Complaint Review: Mark and Evelyn Susol - Orrtanna Pennsylvania

I think one needs to distinguish between Mark and Evelyn. I only dealt with Mark and was not satisfied with his performance breaking a horse we sent him. The horse was not going under saddle with a rider after almost 4 months and it was obvious that he had also had not long lined her outside the round pen on the ground --even if he was afraid to get on her--as she also did not know basic steering. He sat on her the alst week she was there.  He was also obnoxious  and overbearing.  This is my opinion of him. 

I think the wife is a whole different story and for all I can tell is a decent instructor and horsewoman, married to the wrong person. But it looks like she is getting out of the situation-so I would not hold a bad experience with Mark against her.

I have been a horse owner for 28 years and have boarded at approximately 10 stables with various horses through the years.  I have been a student of Evelyn's for about 4 years now and have earned both my USDF Bronze and Silver Medals under her tutelage.  I have received numerous regional & national titles, to her credit.  My horse is in full training at Cool Breeze Farm and has gone from a green First Level horse to an accomplished FEI horse.  Having said all that, I am stunned & shocked to read a bad review of such hard working and dedicated people.

Evelyn & Mark are top notch.  You could not ask for a better instructor than Evelyn - she loves what she does and excels at her profession.  She runs a tight ship.  All of the staff are accomplished horsemen who take excellent care of the animals.  They know the horses inside out and take the time to do things the correct way.  In four years time, I have never seen a horse mistreated in their care.  My horse has never been ill nor needed the veterinarian for anything other than routine vaccines in that time. Every animal on the farm is properly maintained.  Ask the vet - ask the farrier - ask the clients....  I've been around the block - the care is unprecedented.  Their credentials speak for themselves. 

As for the training, animals are not machines.  You get out what you put in.  Cool Breeze Farm doesn't need to trick people into additional months of training - there is normally a waiting list to get in.  I have watched them turn fearful animals into happy, competent, well-adjusted mounts.  Sometimes it happens in a month, sometimes it happens in 5.  Training takes time...re-training takes even longer. 

It is true that a contract to train a pony was entered into between Cindy Rosen of Union Bridge, MD and Cool Breeze Farm LLC of Orrtanna, PA. It is not true that a beginning and ending date was entered into the contract by Cindy Rosen. When asked to produce their copy of the contract with these facts, they could not. When retrieving our copy of the contract from file, it was found that our Office Assistant who filed it and processed their first payment did enter the beginning date. That is not forgery or done with any intent to deceive, but it was a mistake of the Office Assistant and we never disputed this fact or claimed that Cindy Rosen entered this. We can't find any evidence to support Cindy Rosen's claim to having these dates completed on the contract. Cindy Rosen did not take the time to read and complete the contract until she was attempting to remove the pony from training on a term we dispute. We take partial blame for not insisting that the client complete the termination date although our contract allows for this omission and handled in proceeding clauses. The removal of the pony was prompted by her husband's rouse of a story of how my wife and business partner Evelyn punched their pony when he reared up on the husband in the stall. Evelyn wasn't even present in the stall when the rearing happened, and we have witnesses to this effect. The pony never reared up on anyone in the time he was here either, just the husband who told Evelyn he knew what he was doing. We also have witnesses to their daughter saying in front of Cindy Rosen that this story of their husband was false. The pony was to be started under saddle under a 2-3 month period of time, which was communicated in advance. It was understood on bringing the pony to our facility that we were looking at 2 months and possibly more we would decide later, otherwise the contract would have been completed with the proper ending date of one month as Cndy Rosen claims. It is a standard policy in this industry for training and boarding to be done on a month to month basis with a 30 day advanced noticed required for any termination date. There is no ripoff devised by this common practice, nor any intent to ripoff Cindy Rosen and we fully intended to deliver our services for the full time period.  It is also common in other industries like renting an apartment. I'll tell you how long it takes to stop a pony from biting when you tell me how long it will take your daughter to learn quantum mechanics, each pony/human has their own learning time frame. We never claimed to have fixed that problem or that we would fix that problem but only improve it. And the pony was walk, trot, cantering even outdoors by the end of 4 weeks of training...which technically was only 3 weeks because our Assistant doing the training had a week of vacation that we gave them credit for but did not use as they removed the pony during our dispute. This is progress in training typical of this industry. No, we aren't going to take any questions on our methods when the Rosen's can't even tell the story correctly from the start. If you just needed to end the training for financial reasons we would have been more understanding, but why the rouse? If you want to continue to dispute these facts then we will proceed further with collections for the contractual obligations and defense of defamation.