Meandmyos
New User
Can someone please give me some advice. After spending 7 lovely years on a full livery yard in Wawne, I decided to move my gelding and mare onto a DIY yard in the same area as my gelding had an operation and couldn't be ridden so I thought I would save some money. The `yard' that we went to looked wonderful. The stables themselves were brand new and the owner promised us the earth but there was still a hell of a lot of work to be carried out on the yard itself to make it safe. He had no idea on fire safety and I even produced a fire procedure and even supplied the fire extinguishers as he had no intention of getting them. He took £100 bond money from me and stated that I would have to give 4 weeks notice if I wanted to leave, that was only if the stables were full at the time which is fair enough. I have just left a professional yard and I only had to give a weeks notice as a matter of courtesy and I didn't have to pay a bond either. The DIY yard that I went to was like a building site but the owner promised that he would rectify this almost immediately and get it cleared up. After mentioning a variety of issues relating to the serious health and safety issues of the yard and also the issue of a 17 year old (more like 12 year old) who had 2 stallions on the yard of which she certainly couldn't manage, having never owned a horse/pony in her life, I decided to move on as I could not put either my horses, myself or my teenage daughter at risk. It got to the point where a child of no more than 18 months old was running and screaming around in a nappy and a pair of wellies right behind my horses! The owner refused to do anything about it, the health and safety issues or the issue re the stallions so I decided that I must move on quickly within a week as any decent responsible horse owner would. Having checked with the local planning department I found that the stables had not even had planning permission. Also, after speaking to several other people, they also had not received their £100 bond money back and had also told them that they had got behind on their rent money, as he did to me also. I was in fact a week in advance and am in a well paid job unlike his other two liveries. He even denied even knowing one of his liveries. Some people who have their horses on DIY struggle to afford to keep them at the best of times, without being ripped off by unscrupulous yard owners like this (this is my first and last experience of this hopefully). I am now at a lovely yard and both of my horses are extremely happy and we have excellent facilities already in place unlike the last yard. How can planning applications go through for livery yards without the owners having no plans to get a manager in or having no previous experience themselves - grhhh! BE WARNED SO IT DOESN'T HAPPEN TO YOU.
