I just had a flashback to a few years ago when I was leasing my trainer’s horse. Our teenage working student wanted to practice clipping and my trainer had her call me on the phone (nightmare for a 16 year old!) to ask my permission to clip his bridle path and fetlocks. He wasn’t even my horse and it was totally within my trainer’s purview to just have her clip him, but she used it as a teaching moment to show our WS that you don’t clip, pull a mane, etc without an explicit okay from the person paying the bills.
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When I first read this thread I was reminded of … well… one of my worst days as a working student for a well known BNT up north a lifetime ago. BNT told myself and another WS to get everyone in the barn show-ready: clip whiskers, trim ears, clip bridle paths, pull manes to braiding length, pull, clip, and bang tails, bathe and clip anything needing clipping…
So, of course we did. Everyone was show ready to the nines at the end of the day.
Well, turns out one of the horses in training was an arabian owned by a woman who also did some Arabian Shows with him. His mane was au naturale and we pulled it and trimmed the bridle path. He was clipped and looked as good as the rest of them. When she found out, she was for a lack of a better word apoplectic. She said that having him clipped and his bridle path done disqualified him for some year end show/reward. Oh, she was so, so, so mad. She was holding his leadrope and just screaming into the aisle over it, scaring him, me, and everyone else in the vicinity. The BNT luckily caught her mid-reaming session and pulled her aside and explained that this was how it was done in big show/training barns and it was not okay ever to scream at her working students… but I never forgot that lesson!
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For most of the classes at Arabian shows the rules specify a natural (long) mane. The current rules exempt certain classes (dressage, jumpers, working hunters, the sport horse in hand and sport horse under saddle classes–with the western dressage rules being updated currently) from that requirement and allow shortened/pulled manes for those classes. If that woman had planned to take her horse to the national championship show (or any other of the Arab breed shows) for one of the “main ring” classes, the shortened mane would have disqualified the horse. (Even today lots of the Arabian show sport horse folks keep the long manes and use running braids.)
I totally agree that yelling at the WS is not an appropriate reaction.
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My appy’s mane has not grown in the 5 years that I have owned him. I would have had a meltdown.
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Laugh, I have one that has been more than twice that number of years. But then, she does not have enough mane that anyone would think ‘oh, I need to pull this’ so no worries that anyone will ever touch it.
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Trubandloki, Louie is 10 and I don’ believe his mane has grown more than 2 inches of whispy mess in the 5 years I’ve owned him. I trim up the whispy ends, but that is all I can do with it.
Well… based on this it sounded like she was more surprised by the length more than anything and not necessarily the other boarder doing it. No clue if they had some prior discussion about it happening so not sure how you think this relates to “watch reality TV” which is actually scripted garbage in the first place.
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You seem to be the only one who misunderstood.
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Ok. Doesn’t seem like the boarder making this post is really concerned that their horse was messed with without their consent. So I think there’s missing info. If you want to continue to be an internet troll making snide remarks bc someone interpreted a situation differently than you, then I guess that’s your problem.
I am SUUUUPER late to this party, but this so reminds me of a time I was away a few days and another boarder - who was an acquaintance at BEST - took it upon himself to handle my horse in my absence. I only found out about it by accident, if I recall, and was so horrified I literally was at a loss for words. So. Not. Okay.
At the time I was a lot younger and didn’t have the confidence to confront him about it, so put a sign on the stall door stating that nobody other than staff were permitted to handle him. I’d handle the situation very differently now, of course 
Back to the OP, this person obviously lacks boundaries. Like, what the heck?! I know two wrongs don’t make a right, but gosh, it sure would be tempting…!
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Did you read any of the 114 other posts that were on this thread before you commented? The poster made it quite clear in further posts that she did not ask the boarder to do anything to her horse.
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Yeah, it sounded like a miscommunication issue…
Okay. My friend let me ride her horse once. I guess I can just go pull his mane anytime I want and call it a miscommunication issue if she gets upset.
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I’m so glad we can see eye to eye about the communication issue here. 
Indeed. And just so there’s no miscommunication - please don’t touch my horse without my explicit permission. 
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Well, considering this is the internet and I’ll probably never see you in real life this is an irrelevant statement.
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All this and Doug Spinks too. Maybe it’s the full moon.
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Oh, Doug Spinks! I forgot about that character!
His erudite cellmate showed up on the Spinks thread on Off Course.
Thank heavens for that.
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