Another Change

Though I’ve only been here for 22 years now I’ve seen a lot of changes. There is a lot of trial and error in doing business in a new community. In the last 22 years I have switched banks three times. I don’t know why, but I guess it was a sound decision at the time. I have switched pharmacies three times. One always messed things up and the other had inconvenient hours. I’ve switched my grocery buying four or five times. Some of the markets are no longer here, and another I just don’t like. I’ve switched mechanics four times, one shop seemed totally inept; another closed down another is always booked out months in advance. There are restaurants I no longer ever visit because of disappointment compiled over many visits.

Every where I do business I like to give the establishment or the service the benefit of the doubt. If something is messed up they get two more chances for my business. However some are wrong right out of the box. Once while trying to hire someone to do some logging work for us, the fellow that came to give us an estimate insulted my wife’s horse. That was the last for him and he missed the opportunity to earn tens of thousands of dollars for a six week job.

We recently severed our relationship with a Farrier that we’ve been using for close to ten years now. He was good. His work was great compared to other shoer/trimmers out there. He was able to work with difficult horses and he never injured one of our horses. His vast experience gave him an eye things other farriers missed. Sure he had some quirks about showing up on the scheduled day that was set two months in advance, but I could work around that usually. Only once did I have to call his competition because I simply couldn’t get in touch with him before a camping trip. Though disappointed, we usually we able to bend for his scheduling difficulties.

Finally we were brokering a deal with him in a matter unrelated to shoeing or trimming and when we were down to the wire he was no where to be found. All his promises floated away. We couldn’t reach him by phone and he didn’t reply to our voicemails. Rather than getting in touch with us and telling us that he was unable to live up to the terms he presented us, he chose to ignore us. Ten years of his fine work; ten years of my checks always being good; ten years of conversations and advice and ten years of gifts from us all water under the bridge.

Today we move on to a new farrier. He’s a young fellow with only a couple years of work under his belt, but I’m hopeful he’s the farrier we’ll use until we are too old to have horses.