09/08/2026
COPIED and Pasted from a different barn post. This is the truth right here!
This is well worth the read!!!! Itâs not that we donât want to offer any discounts to anybody itâs just HORSES in general are so expensive! Without loyal customers like you all, word of mouth to book your ride with us, your positive google reviews we still would not be in business. 28 years still open, 3 years under new ownership/management and going stronger than ever!
Thank you to everyone for your continued business and support local businesses! đ„°đđ«¶
Youâre Sad Weâre Closing⊠But Were You Willing to Keep Us Open?
I had a bit of an epiphany this morning.
Maybe it came from spending the last several weeks sorting through 30 years of running a horse business, preparing to sell equipment, watching other farms and barns close, and hearing the same thing over and over:
âItâs so sad to see all these horse farms and businesses closing.â
And you know what?
It IS sad.
Itâs sad to watch boarding barns disappear. Lesson programs shut down. Trainers quit. Small feed stores close. Breeders disperse their herds. Family farms sell. Horse professionals who have spent decades building their businesses finally throw their hands up and say, Iâm done.
But hereâs the part nobody really wants to talk about.
While everyone is sad that these businesses are disappearing, many of those same businesses have spent YEARS hearing:
âWhy is board so expensive?â
âWhy did your lesson prices go up?â
âCan you give me a discount?â
âI found someone who will do it cheaper.â
âWhy are you charging me for that?â
âThatâs way too much for a used saddle.â
âHay doesnât cost THAT much.â
âI can buy one cheaper online.â
And my personal favorite underlying sentiment:
But you love horses.
Yes.
We do.
Thatâs probably why most of us stayed in this industry far longer than good financial sense would have suggested.
The Horse Industry Is a Service Industry
Something occurred to me that I donât think we acknowledge enough:
Most horse businesses are hospitality businesses.
Theyâre just hospitality businesses with livestock, mud, manure, tractors, fences and an absolutely ridiculous amount of overhead.
Think about it.
A boarding barn provides accommodations, maintenance, utilities, sanitation, security, customer service and daily care.
A lesson barn provides facilities, equipment, trained horses, scheduling, education, safety management and an experience.
A trainer provides years â often decades â of education and experience, while maintaining the facilities, equipment and infrastructure necessary to provide that service.
A horse camp, clinic, show facility, trail operation, breeding farm, tack shop or boarding stable is providing a SERVICE to its customers.
Except unlike most hospitality businesses, our âequipmentâ eats three times a day.
It needs the farrier.
It needs the veterinarian.
It needs dentistry.
It needs bedding.
It needs fencing.
It needs water.
It needs hay.
It needs somebody there on Christmas morning, during the blizzard, when itâs 105 degrees outside, and at 2:00 in the morning when something is wrong.
And those expenses donât stop because we didnât have enough customers this week.
Passion Doesnât Pay the Feed Bill
There is a very strange mentality surrounding businesses built around something people love.
If you love horses, somehow youâre not supposed to care very much about making money from them.
Charging enough to actually cover your expenses can be viewed as greedy.
Charging enough to PAY YOURSELF can practically feel scandalous.
God forbid the business makes enough money for the owner to have health insurance, take a vacation, replace worn-out equipment, build an emergency fund or someday retire.
But thatâs what a sustainable business is SUPPOSED to do.
A business that only makes enough money to survive until the next emergency isnât thriving.
Itâs dying slowly.
And I think an awful lot of horse businesses have been dying slowly for years.
We just didnât recognize it because the doors were still open.
Cheap Has a Cost
Everybody has a budget. I understand that better than most.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with shopping around, looking for bargains, buying used equipment or deciding that something simply isnât within your budget.
But there is a difference between âI canât afford thatâ and âYou shouldnât charge that.â
Those are two VERY different statements.
Your inability â or unwillingness â to pay the price of a service doesnât necessarily mean the business is charging too much.
Sometimes it simply means the service costs more to provide than you can afford.
And continually forcing horse businesses to compete on who can operate the cheapest eventually has consequences.
Maintenance gets deferred.
Equipment doesnât get replaced.
Staff canât be hired.
Owners work more hours themselves.
Prices stay artificially low.
Margins disappear.
Burnout grows.
And eventually?
The For Sale sign goes up.
Then suddenly everybody says:
âItâs such a shame theyâre closing.â
We Canât Have It Both Ways
This is the part I think our industry desperately needs to understand.
We cannot demand cheap horse services AND expect healthy, financially sustainable horse businesses to exist everywhere we want them.
We canât complain that the local lesson barn charges too much and then complain when there isnât a lesson barn within 50 miles.
We canât demand bargain boarding prices and simultaneously expect beautiful fencing, maintained arenas, clean facilities, quality hay and somebody watching our horse around the clock.
We canât nickel-and-dime our local tack store and buy everything online, then be heartbroken when the tack store closes.
We canât expect trainers, instructors, barn owners and other professionals to continually absorb rising expenses without raising their prices.
Something eventually has to give.
And very often, that âsomethingâ is the person running the business.
Burnout Isnât Just Being Tired
I think we misunderstand burnout in the horse industry, too.
Burnout isnât simply:
âIâve worked too hard and Iâm tired.â
Itâs responsibility without relief.
Itâs financial pressure.
Itâs physical exhaustion.
Itâs being responsible for living animals 365 days a year.
Itâs constantly solving problems.
Itâs missing holidays.
Itâs repairing fences.
Itâs frozen pipes and broken tractors and vet emergencies.
Itâs managing employees.
Itâs dealing with customers.
Itâs answering messages at ridiculous hours.
Itâs pouring your knowledge, your body, your property, your money and sometimes your entire identity into somethingâŠ
âŠand repeatedly having people tell you itâs too expensive.
Do that long enough and eventually even someone who LOVES the work starts asking:
Why am I doing this?
And Then We Mourn Them When Theyâre Gone
Thatâs the irony that hit me this morning.
We mourn these businesses AFTER theyâre gone.
We share the closing announcement.
We talk about how sad it is.
We reminisce about taking lessons there as kids.
We complain about another farm becoming a subdivision.
We wonder why nobody teaches beginners anymore.
We wonder where the affordable boarding barns went.
We wonder why young trainers arenât opening businesses.
Maybe instead of only asking:
âWhy are all these horse businesses closing?â
We need to start asking:
âDid we support them enough to stay?â
Because liking their page isnât supporting them.
Telling everyone how wonderful they are isnât enough.
Being sad when theyâre gone certainly doesnât pay their bills.
Patronizing them does.
Paying professionals fairly does.
Buying from local businesses does.
Respecting their pricing does.
Understanding that expertise has value does.
And recognizing that a business owner deserves to make an actual living â not merely scrape together enough money to keep providing everyone else with a service â absolutely does.
After 30 years in the horse industry, I donât believe most people running these businesses expect to get rich.
Most would probably laugh at the suggestion.
But they should at least be allowed to build a sustainable life from the work they provide.
Because once theyâre gone, theyâre gone.
And weâre rapidly discovering something we probably should have understood a long time ago:
You cannot love having horse businesses in your community only after they close.
You have to value them while theyâre still there.
