Cob Jockey

This month is the four-year anniversary of creating the co-op, and gosh, I don't think I've ever been prouder of anything I've created. 

Canadian wildfire smoke making for an ethereal sunset

We have proven that it works. Not only that, we have proven that it works under so many different configurations: anywhere from 2-5 boarders and from 24/7 turnout to stalls/turnout hybrid. Not one forgotten shift in all that time.

We've had two people leave in four years, both for good reasons unrelated to the co-op, and we've added three, including the first person that I didn't personally know before they started boarding here. We've also expanded upward in age, and currently have people from their mid-30s to mid-70s participating.

Even with the added workload of the chores only I can do, it still feels sustainable

The crazy part is, almost nothing has changed since I first imagined the way it would work when I had to scramble to find a way to keep the barn open after my trainer announced she was closing her program with very little notice. 

It has worked exactly like I thought it would, with a system of checks and balances so that multiple eyes are on anything that's important, a group of grateful boarders that treat the facility like it's their own, and a workload that is sustainable over the long haul and doesn't leave anyone, including myself, feeling tied down to the horses.

Cold hosing a fellow co-op member's horse who of course had a fat leg while she was out of the country

The only thing that's changed is that I've instituted a probation period for any new boarders after we took it very slowly with our newest boarder and that worked out really well. Any new boarder will have the opportunity to shadow as many shifts as they want before they move their horse in (at least over a couple of weeks), and then once they move their horse in and start taking shifts, they'll have a mandatory 30 day probation period during which either of us can terminate the arrangement for any reason. 

Newest boarder (12.2hh Icelandic) continues to be the cutest ever

That said - for the first time now, we are actually full, not "fake full so I can properly screen potential new boarders." So I don't expect or hope to be adding any new boarders for a long time now. 

Here's to four years down and many more to come! 

For the first time in years, our little barn is full again. All thanks to this guy.

He's a 12.2hh Icelandic, which really rounds out our Breeds of the World thing we have going on. We now have an Icey, two Welsh Cobs, a Paint, a Paint/Morgan Cross, an Arabian and a Thoroughbred. Quite an eclectic mix for a boarding barn, and I love it.

So far, he's been a joy to have around. He eats almost nothing, is sensible in group turnout, and he makes me "Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" every time I see him. 

The addition of his owner also means that each of us are only taking 2-3 feeding/turnout shifts per week. Since I've done as much as 7 and averaged 4 over the years, this feels like heaven. I feed this morning, then I feed on Wednesday this week, and I don't feed again until the following Monday. What?

Introductions were done over the top strand electric fence, and Leah's Pyro was the only one that got shocked, surprise surprise.

I put him on the other side of Disco from Connor, and I wasn't sure how that was going to go. Disco's a chill guy, but a gelding he's never met before sharing a wall (solid at the bottom but bars all the way across at the top) with him could have been asking a lot.

But not only did they share a wall the first night, they gave themselves a whole ass window and had each others heads hanging into their stalls, and they were both fine.

I had tried to pre-empt this with twine the first night before I could run out to get more pipe clamps, but Disco was one step ahead of me

More than fine, actually, as I often find them hanging out next to each other even after I fixed their pipes to where Disco can't knock them out anymore (his favorite activity since he was a baby). So, I guess that was good practice for my stallion being in show stabling someday.

With that, we are well and truly full, not the pretend full I always say that we are so that I get some breathing room on screening applicants (a trick I learned from my previous trainer that I have to say is genius, especially when you're running a co-op, which not every owner or horse will be a good fit for). Seven horses, five people.

New guy grazing with his friend? Pyro

It seems hard to believe, but we are coming up on the co-op's third anniversary.

"You know," my barn owner said on the second anniversary, "I didn't say this at the time, but I had some real doubts about whether this arrangement would work or not. To my surprise, it really has worked out well for everyone."

He wasn't the only one with doubts. For a panicked month that year after my trainer announced she was getting out of the business, I wracked my brain for a solution - we had a facility, we had a non-horsey BO, we had a group of ladies who had only ever full boarded, we had no trainer, and we didn't have enough economy of scale (or money) to hire help at only 7 stalls.

Eventually I fought through the lizard brain panic and created a chore-sharing model that has worked incredibly well, and one that I think more barns around the country could adopt rather than paying criminally low wages to staff or closing entirely. 

In three years, we have had no missed shifts and no drama, both of which I am quite proud of. And it's in large part due to how well that model has worked that I finally gained the confidence to buy the place, so in that respect, the co-op has been life-changing for me. 

I could never run a 20 acre/7 stall/2 ring facility by myself, but with this group of women around me and with no one person being overloaded by chores, it feels sustainable in a way even full boarding never did, with its constant dance to find and keep good help.

So I want to (finally) share the details of how our co-op works in the hopes that maybe it will help some other desperate, lizard-brain-panicked googler someday. I am going to write this out in as much detail as possible, so it will look like a lot, but keep in mind that in effect it makes for about 10 minutes of chores for each person each day, and 30 minutes of chores per person 3-4 times per week.

Note: this post is so long, you may need to click "Read More" below to see the full post.

After a long winter of having three horses and just two of us in the co-op, Leah and I were certainly ready for some extra sets of hands. But that didn't mean we just wanted anyone off the street to join the co-op. This boarding model isn't for everyone, and we have to really know and trust those we entrust with our horses.

So I was delighted when within the span of two weeks, we suddenly found ourselves with five horses and four humans, which is a sweet spot for us. And not only that, they were humans we know and trust: Deb, and my college friend, Tricia.

She, uh, LOVES orange, lol.

Tricia and I have known each other for almost 20 years at this point, and last year she relocated back to the Midwest, specifically choosing to live close enough to my barn to join the co-op. But she temporarily left her 17 year old OTTB where he was on the other side of the country, working off his board by dutifully giving H/J lessons and great trips at shows to a bunch of barn rats.

He is kind of awesome.

He was arriving via a trailer too long to fit up my barn's winding, hilly driveway, so we had to meet him after his multi-day cross-country trip and hope he would walk onto my 1H in Walmart's parking lot. As I told his owner, I had Plan A, B, C, and D, with Plan D being her riding him the mile home down the shoulder of the state highway.

(Side note: COULD NOT be more impressed with CTS Equine Transport. The custom-built air-ride rig was immaculate, the owner/driver was a smart guy who absolutely loves his job, and he went well out of his way for the sake of the horse's welfare, even when he didn't need to. Will definitely give them a call when Disco comes home.)

But - bless a good OTTB - I needn't have worried, as he just walked right off one trailer and onto another without even stopping to sniff it. And his introduction to everyone else at my barn went just as smoothly. We are so blessed that the two newest guys at the barn might just be the best behaved out of everyone on the property, lol.

Magnum's first time seeing grass in 6 years! Our whole herd is acclimating slowly in 15 minute increments this month.

I couldn't be happier to have both horse and owner in the barn. He's sweet, easy to handle, and gets along with everyone without asserting himself. And Tricia has jumped right in on chores and picking up extra work when one of us was sick.

And with that, we are basically "full", with five stalls filled with horses, one stall being used for hay (and oh my goodness I am so loathe to put hay back up in the loft again, so I want to keep it that way!) and one stall that will be Disco's when he comes home late this year or early next year. "Full" barn, and full heart.

On the one hand, I'm still not riding super regularly and life is crazy, so I think I have nothing to blog about.

On the other hand, I'm neck-deep in buying a horse facility and welcoming new boarders to the co-op, and that's almost a more interesting adventure than whatever Connor is up to these days.

Shedding. He's up to shedding.

So let's catch up, shall we? Meet Deb and Ivan. Ivan is only in my life because of this blog, and it's a beautiful story.

Deb has been a fixture at this barn for over 15 years, often being in sole charge of both her horse and the BO's horses for long stretches of time. After a couple of years off of owning horses due to life changes, she told me she was ready to come back, and was horse shopping. 

First look at each other on a soggy West Virginia morning

Her ideal horse would be an Arabian (she's always owned them), a grey (she's always liked them), something that is happy to putz around on the state park trails and maybe dip a toe into endurance with (she's always loved endurance), and something that is safe enough for a retired woman to ride alone when the rest of us are working during the day. 

But her budget was more OTTB territory, so that's what she was looking at until I put a call out to some bloggers to see if anyone knew of anything safe and quiet and cheap that was available, and lo and behold, Austen knew Liz knew someone who was trying to rehome a 12 year old grey Arabian gelding with lots of trail miles and a few endurance miles because they were retiring and getting out of horses. It could not have been more perfect.

Power sliding my truck and trailer around a switchback up a West Virginia driveway

For my part, as soon as Deb said yes, I knew I was going out to West Virginia to get him. Both because I wanted to see Liz, and because I've always had an irrational anxiety about hauling through the mountains, and I knew I just needed to DO it. This was the perfect opportunity.

Hello from the top of the world. The only mishap ended up being my truck throwing a CEL here that went away when we came back down closer to sea level.

So we road tripped. And conveniently got there about 15 minutes after Liz's new Corgi puppy got delivered:

"What year is it? Where am I?"

We spent a wonderful afternoon and night with Liz. Good food, good people, a wonderful Appalachian small town. And of course, a puppy to entertain us.

Little puppy, big world.

Side note: I think the bathroom stall latches at Liz's local microbrewery are secretly a sobriety test.

The next morning, we all went out to get Ivan and head out. After an uneventful 8 hour trip, he was mildly colicky when we got home, but nothing some electrolytes, banamine and soupy chopped hay couldn't fix.

Meeting the natives the first morning

He has since settled in beautifully, cheerfully occupying the low man on the totem pole position in the herd and charming everyone he meets, including his new owner.

Ivan would get about two weeks of being the new guy before our other new resident showed up...

As of this month, we're celebrating one year as a co-op.

A recent Sunday morning on the farm

At our June monthly co-op meeting, I mentioned the anniversary and that I was still sometimes amazed at how smoothly it had gone. The barn owner laughed and said, "I'm amazed too, I didn't know if this was going to work out at first, but it really has!"

It's not just amazing that it worked at all: it's amazing that it worked so well. This has been the smoothest year of boarding I've ever had. Certainly the most work as well, but never so much work that it felt like I couldn't get away. 

My mom doing stalls on Christmas morning

In that year, not a single shift has been missed. Service complaints have been minimal, and when they happen they're something benign like someone left Shoo Fly Leggings on a horse inside when they should've been off. We've seamlessly dealt with 10 day vacations, multiple unexpected week-long absences due to family emergencies, extreme weather, holidays and business trips, and never missed a beat.

Waiting for the hay guy on my day off this week

Even drama has been at nearly zero. We had one moment where something could've gotten petty, but instead of letting it happen, I set a firm precedent that we are not going to use me (the co-op manager) to hide behind rather than directly sharing valid complaints and thoughts with the group. Direct and honest communication is what makes this co-op work, and I'm going to preserve it fiercely.

This isn't something we HAVE to do, but sometimes the BOs can't keep up with the landscaping and I take it upon myself to help out

The top picture to the bottom picture took me an hour!

I think for me the biggest lesson here is that with the right group of people and the right motivations, this might be the most sustainable boarding model of all, at least in this economy. I've seen so many full care facilities close around here recently for various reasons. I've seen so much drama boarding over the years. I've seen so many entitled boarders ask for truly ridiculous demands. 

And we have almost none of that, because we all have skin in the game of keeping the facility open and running smoothly. If one boarder asks for a change that will impact all of us, we discuss it and agree to it, or if there's disagreement we figure out a compromise. It just works.

Neatly organized feed room from last fall

This post is long enough, but sometime soon I'm going to make a list of all the things that did and didn't work in the first year of our co-op, since I've had readers come to me for ideas. Am I an expert, no, but I did write our model and have a year of experience under my belt at this point, which I think is worth sharing.

I don't own a barn, but I do pretend I do sometimes!

Me and the BO working to take down a temporary electric paddock fence we don't need anymore

See the thing about the co-op is that the owners aren't involved in the day-to-day except for anything involving a tractor, so there are some "someday" chores that aren't in our AM/PM chores list but still need to get done from time to time.

What with needing to keep an eye on Disco and the weather being the best it's likely to be for months last weekend, I decided to knock a whole bunch of the things on our co-op Todoist "Barn Chores" board out at once on Saturday.

Rolled over Saturday morning and read the NWS Indy Forecast Discussion, as I do every morning, and even the meteorologists were telling me to get outside! It was our last few days of 60s and sunny before the weather is projected to turn sharply colder and wetter this weekend with no end to that in sight.

(In addition to just wanting to keep an eye on him, spending the whole day out there also gave me the chance to walk out once an hour, give him a treat, scratch him and walk away. This pony will NOT be hard to catch, I swear on the memory of every time I've walked Connor down in the pouring rain/snow/sleet/thunderstorms, I will not let that happen)

I scrubbed the feed bin so that we could dump feed into the right side rather than dropping bags in.

This is such a great feed bin. Each side holds more than two 50lb bags of feed.

I went through the feed room to get rid of anything that shouldn't be there, vacuumed the whole thing, and got rid of duplicate tools that were taking up space.

At only 4 feet deep, this feed room is too small to have anything "extra" in it

All of this is going to the equipment barn which is a separate building about 50 feet from the indoor

I put a couple of screws in to hold up the shelf that rests on the feed bin, and also finally got around to cutting the excess chain off of the hook I put in last year to hold the feed bin lid up. Previously, the BOs pulled the feed bin away from the wall far enough to rest the lid against the wall, but with the hook, we gain a few more inches of space in the feed room by pushing it back - and every inch matters in a feed room this small!

I cleaned the garage door between the barn and the indoor that we just recently started using. My old trainer never used it, but I find it a lot easier to push a button to drop the door than to close alllllllll of the big, heavy arena doors in the transitional weather. It should keep the stalls warmer, and I hope it cuts down on dust in the barn, although it probably won't - our dust doesn't come from our TruTex footing.

I wasn't going for completely clean - it's better than it was.

I took down the aforementioned electric fence. I did the step in posts and the rope, and the BO used the tractor to get the corner T-posts out. Now we can bushhog this hill and get back to using it for conditioning.

Meatloaf helped

I hung the last girth rack and helmet rack. We don't really need them, but we had them sitting around, so they may as well get used.

And I redid the feed board, as well as (finally) hung the feed board and calendar that have been sitting on the counter for the last year since I redid the feed room the first time.

So small, but so functional

It felt good to get so much done! These are the types of things that just itch my brain every time I see them undone, and so it's nice to go to the barn and feel like I can just enjoy myself. Winter can come now!

After 9.5 years of full care boarding, I suddenly find myself managing a modified co-op. How did THAT happen? 

Our stall cleaner quit in mid-May, and finding someone new was challenging. My barn has incredible amenities, but the fact that it's only 7 stalls means the economies of scale in terms of paying someone are just not there. So we went co-op, with the BO's encouragement and blessing. 

Hydrangeas are killing it this year #lazygardener

I know these situations can end badly, but I've boarded with my fellow boarders for several years now. We all approach horse ownership the same way, we're all very detail-oriented, we're all engineers (lol), we all live less than 10 minutes from the barn, and we all want the same thing out of the co-op: to have a high standard of care without any of us feeling like we're so tied down we can't get away.

In case anyone else finds themselves in this situation, here's the high-level overview of our rules:

• Each boarder is responsible for doing their own stall(s) every day
  
• If you can't or don't want to do your own stall, you pay someone else $5 per stall to do it
• As a condition of boarding, each boarder picks up 3 to 4 AM or PM feeding and turnout/bring in shifts per week
  
• BO will continue to provide hay, grain and do anything that involves the tractor 

There's more - we have a full one-pager laying out roles and responsibilities - but that's the gist of it. This model allows for us to either do our own stalls, or pool the money we're saving on the reduced co-op board to find someone to do stalls for us. We can also decide to do that on an individual basis, if say I'm okay doing Connor's (insanely easy, omg) stall forever but my barnmate isn't.

I know $5 seems like a tiny amount, but we all travel quite a bit for work and fun, and having a monetary exchange will make it feel less like an imposition/favor when we have to ask a fellow boarder to cover for us. It's almost more of a psychological necessity than a financial one. No one likes feeling beholden to others.

Barn upgrades: I hung a new saddle pad rack for us

So far it's working out pretty well. We're holding monthly meetings to discuss what is/isn't working, upcoming schedules, etc, and we're all erring on the side of over-communicating. At our first monthly meeting, I encouraged everyone to not hold back, if something is bothering them they have to say it rather than let anything simmer, and so far they've actually done that respectfully, even when it was a little uncomfortable, which is great. It gives me the confidence that we'll be able to continue to modify this in the future, if it's not working in some way.

So who knows if this works long term or not, but so far, so good!