen.

You'd need Enhanced CRB disclosure certs, Risk Assessments, Local Authority inspection, etc etc, plus your insurance premium would rise very considerably! And that's just for starters. If the boy is autistic spectrum then you'll have every social worker/educational psychologist and god-knows-who else crawling all over your place!!

I know of a situation where some adults with special needs ride at a local riding school - they're not permitted to go on hacks but stay in the school, and presumably the riding school has been given the OK to do this. But for a private individual (which I presume OP is), this isn't going to be viable, it would be a total minefield to even consider.

We have a riding establishment locally which offers a sort-of "pony-share" arrangement, i.e. two (or more) people/children share the same pony; and agree on days/times to suit when the pony is available, a bit like a timeshare. Typically it works out as say 4 days/3 days split, then the following week the time-share is reversed. The pony is in a local authority approved & registered yard where there's always supervision and it gives kids a good taste of what pony-owning is about without the commitment of the parent having to buy - and then either child gets fed up or parent gets fed up with being the mucker-out and general slave!

I wonder if there's somewhere in your area that maybe runs something like this? Or even perhaps Riding for the Disabled would be a good start particularly for the boy? It would be nice if this family could start somewhere on the equestrian ladder; but I don't think anyone here will blame you if you send them away!

If you wanted an excuse you could always say that you're sorry but there's too much legislative stuff involved (plus expense!) and that's why you can't help.
 
I was approached by a woman wanting livery for her 7 year old daughters pony, she wanted to know if it would be ok to drop the child at the end of the drive on her way to work and pick her up at the end of the day? I dont live on site and the yard is very small so not always someone around, she seemed quite astonished that I was not prepared to do this and when I told her that no livery yard would look after her child all day she was quite rude telling me her child was very responsible and quite capable of looking after herself!!!!!!! needless to say she went elswhere
 
I think its very very rude of her!
When i bought a horse for me and my then 12 year old daughter to share i asked when i viewed my livery yard if daughter would be ok going on her own - answer was yes but if it had been no I would just have had to make other arrangements.
She should have checked with you first
 
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