Services

Fairbanks Cutting Horses starts, trains, and shows horses of various ages.

Good training will allow a horse to be successful in time.

Communicate your plans and expectations.

Talk about what you want out of a cutting program.

Call for rates and how expenses are handled.

uses a letter from Ol' Joe to a customer who complained about

his monthly invoice to humorously demonstrate what extra things are

done besides training or board.

Dear Customer,

Enclosed you'll find some additions to your bill. We agreed to take your horse to

train for cutting and we agreed to board him at the same time. Your comment the

other day about being gauged by people made me do a lot of thinking, and I think

you're right. I think I'm being gauged since we do a lot of things around here

for our customer's horses besides training and board.

You also told me one time that the only people who amounted to anything were

the ones who looked out for themselves, so I guess I'd better start looking out

for me. Thank you for pointing all of this out to me. From now on, your bill

will reflect the expenses listed below in addition to the training and board. Granted

it's an additional $4-500 per month, but if you want to come out everyday

and take care of them yourself, we'll be happy to deduct them from the bill.

a. Grooming: including but not limited to shampooing, cleaning out

hooves, and brushing. After looking in my personal checkbook, I find my wife

pays $12.00 a week to be groomed at the beauty parlor, and her head of hair

isn't anywhere near the size of your horse, but I'll be generous and charge the

same amount. $12.00 X 5 days = $60.00 X 4 weeks = $ 240.00.

b. Exercising - including but not limited to riding in pasture, exercising on

walker. I also looked in the checkbook to see what the wife was paying for

those exercise classes she's attended, now that really is price=gauging, so I

won't charge you that. I'll just charge you $5.00 for putting him on and off the

walker for exercising and $10.00 for the days we lope him in the pasture to free

his mind from training. He's ridden 2 days and on the walker the other 3, so

that's 8 days of pasture riding each month at $10.00= $80 and 12 days on the

walker at $5.00 = $60.00, so that will be $140.00 each month.

c. Veterinarian work - including but not limited to daily checking your horse

for swelling or any other abnormalities, giving vitamin shots or various other

medications, and using machines on him to keep him free of soreness. I'm just

going to charge you $3.00 a day for the once-over we give the horses each morning

to make sure they're in good physical shape, and we'll start adding $2.00 for our

time and expertise every time we have to give shots or medicine. Of course, if

you'd rather, we can have the vet come out and do that, but you know he charges a

$25.00 house call before he does anything with a horse. Let me know what you'd

like for me to do here.

d. Security patrol - we check our horses every night before bed time, and I asked

a security guard what his company charges to drive by businesses at night. I ain't

gonna charge you that either! We'll just tack a couple of dollars on the bill for that.

It's every night, though, so that's $2.00 X 30 = $60.00

I guess that means you can look for an additional $500.00 on your next invoice for

all the tings we do around here in addition to training and board. If anything else

comes to mind, I'll let you know, and I sure appreciate you pointing out that

gauging stuff to me.

Yours truly,

Ol' Joe