What's your worst yard experience?

my bfg

my bfg

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Was pottering about down the yard tonight and got to thinking how lucky we are to have ended up there and how crap the previous yards were in comparison. I could write a book on the issues we've encountered and this is only our 3rd yard!

What's everyone's worst yard experience?
 
I've had no really terrible yard experiences but I've had some major annoyances, kind of in the middle of one right now with my horse's sharer but hopefully we can resolve it before we fall out
 
So far, several yards where I've had feed stolen, one where we were made out to be totally overreacting for getting the vet when our horses developed symptoms after being in-contact with strangles (we'd quaranteened ourselves), used to be screamed at by yo on one, yo stealing feed, given notice at 8pm to be off yard by 9am the next day (we didn't do anything wrong, they wanted the stables for their horses in the field and we had 4 horses there!) Sat next to a grass livery (not my horse but owner was away) as it was dying and pts because the yo hadn't bothered to remove a hw rug when the sun came out and we went from cold and wet to 25 C heat over about 2 days

Oh I could go on (and this is only over about 3-4 yards, most from 1 yard) - we are know on a brilliant smallish yard where everyone gets on and is friendly. The horses are the priority not profit and help is there is you need it. Wouldn't move now.
 
TBH, most yards are lovely, but I guess my main gripes would be the YO's who tell you there is always turn out in winter. Then winter comes and you find your horses stuck in for 3 weeks.
Not a problem, we move.
 
Either the yard I've just left, or the one previous to that.

The previous one was meant to be the best in the area. It was VERY posh, but some of the instructors just did not bother with kids. We were stupid kids and that was it. Granted one or two were nice and really tried, but most didn't. The ponies were also dangerous for beginner kids. It was the final straw when I witnessed a girl nearly lose her life. She thankfully was ok in the end.

The yard I just left was really like a second home. It was like marmite - you loved it or hated it and I ADORED it. YO was and still is a good friend. I learnt so much from her and she was the one who gave me Ned. I can't describe the feelings I had for that yard.
When YO left, it was the best and worst thing to ever happen to me. I got Ned, but YM took over. I had great respect for her and although we weren't "friends" we certainly got along well. As time went on, she became more and more sour to me and Ned. I realise he was a pain, but how she treated me was completely out of order. I started losing my hair and gaining weight because of the stress she was putting me under. It will be an essay if I write everything, I am so glad I am out of there, but also heart broken.
 
Wow Chan *hugs* I completely get how stressful that situation can be. Nightmare!

My worst experience was similar to Chan's, more people related than horse related. I was punked by somebody who I THOUGHT was a friend. She'd be all over me asking to come over to my house or for me to go visit her, until my husband got sick of her turning up unannounced at our door. Once she turned up at 11pm and asked to eat a takeaway in our livingroom. Then one day she suddenly stopped and latched on to a new bestbestfriend. After that I noticed I started getting the cold shoulder from people on the yard one at a time, until nobody was speaking to me and I became the yard Jonah. Eventually after suffering in silence for a number of months and just getting on with things it turns out my supposed 'friend' had been blacking my name to everyone else, telling all sorts of really nutty lies about me, saying I had said x or y about somebody when in fact they were things from her own mouth. Eventually she did this with so many people her lies caught up with her and several people opened up to me about what had been going on. I confronted her head on and was faced with a screaming, crying wreck who first tried to deny everything and then told me it was all my fault because I'd acted stuck up toward her!

She's left the yard now, as did the two others who were enabling her and feeding the pot, but we had somebody new come in just a few weeks ago who'd met my 'friend' at a different yard and she'd been bitching about me there too!!! When my 'friend' found out our newcomer was moving to our yard she specifically took her aside and warned her about me! Luckily our newbie has an open mind and didn't take it seriously for one second, but it's scary that this woman wants to black me to everyone.

It's a strange feeling, especially since I'll never ever know what I did to offend this woman in the first place.
 
sounds like some people have had some horrible experiences!

i think the worst was... we were there for 2 years and then all of a sudden it was like all hell broke loose. the ym's son took a disliking to my step dad and inadvertently took it out on me, mum and my horses. on a couple of occasions he threatened to bring the bucket of the tractor down on our car. then one day he took the tractor in the field with 2 of our horses and chased them around and then "accidentally" unlatched the gate to my stallions field. by then we had already found a new yard but it had taken a while as people dont like stallions but it was a relief to get out of there!
 
Goodness Fattylumpkin :O she sounds a bit weird! Glad you're rid of her!
I also had complaints that Ned was dangerous. The woman who said he was dangerous couldn't control her mare, the mare would rile Ned up and chase him around. I would hold my hands up and say sorry when Ned was a pain, but of course, it was ALWAYS Ned, everyone else's horses were perfect. Pft, yea right.
I had to catch her mare once, what a witch!! She tried to kick me as she flew past. No manners and almost knocked me over. Ned on the other hand, I can lead with a slack rope and he doesn't run away from me. She was once also caught waving a fork in Ned's face! I wish I was the one to catch her.
I'm glad I'm on my own now, I've had it with people and their problems!
 
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being told to take away our horse...... in a round about way. we had a large stable at the time on the yard as we wanted to keep it incase we would bring back our big mare (small gelding can fit anywhere).....however we didnt want to pay a £25 per week retainer fee on the stable...so small guy moved into big stable

the yo one day came up to us and said 'oh ive had interest in the large stable....do you think it will be free soon?'...... well with no other stable space obviously she wanted us to go
the only thing we had done was take our mare to a prof dressage trainer for some training...... but y/o's arent the best of friends!
both have moved to prof dressage trainer.....and the freedom to do what we want is great!!!
 
I couldn't believe the old yard I used to be on it was appalling. The amount of bitchyness, pettiness etc was unreal. People broke into other peoples trailers and stole things, someone else had their saddle cut with a knife. Another had their saddle stolen (all by other liveries.) What did the YO do? Yep you guessed it nothing. Liveries would take food and water away from other horses of the people they didn't like.

Not only did this sort of thing go on the YO happily put a number of horses in a field that he knew was dangerous due to toxins in the field. 3 horses died and after the first he was told not to graze equines but he still did which resulted in another 2 deaths and 2 horses becoming seriously ill.

Looking back I can't believe I stayed as long as I did.
 
It was a long time ago now, but I will never forget. We rented stables and field and the farm house was rented to a family. The children would talk to us and fuss the ponies. One night the Dad set fire to the stables with our horse and pony inside. I still get upset thinking about it, luckily the eldest child got the horses out and put into the field and called fire brigade and us. We had to find new accommodation the next day.

I appreciate so much now having our own field and stables next to the house so I know what is happening at any time.
 
Oh my word, Adopter, that sounds horrific. Why did he do such a thing?

I moved my horses to a yard that was just us and the owner. She had three, I had two. I did have concerns about the field set up - having to go through her field to get to mine - but she promised to put a walkway through to enable me to get mine out. It never happened, and she wouldn't let me put mine out if hers was out before, despite me asking her to text me to let me know what time hers would be going out so I could get mine out first.

After being in for two weeks due to me being unable to get him out, one of mine pushed past me when I opened the stable door, I slipped on the ice outside the door and got trampled. I dragged myself up and got kicked on the shoulder as the poor lad whizzed past me, bucking as he went. It was not the horses fault, he was a youngster who had been kept in for two weeks through no fault of our own. As well as cuts and bruises, I ended up on crutches for two weeks, and the woman refused to help me out at all 'because your horse is dangerous'. Erm, no he wasn't, he was going stir crazy because you were inconsiderate and selfish!

As soon as I was back on my feet I rang my transport friend and moved them back to my own land, despite it being 25 miles away.

I will never, ever be dependant on others for land or horse management again, it is too stressful.
 
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I think the worst part of what happened with our previous yard, was that we had been there last year with previous horse, and were very happy. We had looked forward to returning. But there is something wrong apparently between some of the staff, and not knowing this, we failed to indicate what side we were on...so of course everyone took the hump!

Most displeased.
 
It was Mrs Elle, We found afterwards that the Father was receiving treatment for his mental health, so arson was one of his problems.

When I was young we moved yards quite often, there were not many good equestrian livery yards back then, so we often just rented a field. I was 17 before my parents moved into a farm house with land, we all loved having our horses at home, and I could not go back to renting again. I did not get back into horses after I married until we had our own cottage with land.
 
My lad was in a mixed herd with no problems, then a new mare arrived and my lad raped her, no other word for it, poor mare was bitten badly and cut to ribbons and badly shocked, my lad was tested for being a rig and was fine, the YO refused point blank to seperate the sexes, leaving us with no choice but to give up our cottage on the yard and find us and the horses a new home PDQ. YO also changed the rules almost daily, hay and straw was included, yet he was seen more than once, removing hay from my stables, I have large horses and gave them two regular haynets for overnight, I don't like overweight horses so wasn't just getting my moneys worth, I just don't like horses standing hungry
 
Dont even know where to start. My mare slowly started going nervous and loosing weight and was very unsettled in her stable.
Bed was soaked through with water every night even though there was no leak ..? And pony suddenly became terrified of water and bolted at the sight/noise of the hose. So you can guess what happened there, would find her cowering at the back of her stable some mornings with a pile of sharp end up nails on the floor of her stable.
She jumped at every noise, kept getting pulses despite very restricted grazing (laminitc)
We moved in the end as i had a gut feeling this woman wasnt going to stop at the silly games i was right :( mare was at the vets a month or so after moving with an inpaction colic caused by liver damage which was caused by long term poisoning! Luckily as we caught it early enough shes made a complete recovery :D but its scary to think horse 'lovers' are capeable of that!
 
That was all just the tip of the iceburg too, we had all the silly mind games, everyone on the yard that she didnt talk to had tyres punchured regularly. She woukd get her mum (her pitbull ..) up the yard to start fights for her.
Bloody crazy place!!
 
Well our "friendly" YO turned out to be a spineless two-faced *****. We'd helped her through some tough times, overlooked the multiple failings of the yard (turnout non-existent in winter, no arena lights, things always going missing, vile swearing, lies - the list goes on).

We eventually chose to leave and gave notice on friendly terms, only to be thrown off literally the next day under a tirade of scary abuse - not far off calling the police-worthy. Luckily we had somewhere to go and heck, we loaded the vehicles and were out of there in 90 minutes.

It shows you can't make a leopard change its spots, and we now realise we were too accommodating and forgiving.

Never again.
 
God, some horrible stories here, I've least been very lucky with the yards I've been on, no scary stories from me! Fattylumpkin, I had a similar experience with someone a couple of years ago, there are some very strange people out there!

TandD said:
being told to take away our horse...... in a round about way. we had a large stable at the time on the yard as we wanted to keep it incase we would bring back our big mare (small gelding can fit anywhere).....however we didnt want to pay a £25 per week retainer fee on the stable...so small guy moved into big stable
Click to expand...

Isn't that normal? If you want to keep a stable, you pay for it surely? I certainly wouldn't expect a YO to keep an empty stable "just in case" I decided I wanted it. And if a YO has a big stable, that should be reserved for the big horses.
 
Very 1st livery yard experience over here. Things were great for 2+ years. Wasn't a live on yard so as I was closer than the YO I would often feed the horses, turn them out and make the last nightly check, all free of charge. I would also muck her 4 out quite often. OH even helped sort her computer problems out. She started to p** off the other liveries (only 4 of us!) but stiil seemed ok with us. Then, one evening I went down to feed them and noticed that there was barely enough food for the evening feed and definitely not enough hay. She had promised to make sure that it would be filled up in time. Rang her to say that I had fed but they needed hay and there was no food for the following day. I trusted her to look after them. HUGE mistake! I didn't feed the next morning cos of other commitments but trusted her to do it. That evening when I turned up there was no feed, no hay and no straw and the horses had not been fed since the evening before. OMG they had gone almost 24 hours without food. Tried to ring her and she wasn't answering. Wasn't prepared to leave without knowing they would be fed so 1 of the other liveries had a bag of feed at home so she went to collect that and I went to a local farmer and bought 8 bales of hay. We then fed ALL the horses, her 4 included. Fine you would think. Apparently not. She phoned me full of hell screaming how dare I feed the horses. WTF? Needless to say she got back a mouthful and I said I was so angry with her that I would discuss the situation with her the next day in person and not over the phone. She kept ranting and raving so I hung up. She rang back, I didn't answer. At 10pm she turned up on my doorstep. I refused to answer the door. I was so angry with the fact she had starved my horses for 24 hours, if I had opened the door she would have been flat on her back.
I didn't sleep much that night and at 4:30 am gave up and got up to make a cup of tea. Found a letter shoved thru the letterbox teliing me I had to be off the yard by 10am that day.
There was no way I was going back to sleep after that. Luckily I had had the foresight to be placed on a waiting lst of another yard close by. Better facilities. YO there was fantastic. At 8am I was on her doorstep wxplaining the situation. At 9am my horses were already there and by 10 am there wa no sign of me ever being at the other yard. Stables mucked and cleaned out, everything gone, including the hay I bought.
Have never forgiven her for starving me horses. Heard afterwards she was telling people I stole from her. Would like to know what I stole! She was the one stealing from me!
Still get really annoyed about it. Not that you can tell!
 
Found my YO's boyfriend passed out in my horses stable with an empty bottle of gin. Horse was up against the wall, sweating and rolling eyes. No idea what happened to this day. Horse was in new yard by dinner time.

Also had refusal to remove poisonous plants from paddock because "plants have souls and feelings". Horse was down and vet was 90% sure it was hopeless and others were till grazing in the field. THAT one was weird. Horse made full recovery and yard was livery-less in a week.
 
For the most part, I've always found decent, relatively sane yards. The only time I didn't was when I had a summer job in New York City and the only place I could afford to keep my horse that wasn't a hellishly long drive away (although any driving around there was hellish) was on Staten Island.

YO used to say she invented natural horsemanship and Monty Roberts, Ray Hunt, et. al. all learned from her. I was never sure how this one was meant to work since most of those guys are from out West, which is nowhere near Staten Island. And she was not. She was the stereotype -- loud, opinionated, obnoxious New Yorker with the full on accent most people only ever encounter when watching "Law and Order" or Woody Allen movies. More vexingly, if you were doing anything with your horse, she would approach you and tell you that were doing it wrong and unfailingly have some story on hand about how someone she knew was doing whatever in that way and then they were horribly maimed or killed. Her criticisms included, quite memorably, my habit of leading my horse around in a headcollar without a stud chain over her nose. Shockingly dangerous, I know. I said, "My horse is very well trained and well behaved. I'm not leading her with a bloody stud chain!" YO said, "What would you do if something spooked her and she jumped forward?" And then had some story about someone who was horribly maimed and killed while leading their horse in a chain-less headcollar. I never figured out how she squared this one in her head with the whole "I taught Ray Hunt everything what he knows" assertion, as I'm pretty sure Ray didn't lead everything around in a chain.

She also insisted that my horse was in lots of pain and that's why she didn't like other horses. Told me I was flat-out wrong when I suggested that the more likely cause was poor socialization when she was a youngster. Her whole "everything in the world is caused by medical problems" view conflagrated when I went back to my home state to visit my parents for two weeks. Like an eejit, I had asked her to ride my horse a couple times while I was out of town. Halfway through my visit home, I phoned her, just to see how my horse was. She said, "I had the vet out to draw blood for an EPM test." What??? EPM is a disease you see around the East Coast of the US -- it's a neurological thing, like horsey MS. Symptoms usually include obvious loss of coordination, ataxia, falling over. I asked why, as the horse had been displaying none of the above when I left. YO said, "She is stiffer to the right than to the left when you ride her." "I answered, "But isn't EVERY horse stiffer to one side?" YO replied, "Yes. More horses have EPM than are ever diagnosed." That's like saying a person might have MS because they only write with their right hand.

Cheers! So you're sticking needles into my horse for a non-emergency half-baked theory AND then, uh, telling me long after the fact. Great.

Then there was the fact that she used to tell me that she had another farm on Staten Island somewhere, and at this farm she kept rescued lions, tigers, and bears, oh my! Literally. Rescued exotics from people illegally collecting them or dodgy zoos. She told me she used to give the tiger daily walks until she got a bad back and wasn't strong enough to handle him. She was batsh i t crazy enough to make something like that up, or for it to be completely true.
 
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Same as others really which is quite shockingly common, everything vanishing by magic pixies! I even started to lose my horse on a regular basis and got the same excuse every single time "oops he looks just like Pepper" even though RS horses and liveries were in 2 different fields, plus I have never EVER managed to confuse a 17.3 bay with a 16.2 liver chestnut.
 
omg ive been so lucky on yards given the stories im hearing here......!!!!

Worst things happen to me on old yards is the odd thing going walkies... and lasting 6 days on 1 yard because it was just awful!!!! but not as bad as these stories!!!! :o

Im so glad im on a lovely yard now (and my last one) i can leave car keys/iphones/ipads etc lying about and feel fine about that as i know nothing will go walkies!! (i dont as i generally break them..!)
 
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