As a new employee, one of the first things you will hear from Linda's mouth is, "most of my employee's will last as little as one month, or up to six months." This is where you should just turn around and run away. There is a reason behind this!
From face value, the Magical Ranch seems fine, until you dig deeper. Linda is a desheveled woman that barely looks like she showers or finds the time to brush her hair. She tells employees that they can't show up late, but that if you are early, you better wait in your car before you come in. You are expected to check in with her, in the house each day before you start work. The house is unkempt and really just down right gross, with hair balls from animals floating around on the floor, cats on the countertops, dishes and stuff everywhere. You recieve the duties for the day and head to the barn.
The barn is clean, if you are done with chores, you are expected to clean the sills of the isleway and use a shop vac to VACUUM the stalls. Although imacculately kept, the horses are cranky and rude. They zing their teeth against the bars and pin their ears when they see people. When horses are brought in and out of stalls, you better watch out as multiple horses charge in and out, risking that you get injured. If you try to help the horse get over it or reprimand them or anything, Linda will tell you, "You are not a trainer, so don't try training the horses. You are a groom. If I want my horses trained, I will send them out to a national level trainer that can work with them." So, horses spend most of their time thinking that it is ok to drag people around, because they spend 90% of their time doing it, except for the occasional period when they get sent to training. Usually, they get whacked on for a quick fix, so that handlers don't get run over, when Linda is not around. There are also young, testosterone filled stallions running around, dragging handlers and rearing up when they don't want to do something, but "you are not a trainer, " so you can't even help them understand what basic manners are.
Specific examples of Linda's lack of humanity include an elderly trainer trying to work with a young stallion doing halter work. The stallion kicked the man in the head, knocking him to the ground and cut his leg open. Linda rushed past the man, ran to the horse and took him to the vet, with no concern for the elderly man.
Linda coerced a woman that owned a barn that was being forclosed on to write up a fake lease agreement, saying she had use of the property. When the property owners came in to prepare the place for sale, Linda said, "I have a lease agreement here, you can't take this property, it goes against the documents I have." She said that they were living there, she had her adult (40's?) daughter stay in the house, making it look like they lived there. Her daughter lives with her in her house. Since she is a horse hoarder, she was using this place as a cheap way to keep all the horses that she has, inexpensively. She lied (I know the people that had rightful ownership) and said that the Obama law won't let you make people move for up to three months and that she couldn't be kicked out. All a lie. The precursing details to when the gal that got forclosed on moved out don't jive with Linda's scam. She also said that since they owned the place and she was using it that she wanted them to make improvements on the property, so that it was more usable for her. What a joke. Oh, I got it... She got a lease on a 10 acre parcel, with a 34 stall barn, in a prime location, for $1,000 a month in her fake contract... For 5 years... in California. Yeah right.
The funny thing is about Linda acting so concerned about her horses, is that she uses a trainer called Lacey's. She wants these national level trainers to handle her horses, and they can just do whatever they want. When you show up there, you will see nervous horses in the cross ties dancing around with fear in their eyes.instead of being calmed and settled, they are cracked in the legs with a whip until they stand stark still. The solution for Linda's trainers to making a horse "frame up" (esentially, tuck their nose and round their body) is to tie the horses head between its legs and run it around until its mouth is frothing blood. Once the horse hits that point and its mouth is totally raw, it is "soft enough" for her grand daughter to ride. This is an aged horse, mind you. If it was trained properly, it would just stay in frame because it enjoyed it, not stay there because its mouth was totally raw. Linda seemed totally ok with their tactics.
In the end, Linda will come off as a somewhat normal person, but her jargon is filled with negative comments cutting you down and making you question what the hell is going on. She has all these horses and acts as though everything revolves around them, but it really revolves around her and her struggle for ultimate control of every situation. Just look at her husband and daughter to see that. They are esentially slaves to her whim. Her husband is a lawyer, so she uses him to fight her battles and continues to see that she gets her way.
She is a crazy old loon.
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