When Mary Behrens was a girl, playing with dolls just wouldn’t cut it.
Playing with horses was more her speed.
When she got older, she parlayed that passion into a business with the help of her father, Bill Harris.
Together, they run a horse boarding business, the National Equestrian Center Inc., which operates as the Huntington Central Park Equestrian Center in Huntington Beach.
The National Equestrian Center was honored with the small business award at the annual Family Owned Business Award lunch hosted by the Business Journal and California State University, Fullerton’s Family Business Council on Nov. 19 at the Hyatt Regency Irvine.
The company boards horses, has a therapeutic riding center and offers trail riding and lessons.
Revenue for the business comes mostly from boarding fees, which are $450 to $620 per month to keep a horse at the center.
Horse owners also pay other fees, including veterinarian care costs and show fees for competitions.
The center has 410 stalls and operates on 25 acres owned by the city of Huntington Beach. The company pays the city a percent of its gross receipts under a long-term contract.
“We have a great relationship with the city,” Behrens said.
The stable employs 25 people.
“If something needs to be fixed, it gets done immediately,” said Nannette Goodrich, owner of Horsen Around Equine Daycare, which does business at the stables. “The boarders are just phenomenal. I think it has to do with the way with the facility is kept up.”
Behrens herself was a boarder at the stable in 1985.
The owner at that time was having financial difficulty keeping the place running, so when Behrens was 28, she approached her father with a plan to buy the business.
In 1986, Harris and Behrens bought half of the business and three years later took over the rest.
Behrens, now 51, since has paid off the loans she took out to buy the business. Recently, she bought out her father.
But he’s still an integral part of the business.
“He is my mentor,” she said. “Being in this business, we’ve grown very close. I always listen to him.”
Harris, a developer, modeled how to run a business and how to treat people for Behrens, she said.
“He helped me learn how to make more money and be more profitable,” she said.
The family also owns apartment buildings in Southern California.
In early 2009, Behrens started Red Bucket Equine Rescue with Susan Peirce. The horse rescue and adoption business came about because owners began abandoning their horses amid the economic downturn.
Peirce visited a nearby stable and found starving horses. The stable owner stopped feeding them because the horse owners stopped paying their boarding fees.
Peirce contacted Behrens, who told her to bring them in.
Red Bucket also rescued one horse that was abandoned along the Los Angeles River.
“A lot of horses are going to slaughter in Canada and Mexico right now” to serve as horse meat for people to eat, Behrens said.
After Red Bucket takes the horses in, it then readies them for adoption. It has found new owners for about 10 horses since it began adopting in September, she said.
The rescue horses are kept in the stables right now because there is space available. But it
is building a pasture for the rescue horses when a better economy brings back more paying boarders.
Documentary
Behrens’ company also produced “Equine Destiny,” a documentary on the rising neglect of the nation’s horses. The film was entered in the Sundance Film Festival.
Behrens other business, Horse Play Rentals Inc., rents horses for trail and other kinds of riding. Most of the rental horses are her personal horses. She owns 20 horses, which she keeps at her home in Orange Acre Park.
“I fell in love with horses,” Behrens said. “So much good energy comes from the horses.”
She also has show horses for “cutting,” which is a competition that uses a horse to separate a single cow from a herd.
While she fostered the love of horses on her own in elementary school, she developed business sense from her father.
Behrens said some of the best wisdom she’s gotten from her father is on how to treat customers.
“Good customer service is key to good business,” she said. “You want happy customers.”
She still calls him every day for advice or a sounding board, or just to check in.
“He has such a great sense of humor,” she said. “My parents are so much fun to be with.
I would rather be with them than anybody else.”
