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Ah the little annoying things. ;D

6K views 57 replies 34 participants last post by  AlexS 
#1 ·
Okay so this isn't a serious rant, more a joke really and everyone feel free to stick your additions on here. Just the little things people say about you or your horse that sting a little bit... even if they shouldn't.

Example: riding in a group lesson, once finished a lady commented on my horses 'tiny pony strides' and how it was 'so cute'. Hey lady, my horse isn't a pony! And those 'pony strides' are the product of six months of hard work teaching him to COLLECT, COLLECT, COLLECT. Yes, we got an astounding 9 strides in the 6 stride line of poles but 6-8 months ago we would've gotten 5 flat, no option of 'collection' offered. :lol:

Clearly I can laugh it off now, and she obviously didn't have any bad intentions, but it makes me wish I could just brag about his progress instead of biting my tongue and saying 'yeah, he's cute isn't he!'
 
#31 ·
I've only ever really had any snide remarks once. Me and another girl at the barn were riding and I dismounted because I was having MAJOR issues with Clem and the cars. There was a lot of "Wow, maybe we should have gone to a movie," and when I said we'd work on her apparent fear of traffic (that she didn't have before) it was "I don't know if she's fixable. She might just end up being an arena horse and that's all."

Excuse me?! She did apologize, saying, "Sorry, but I just think it's funny." I'm glad you find the fact that I'm struggling with a spooking, terrified 2000 pound animal hilarious while you sit on your horse and don't offer any kind of help except that I'm doing it wrong, and why am I not doing it X way?

I won't ride at my barn when there are other people there because of this. I'm a green rider on a green (well, not quite green but not finished) horse. We're making slow progress, but it's a learning process, and I know that. I don't think I could ride knowing that the people watching me are looking down at me because I'm trying to learn and train on my own and their horse is perfect because they all share a trainer or have been with horses their whole lives.
 
#32 ·
I had my (now ex)equitation coach tell me that my POA (Savannah) would never be a good horse and that I should sell her as a broodmare(because she was too naughty to go undersaddle). She also told my mother that I shouldn't go to Octoberfest (it would be my first rated horse show) because I wouldn't be competitive. We sure showed her when I won champion and reserve for my division! She saw me at the same show a couple years later when she was no longer my coach and made some snide remark to the photographer that my mare was a bit spooky. She didn't even know the horse anymore! I really want to send her video of Savannah since she claimed this mare would never be good. Now she does 3rd level movements, had jumped up to 3'6"-can course 3'3"- (at 13.2 she beats the big guys in jumpers) goes tackless and is a great babysitter for beginner riders.

As for merely annoying comments I was showing her Summer of 2011 at schooling shows as my horse was in rehab. Now I am too tall for this pony but I don't think I look too ridiculous (I'm 5'6" shes 13.2) but I would always hear comments as I rode by from people thinking I was schooling her for a small child. I used to braid her for schooling shows as I love how she looks in braids and I would wear my show clothes and after I walked past this woman she turns to her friend and says loudly "Well somebody's overdressed!!!". Whoops sorry I like to look nice at schooling shows! Oh well, these people do make life more interesting! :)
 
#33 ·
The stupidity was my own.

The farrier was out and doing a Draft at the barn. The apprentice left the horses hoof on the stand, and the horse was wobbling the stand all over the place trying to remove his foot.

Because I am an idiot, and I have zero experience of draft horses, I went to remove the foot myself. Oh. My. Gawd.
Obviously I knew it would be heavier, but I had no comprehension that it would be the weight of my house!

The horses foot remained on the stand. :lol::lol::lol:
 
#34 · (Edited)
When people get mad at their 10k western pleasure horse that doesn't lope slow enough or it carrying his head in exactly the right spot 100% of the time. Im like shut up and enjoy the amazing horse all the training you got with zero work or effort. Or when people ask me what me horse's name is and I tell them Eeyore and they start cracking up or when they make fun of his blind eye or his scars or his 14.1 hand size. Although one rodeo a little girl told me she thought his eye looked really pretty.That made my day :')
 
#35 ·
I was heading home from a lesson and was bussing as I often do, normally nobody says anything about my breeches half cahps and the helmet bag over my shoulder, but this time a man did. What did he say? he asked if I rode motorcycles. Yes I'm sure this thin, soft fabric with protect be from skidding across the pavement should I fall and is therefore apprpiate attire for motorcycles.
I also had a friend say BOWLING was more of a sport then riding. BOWLING.
 
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#39 ·
This one is about to get on my last nerve with my in-laws to be. Every time we are in a bit of a tight spot, or mention ANYTHING about money, I get the third degree about how selfish I am because I have horses. Mind you, my fiance loves the horses and told me "don't you dare think about it" when I mentioned that maybe I should sell them since they seem to make it harder for him to visit his son.
 
#40 ·
At one of our endurance rides, I was volunteering at the vet check. At one point, the Sherriff stopped by, complete with handlebar mustache and cowboy hat (this was near a very small Idaho town). Some ATV riders had mentioned how a bunch of horses were on the trails, so the Sherriff wanted to stop by and meet with us as well as request that we contact them when we have rides so they can put up notices (which we already had for weeks).

This was all only mildly amusing, but then the guy comments how we must all be pretty rich because he'd owned ATV's and he'd owned horses, and horses were definitely the more expensive of the two.

The whole group laughed and I proceeded to set him straight that, no, we weren't rich - we just have a different set of priorities ;)
 
#41 ·
Also, when I used to give lessons, so many people would come to me saying they (or a friend/family member) had a few extra acres and wanted to get a horse, so they wanted to take a month or two of lessons and then get a horse.

I don't know if I could ever really explain that 1) There is a lot more that goes into horse ownership than just having a place to put it, 2) Our horses are so broke and we are able to let beginners ride them for a reason, but we still have constant supervision and trainer interaction for a reason, 3) Those $500 horses that are "broke" and are being sold so cheap because of the economy are NOT the kind of horse a complete beginner should be getting, and 4) that they will more than likely have a horse that acts up once in a small way, gets away with it due to a beginner rider without a knowledgable instructor present, and end up in a cycle where ultimately something happens that the horse gets away with and the rider cannot correct, therefore the horse gets away with more, and the rider stops riding and ends up with a "dangerous" horse.

There were so many more issues with this, but OMG these requests scared me so bad!
 
#42 ·
I also had someone request to take lessons from me because she had a horse that threw her a while back (she didn't get back on and that was the last time the horse had been ridden) and she wanted to get her confidence back. Of course, the horse was at a barn in another state, and the girl only saw the horse once once or twice a year. She didn't want to move him to where she lived because he was "happy" at the barn and had "made friends". She somehow expected my lessons, on VERY broke horses, to enable her to ride this horse with a bucking problem when she visited him after 6-month breaks or longer. Uhhhhm, no.

I did not give her lessons. Another trainer did, though, and she ended up being a no-show most of the time.
 
#43 ·
Jillybean... sounds to me like she wanted to get some more experience in the saddle and gain her confidence in general back so she could try to tackle her horses issues again when she got home.

Which leads me to my next point. The amount of miscommunication that is possible in the horse world ;D
 
#48 ·
Disclaimer - I understand if you have a horse that you don't see or can work with for done reason, but I just don't understand paying $200/mo for boarding a horse you can't ride and can't see more than a few days a year, so it just sits there and you can technically say you,"own a horse"
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#49 ·
This friend of my dad's who used to have horses on our farm too was always FILLING us with horse knowledge. Well, not really.

Rusty, my gelding, is a Quarter Horse but is built somewhere in between like a Thoroughbred and an Appendix. He was trained mostly western. I wanted to make him an English horse because he moved faster and had these huge strides.

This dude's comment: Rusty would never be happy as an English horse. He's a great western horse, but I don't think he's right for jumping.

Right... So today Rusty gets all happy when he gets to jump and can jump up to 3' 6" and had a successful first year of showing with a 2nd place in his Non-Thoroughbred Hunter Under Saddle class. No, he hates jumping. Because when he gave me rear threats and attitude in the western pleasure and trail ring he was enjoying it so much...
 
#50 ·
Haha, the same colleague I mentioned earlier continues to amaze me! She's supposedly intelligent and educated, yet she was truly shocked when I showed her a picture of my gelding lying on the ground, asleep. She thought there was something wrong with him! It turns out, she believed that horses and cows are animals that don't sleep and lay down. Never ever. And that a horse is generally the same animal as a cow, just a bit more slender and without horns.
 
#55 ·
my mare is 6 and i got her when she was 3 and hadnt had anything done with her. my friend recently told me she thought that gypsy was a nice horse now but didnt see what i saw in her when she was 3 =/ she was a gorgeous, balanced, well moving 3yo, there was nothing not to like ! it just came off kinda snotty
 
#56 ·
Well, when I bought Snickers, he was overly disregarded by his owners as a clumsy, unproportioned, hammer-headed nothing, commonly reffered to as "The Jerk". He was a slow growing heavy-breed youngster, so going through a fugly phase was just natural and being "a jerk" actually meant him having a very active, curious and dominant mind. All of this used to hurt me quite a lot, I still don't take kindly to anyone calling him a jerk, even if it is meant as a joke.
 
#57 ·
As far as the cost thing, it takes me about 75 a month to feed 4 horses, 2 ponies, 2 goats, and a young potbelly pig. Dewormer is about 30 every 4 months. We own the 12 acres they are on, and it is about 80 a month to feed 12 dogs, cheap only because my husband works at a smoke house and brings home the meat leftovers for them. We aren't rich, we are in our 20s and have a little girl, but like someone else pointed out, you find ways to make it work.
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