Cluck, Cluck, Neigh

I should have been focused on the arrival of our baby chickens in two weeks. And I was to a degree. The makeshift Rubbermaid brooder still needs to be fully assembled, but I'm close. Nothing a pair of tinsnips and a few screws won't take care of. The feed, feeders, heat lamp and shavings are on standby. The only animal I should be losing sleep over right now are chickens. But I'm not. Prepare for a raging rant...

Instead, it's horses. I've mentioned before how we have given the horse boarders (who were boarding their horses with the previous owners residing here in March), the notice that we would not be boarding on the farm. All of them have heeded that notice and the last boarder left two weeks ago. We should have no animals left on the farm right? Nope. Two horses are still left. Five deadlines have been made and broken, by none other than the lousy owner herself.

Not anybody earns the name "lousy" from me. But this lady is down right LOUSY. Never returns a phone call. This week topped it all for me. Follow me carefully: The last boarder to leave (I'll call her Mrs. Sweet), actually was the one who fed Mrs. Lousy's horses for her. Mrs. Lousy has only shown up once in the last three months to see her own horses, and that was because of a deep wound one of her horses had incurred on the farm (lot of blood) and the vet had to work with the horse quite a bit. That's it. ONCE.

So...when Mrs. Sweet left, there was no one to feed the remaining horses. Mrs. Lousy, knew Mrs. Sweet had left. But Mrs. Lousy never came by to feed her own horses. For FOUR days. And for THREE days I called her six times letting her know that I was growing concerned that her horses were not being fed and there was no alfalfa hay available at all. Now, of course, I'm not going to watch horses starve on my own property, so I fed them with the remaining grain and pellets. But she didn't know that. Never once did she call back. Until today.

All of a sudden, she leaves a message on the machine that someone is coming over to look at the horses, and by the way, she was feeding the horses. A bald faced lie. But to be sure, I made sure to be down at the barn when she came by. We chatted for forty minutes after the man decided that he wasn't interested in a sixteen year old flat footed thoroughbred and a spitfire mean miniature stallion for his wife. After some warming up, I apologized for all of my repeated calls that she never answered regarding the welfare of her horses, and then lined up the bait and switch. "We must have been just missing each other. You must have been coming by in the afternoons." (I had been at the house almost constantly all week, but for the last four afternoons we had been on the property outside). "Yes...(her eyes dodged), in the afternoons sometimes and also at night I'd park on the street and walk down to the barn."

Two minutes later, as she walks down to the barn to "feed" the horses, she asks, "So how are we doing on our grain level?" And I watch as she checks the four garbage cans where the horse food is stored. She sifts around, "We still have some senior equine in there, and enough beet pulp..." For a person who has been feeding her horses for the last four days, she sure did a lot of checking, and asked some odd questions. I could tell you with my eyes closed and hands tied behind my back how much of everything there was in those bins. My blood was boiling.

So here's the kicker. She moved her other horses off of our property to next door over a month ago, but she doesn't want to pay for the last two to go over there. So we are stuck with two horses, the owner neglects, and who rarely you can get a hold of, because she doesn't want to pay for boarding all of her horses somewhere. And we walk this fine line tight rope of what in the world do we do? We can't charge her boarding fees, because then we become a horse business and insurance must get involved. So she sits here for free. I am a finger dial away from calling a horse rescue place, but then their web site has a blip about how they are looking for more available stall space and has over twenty horses already listed. And I just don't know if we can call them truly abandoned yet.

How do you make someone take their animals off of your property when they weigh hundreds of pounds? It is the most frustrating situation I have ever been in with someone. And we're dealing with an unreachable bluthering idiot who is prone to lie badly. Tom Builder keeps telling me that he is two weeks ahead of me in frustration and anger. He still thinks the best solution is to park the remaining two horses in the parking lot of her town home. If I didn't have a heart, I'd do it.