Complaint Review: Paint Horse Stables- Chatfield Stables

I got a job a Paint Horse Stables thinking it would be an awesome experience and a long term horse job and excellent learning expierence about working in the horse world. Unfortunatly, it was anything but.

While I was there I discovered that out of the 200 or so horses the owner, Bob had, only about 20 were trained, and none were properly cared for. The majority of the horses were in desperate need of a farrier and their hooves were over grown and cracking all the way up. There was even a small shetland pony there that appeared that it hadn't had its hooves cared for in quite a while, in fact her feet were in such bad shape that her hooves looked like they were Dutch wooden shoes, litterally coming to a point and curling all the way up. When I brought this to Bob's attention I was told that he would "get around to it" and that he had experience as a farrier so he refused to pay one to trim all his horses when he could do it himself. The problem was... he didn't.

He also has way to many horses than he can properly care for, and not lacks staff the keep up with all of them. Bob is irresponsible and let his horses breed freely in pasture together. But when the babies are born, he can't remember how many males he needs to have gelded and always ends up missing a few. Leading to more foals to the amount of horses he already can't care for. I met a nine year old mare who had never been trained at all, a paint gelding who had just been gelded and was atleast 10 and would only let you get near his hind end, a horse who was supposedly fully broke to be ridden and wouldn't let anyone get near him, and these are just a few that stick out in my mind.

Bob would always complain about not having enough money, yet when asked why he didn't sell some of the horses, he said because he had too big of a heart. Even though the horses are not living in acceptable conditions and would be living a much better life with people who have enough time to take care of and care for them. I'm guessing this is because he had 2 little girls who thought of all the horses as their pets.

Now, onto why he's a crappy employer...While I was working there there was another kid working there who Bob would always put down and make fun of, even to his face! He would tell him what a crappy employee, and worthless person he was in front of customers and when any of the rest of us would make a mistake, he would tell us to stop acting like the other employee and get our heads out of our asses. He then fired the kid and refused to pay him, even asked me for reasons to tell him why he wouldn't be recieving his last paycheck. Bob came up with the idea that he was going to charge him $20 a day for each day his "uniform" wasn't right. Which meant he was going to charge him for his shirt coming untucked while riding, taking his felt hat off to cool down, forgetting his belt every once in a while, etc. I thought this was pretty screwed up, especially since the kid had a baby he was trying to support.

Not more than a month after he had fired that employee, I was injured by getting thrown off a horse I was riding when the wind blew and rustled the leaves in the trees, spooking the horse I was riding. I reported it to him right away and when I got back to the barn, I was blamed for the whole incident because my "stirups were too short" although they were the lenghth that he had adjusted them to! I worked for almost three weeks after my injury, until the pain in my back, neck, and shoulder was more than I could endure. While I was working, I was constantly yelled at for not working fast enough and not being efficient, when I was in so much pain I could barely move. I finally decided to go see the workers compensation doctor. They took x-rays, and did an exam, signed me up for physical therapy and sent me back to work. When I got back to work, I was yelled at for being on the medications the doctor had perscribed me and was told I was no longer allowed to take them. After putting up wit Bob for three more weeks and working as hard as I could with my limitations put on me by my doctor, sometimes even doing things he'd ask fully knowing that I was breaking restrictions that were put on me, I was fired because I was still taking the medications as directed to my doctor, even though I had gone back to the doctor and been put on different medications that wouldn't impare my ability to work. When I came back to return my keys, I was told that I wouldn't be recieving my last paycheck (how ironic) because I owed him money for his workers comp rates going up. Later when I filed a report with department of labor about it, I discoved all of the unpaind overtime he owed me as well. I ws making 3.25 an hour on average. He actually owed me more than 3 times as much as originally thought.

All in all, s***** employer, s****y buisness parctices, irresposible horse owner...

Cowgirl007
Denver, Colorado
U.S.A.