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[RC] Boarding Facilities - Alissa CowanI've managed a college riding stable with 70-plus horses. The very most important thing in that situation is COMMUNICATION. Owners need to know when the farrier is coming, when the vet is coming, who is feeding, what time, when horses go out, and need to know ASAP if there's something wrong with their horse.What I find most frustrating in my current situation, where I board my horse, is my lack of knowing what is going on. I don't know who is working when, and what time things will happen. It makes me batty! Find a good way to do mass communication with all boarders, even if they don't come to the barn every day. If everyone has email, you're all set. If people are not that technologically advanced, you'll need another solution. I also found (but probably because I dealt with college students away from home for the first time) that I had to keep track of all their horse's records - I had to tell them when to worm and vaccinate and with what, and I had to tell them when their horse was due for shoes. Find a good program to keep records with. And a saving grace, in my situation, was SmartPak Equine. If any horse required more than one supplement, they HAD to use SmartPak, or we wouldn't feed it. Trying to measure out a scoop of this and a scoop of that, twice a day, from six different supplement buckets for one horse - it's impossible. SmartPak saved the day (and, no, I'm not a SmartPak rep. Just LOVED their service!) We also had tack rooms that locked, a barn with definite opening and closing times (although I understand in the real world people would hate this) and a barn with a motion detection alarm that turned on at night - so if a horse got out of a stall the alarm would sound. It, unfortunately, also sounded for cats, dogs, and deer... Alissa =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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