I am Denise.  I trained at a public boarding facility in Anaheim, California for years.  This experience taught me what greed and bad management could do to a nice business.  Greed leads to bad management and bad management leads to DEAD HORSES.  Let me tell you one true story.

There was an older woman, we will call her Kathy, her husband had died and she wasn't of retirement age yet so she bought herself a really pretty little Palomino filly.  I believe the filly was between 6 to 8 months old.  Kathy was a decent horse owner.  She was at the stable almost every day after work.  She spent hours with this filly and the filly was coming along nicely, and growing into quite a beautiful yearling.

Well, Kathy had to go on a business trip.  She would leave on a Friday and be back Monday morning.  Since it was August, and hotter than hell here in Southern California, Kathy decided not to pay someone to turn the filly out.  She should be fine in her stall for only three days.  Kathy did tell management that she was leaving town for three days and management agreed to keep a close eye on the filly while she was out of town.  Kathy should have asked  someone else, like me, to watch her too.  She did not.  We did not know that she was leaving town for three days.

The lease holders at this stable are evil and greedy!  If you are gone the stall is not going to be cleaned.  You are lucky if your horse even gets fed.  They keep the stable under-staffed so that the workers only have a short period of time to clean each stall anyway.  Wet spots in each stall are not even looked at.  So if you are not "hands on" you will not get what you are paying for. 

Kathy came back to the stable late Mondy morning to find that her pretty little filly was near death.  She had pooped in her automatic water dish on Friday and she went all weekend without drinking water!  She was so dehydrated that she was near death.  The poop was still in the water dish.  It was apparent that nobody had checked on the filly, or even went into her stall.  If they had gone into the stall they would have seen that there was poop in the waterer.  Nobody went into that stall for three days! 

Kathy's little filly did not make it.  She died in the parking lot right after the trailer arrived to take her to the hospital.  Nobody was allowed by management to mention the incident.  If you did, the lease holder's greedy, evil wife would kick you and your horse out of this public boarding facility. 

I DON'T MAKE THESE THINGS UP FOLKS!

Your thoughts and comments are appreciated.