Stones Throw Farm An Honest Review Galena, Ohio

I boarded here for about a year and a half, I just had one horse at the time.  When I first moved here, I thought it was a breath of fresh air (pun intended).  Then winter hit.  There is absolutely NO ventilation system, and the barn is kept completely shut up every possible second of every day when the temperature is below 50-60 degrees, it is heated, and therefore for a lot of the year it simply reeks of urine/ammonia.  Thankfully I kept my horse in a stall in the arena so he was out of the stench most of the time.

The arenas are spectacularly maintainted, I'll give him that.  Great footing, great sizes (though I've never been at a barn before here where the outdoor is smaller than the indoor).  More than enough room for 8-10 riders so long as they all know what they're doing and use proper ring etiquette.  Unfortunately, several of the boarders that I know are still there and were when I was have no idea what etiquette of any kind is.  They cut you off without a word, let their horses barrel around like crazy with no control, and jump horses that should not be jumping in any way.

Feed is a somewhat adequate amount of most horses.  However the owner doesn't seem to understand that 1, not all horses require the same amount of feed, in fact some need much more and 2, that forage/hay/grass should always be received in higher quantitaties than grain.  I have a very very hard keeper, and I constantly asked for him to receive more hay, however the barn owner kept telling me to buy all these expensive grains myself to feed him.  In doing so, I would be spending a ton more money each month without him giving a discount on my board, and he indicated he would charge something around $40-50 a month for two more flakes of hay a day.  Ridiculous.  Therefore, I was forced to purchase an array of feeds for my horse to try to put on some weight.  I purchased corn oil and alfalfa cubes, and I created a simple schedule to feed both to slowly increase the amounts so that my horse did not founder.  My first gallon of corn oil was supposed to last 5 weeks according to the schedule I had outlined.  It was about 2/3 gone after 6 days.

As far as turnout goes, there is not nearly enough space for the number of stalls filled at this facility.  I think there's something like 5 acres total?  One dirt lot, the rest are grass.  Too bad he uses the grass lots maybe one or two months out of the year.  He doesn't want the horses "ruining the grass."  Why on earth do you have horses on your property if you want the grass to look perfectly manicured at all times?  He said he rotates groups between the dirt lot and the grass lots, which would be great, if it actually happened.  Every single day that I'd come to the barn, my horse would be in the dirt lot with the same 10 other horses.  That's 4, 5, or 6 days a week most weeks.  Nice rotating.  Meanwhile he puts his poor mares on the grass lots, the fattest horses in the barn who need exercise and to get out of their stalls more than once a month, not grass.

About 4 months after I moved here I had to have surgery that put me on crutches and completely non-weight bearing for 4 months.  About a month into my recovery, I caught a ride to the barn as usual with the mother and daughter leasing my horse.  We arrived around 6pm as the owner of the barn was feeding dinner.  He walks by me crutching down the aisle and goes "oh your horse colicked this morning and hasn't eaten anythinig all day."  Excuse me?  My horse colicks and you don't feel the need to call me?  That should have been a huge clue for me to get out then, but instead I stupidly waited another year.

Finally, the owner of the barn says that he hates drama, however he actually thrives on it.  He has an odd idea of what a competent trainer is, and let's rather horrible trainers train out of his barn.  His only concern is money.  There's currently a dressage trainer who probably hasn't sat on a horse in 10 years.  If you can't get on my horse and show me how to do something I'm having trouble with, you're not a trainer.  She's also extremely rude, staring down and giving dirty looks to horses that aren't $80,000 warmbloods.  She also sits on the mounting block while "teaching" and doesn't even give a thought to getting up when someone walks their horse into the arena to mount up.  There's also a "trainer" teaching beginner-intermediate jumping lessons on her ill-trained animals.  This "trainer" has jumped maybe a total of 20 times in her life.  In fact, while I was at the barn, she was taking lessons from myself and a mutual friend, and our lessons were the first real times she had ever jumped in her life.  Yet the owner of the barn finds her to be certified and qualified, while he recently kicked out a fantastic up-an-coming instructor who has experience jumping up through 4' courses.

Basically, the owner of this facility needs to learn a thing or two about equine nutrition, and he needs to stop letting incompetent horse owners and trainers whisper in his ear with their jealousy of others.  If he would do these things, then it would certainly be a wonderful facility to board and take lessons at.