03/17/2024
You're never allowed to complain about the cost of boarding your horse.
Again, you're never allowed to complain about the cost of boarding your horse. Unless, that is, you've owned your own farm for at least a year. You can't complain if you've never cleaned stalls every day, even when you're sick. You can't complain if you've never scrubbed a water bucket or a water trough outside, or broken ice in sub zero temperatures. You can't complain if you've never fixed a fence or repaired a stall wall that your horse took out. You can't complain if you haven't swept the barn more than 365 times in a year, haven't spent hours decobbwebbing with an aching neck, throwing down dust control, watering or washing down the arena. You can't complain if you've never paid for a barn full of hay, or at minimum, helped unload it. If you've never rearranged your family, personal or work commitments to take care of horses, you can't complain. If you've never gone to the barn late at night, before bed time, to make sure all the horses are OK, you can't complain.
If you find the cost of boarding to be reasonably affordable, I hope you thank the ones that are taking care of your horse every single day. Thank them for making it possible for you to have a horse. Thank them for making it possible for you to stay warm and dry while they make sure your horse is the same, at the expense of their own warmth, convenience, or comfort.
You know what might be better than your verbal thanks? Your help! Offer to scrub or fill buckets. Offer to help turn out or bring horses in some time, so the people your paying can have a night off.... because they don't really get nights off. Offer to water the arena that you ride in before you complain about the dust. You see something that needs fixing or cleaning, volunteer to help.
You think you're paying for these services and that's simply enough? I dare you to calculate what these people are making. Just don't tell them the answers to your math because it's likely pretty depressing. They aren't doing this to be rich. At the end of the month, if there happens to be a little surplus, I promise you, it's most assuredly going back into the farm to benefit you and your horse. If they were doing this to make money, you couldn't afford to have a horse.
I posted a meme the other day that said "Horses are for people that love work and hate money" and I can't think of anything more accurate. The work NEVER ends. The money NEVER stops going out. Caring for horses isn't for the faint of heart or the lazy or the "too busy." If you are one of those things and that's why you are paying board, you aren't allowed to complain. In fact, you should be the absolute most grateful. You're never allowed to complain about the cost of boarding a horse, unless you've owned your own farm for at least a year, and in that case, I know very well, that you will never complain.
