Very strange liveries

On my old livery yard, a lady came to ride a very strong Welsh D my friend owned. He was a prone bolter and upon being told this her reply was "thats okay, i'll just sing to him the Lords prayer and he should stop" (yes, she was serious)
 
We shared the yard briefly with a lady and her (very sweet and well behaved) 8yo daughter. Lady had 2 ponies, and both had got the measure of her as small native ponies are wont to do. We called the the Windies, as they were just so windy about everything!

We'd had our suspicions about the bigger pony not being quite right for a while, but as they never really went faster than an ambling walk it was very hard to tell. Then bigger pony started refusing to leave the yard- they'd get halfway up the drive and he'd turn back very calmly and return himself to his stable- nothing nasty, just a determined plod back! This continued for about 3 weeks before they asked Al to try and persuade him to leave the yard. He put up one hell of a fuss for her, spinning and throwing his toys when he wasn't allowed to head home. She won and set off on the little hack- asked him to trot and he was unsound...

Bought him back, trotted him up for the owners and explained he wasn't right...

"Oh", says Mummy Windy, "that's just because he doesn't know his diagonals yet."

Sometimes, there are no words to explain exactly how wrong someone is...
 
One livery who used to be on my yard had a so called nappy mare (never saw any evidence of this). She used to insist on someone else leading her horse 50 yards to the school with her walking a few metres in front because in her words "she knows I am her herd leader and will only go where I go". :confused:

She also insisted that horses that are imported from Ireland cannot digest protein for six months, and got the back person out because her horse was swishing it's tail when we were hacking out on a summer's day surrounded by flies. Neurotic was not the word!!

She even approached the YO and asked him to install a roundabout at the entrance of our yard (there are six stables at our tiny yard) because she didn't like doing three point turns in her 4x4.
 
We had a lady that wouldnt walk to the fields alone :confused: her OH had to go with her all the time or she would be attacked apparently. She left before winter though so I'm not sure how she managed in the winter. Nothing compared to some of these though :eek:.
 
My friend had a right plonker on his yard who claimed to be a 'top showjumper'. He then put a website up claiming to compete competition horses and was based at his own showjumping yard and was looking for Grade A's & B's to compete for owners, when in reality he had a string of horses that he didn't ride and when he did would poo his pants if he jumped higher than 2ft 6. The yard he claimed was his was in fact the yard my friend was on which was a livery yard and he was a livery there. He fooled so many people, but in the end everyone saw right through him and saw him for what he was. I think my friend found it very embarrassing that he lived in this fantasy world and would spout all this rubbish talk at anyone who would listen, but totally amusing also as did everyone else I guess.
 
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I know a bloke who is convinced in his mind that he beat Harvey Smith at Hickstead as a 13 year old! He is`nt on the BSJA data base,actually I think he MIGHT have been in the schools competition once..but he seems to really believe it.
He invents other stuff he`s done ..all complete fantasy ..really needs help .:rolleyes:
 
applecart14 said:
My friend had a right plonker on his yard who claimed to be a 'top showjumper'. He then put a website up claiming to compete competition horses and was based at his own showjumping yard and was looking for Grade A's & B's to compete for owners, when in reality he had a string of horses that he didn't ride and when he did would poo his pants if he jumped higher than 2ft 6. The yard he claimed was his was in fact the yard my friend was on which was a livery yard and he was a livery there. He fooled so many people, but in the end everyone saw right through him and saw him for what he was. I think my friend found it very embarrassing that he lived in this fantasy world and would spout all this rubbish talk at anyone who would listen, but totally amusing also as did everyone else I guess.
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Oh we had someone who did excatly the same thing. I wonder if it's the same person.
 
I had a livery who asked me to clip his (very fine coated) TB mare. Although I say so myself, I did a damn god job, not a tramline to be seen, and livery was thrilled at how smart she looked. I suggested that she needed more than one thin stable rug on, but was ignored. 4 weeks later, one of my other liveries told me that TBs owner was bitching about how I had deliberately not clipped the horse close to the skin so that I could charge them for another clip sooner!
I still don't know how it is possible to ensure that the clippers leave 1/4 inch of hair consistently all over its body - and no tramlines!

Same livery rang me up at 2am to ask if I thought the horse should be brought in, because rain was forecast. They took a dim view of my short and pithy reponse!
 
Oh this thread has made me giggle - and has made me very grateful that I dont have any f these people on my yard - the two other liveries on my yard and the YO are thankfully very sane and nice and we all get on great.
 
I used to keep my pony at livery and the strange behaviour actually came from my mum ( sorry Mum!)

She found is VERY hard to give someone else responsibility for the pony and used to regularly find an excuse to pop over to check on her until I told her she had to stop. The yard looked after the pony in question very well, but when it got colder my mum did a few secret drive-bys of her field to see if they'd swapped her into her heavyweight rug! I am pretty sure the YO knew about it too...it was so embarrassing!
 
horsemadmum1 said:
I knew a girl whose horse was difficult to clip so she had an obsession about rugging it all the time. I was at this yard over the summer and it was a boiling hot day when she put her mare in the field-without the rug! I thought great, its July, won't be growing a coat at the moment and it can enjoy the sun, then I watched in astonishment as she came back to the field, looked the horse, shook her head and ran back to get the rug-which was a heavyweight winter thing. I mean in July? You couldn't say anything because she was in the pocket of the YO, but we all felt so sorry for the overheated horse.
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If I witnessed that situation, I'd be wrestling the girl to the ground to prevent her from rugging the poor thing. Horses can't speak up it saddens me no end.

So many horse owners think they are doing the right thing but they are not. It's down right abuse. I've seen a pony who got so hot in a rug it collapsed due to overheating and another where it broke out in sores under its mane due to over heating. When will people learn :mad:
 
All my fellow liveries are nuts. Must be due to the high insistence rate of hitting the pub or wineclub after doing the horses. They are also far too sociable and....god help me, actually seem interested in how other liveries are doing.

Off shortly to see my weird bunch!
 
There are a couple on our yard who ride almost exclusively on the roads, they only ever use these homemade bareback pads instead of saddles, and they only trot or canter on the tarmac never walk.

The other day they were away up onto the dual carriageway with their ponies. Oh, and they NEVER wear hats. Each to their own and all that but I do find this a bit...you know...dangerous...
 
I knew one livery who had a 'seven day' event horse, I don't know what it did on the other 4 days ! clever person who sold it to them !
 
I think there is always at least one slightly odd person at any livery, and if you can't spot them then it is probably you:p

The only thing that has ever rattled me was a very odd woman at a previous yard who was great friends with the owner. She was an extremely needy individual with severe delusions of adequacy with regard to her own abilities, and who also seemed to think that her relationship with the YO entitled her to dispense unsolicited (and nonsense) advice to the other liveries. However, where this person strayed from "annoying" to "strange" was in her online behavior, which comprised the cyber- stalking of other liveries by trawling various forums and piece-ing together usernames, avatars etc, a task which must have taken an inordinate amount of time and effort, and which severely creeped me out:eek:

In fact I firmly expect she is reading this post now, in which case I hope she recognises herself - unless of course she has now found another target!!!
 
A remember some strange people- one woman wanted her (only slightly overweight) cob to lose weight so fed it top-quality haylage off the floor (not even a small hole net) and would only turn it out in really grassy fields :confused:

Another woman got a 'horse healer' out because her horse was stamping a lot (it had mites) the horse healer said it didn't like 'the palomino horse' in its field (who was my horses best buddy- it was a lovely horse!) and said it was caused by the 'traumatic memory of a past injury' and that she had spoken to the horse and it was now ok- funnily enough the horse still stamped the floor- until the vet came out and treated it for mites :rolleyes:
 
Gracie21 said:
Have friends quite similar. Lovely people but a bit bonkers. 3 of them in a bedsit. The kid however has 4 ponies, they take him to compete every weekend all over the country. They can't afford their electricity/phone bills and often get cut off. But ponies ALWAYS have new tack, or they're upgrading their lorry, or new rugs 'just in case'. BARKING MAD!
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I too have a friend/acquaintance that is like this, in hundreds of thousands of pounds in debt... very rarely have any *proper* food in the house, children don't have new clothes neither are they fed properly.. yet they go out to shows nearly every weekend, do PC rallies, PC camp.. get new bridles, saddles, hats, hat bags etc etc.. they've got 4 ponies (3 are fully shod and 1 is a field trim..) it's pure madness and to be quite honest, i'd put money on the fact that one of the two kids wouldn't even ride if they had the choice! (mother living her dream through her children unfortunetly). Don't get me wrong, they are friends of mine but she REALLY has her priorities mixed up, and i will quite happily tell her this and i have done in the past. I don't agree with it whatsoever!


Never really known any weird liveries, perhaps one, about 6 years ago at our old livery there was a lady with a veteran arab.. she was a bit weird and sadly we suspect she cut our ponies tails off, slashed all of our rugs and punctured our tires but of course.. how could we prove it! :rolleyes:
 
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