A Good bye Letter to my Barn Owner

Dear Barn Owner,

I wanted to let you know that I will be leaving with my horse on September 4th, 2017. We didn't want to leave, but you made it necessary. The day my horse was diagnosed with Cushings Disease was hard. The vet told me that fortunately because we caught it early, with medication, my horse could still live a long good quality of life.

Unfortunately, it was a month or so after I had been painstakingly been preparing plastic containers with his medication so that you could easily mix it with his daily grain, that you casually informed me that "the other horse was sharing the medicated grain" that my horse needs to avoid possibly deadly complications of the disease he has.

You ignored the notes I wrote explaining to you what could happen if he was not geting his medication and why he needed it. You ignored my warning that it was not good for "the other horse" to eat this medication and could cause the other horse to have issues. You ignored my pleas to call me if he was not eating it so that I could come up after working at my full time job with an hour each way commute to come try to get him to eat it.

The final straw for me was when I ran into you the day the vet came to re-test my horse's blood and I asked you if my horse had been taking the medication now, since I had not heard otherwise. You said, "I really don't know. Sometimes he still shares it with the other horse and I refuse to stand there for a half hour while he eats it.". I told you that I knew for a fact that the small amount of grain my horse gets, certainly does not take him a half hour to eat.

You shrugged and said that it was not your job. You told me that I should come up every day, and do it myself if I wanted it done. I told you that was impossible for me because I work full time and do not get home until late in the evening. In the winter that is a pitch black icy walk down to the paddocks where the horses are kept, which would be dangerous.

You didn't care, shrugged, and walked away.

So, I began my search for a new barn. You know, a barn where people don't think that it's too much trouble to give a horse a drug that he needs to live. I am giving you your 30 days notice as per the contract I signed when I came there, but I wish I could leave now. It makes me sad that someone who obviously has no regard for animals places themselves in a role where they are the primary care taker for them. You honestly have no business owning any animal, let alone charging anyone money to take care of theirs.

I have often found it difficult to say good bye. We'll miss the trails and a few of the other boarders. What we won't miss is your callous and uncaring attitude towards the animals under your care, which has occassionally bordered on negligence. I won't even mention the dog that you had locked up in a horse stall alone for over 6 months that bothered me to the point I lost sleep feeling so bad for the animal.

So I bid you good bye dear barn owner. I know that you won't miss me or my horses, but you will miss my money.

Sincerely,

A soon-to-be ex-boarder that cares about their horse