[QUOTE=junebug;8895372]
Wow, I go away to a horse show and my topic explodes! I appreciate everyone’s input. At this point I’m considering this a friendship (I do really like this guy and we get along very well) I would like to find out what specifically bothers him about people riding horses, what knowledge/experience he has, and educate him if possible. Who knows? Maybe he’ll “see the light” and can share his experience with others who feel the same way as he does.
I was definitely willing to compromise about him being vegan - I was flip in my first post, and didn’t really mean that. I am 99% vegetarian and many of my meals are probably vegan without me even intending it. I don’t think eating vegan full-time would be a good decision, health-wise, for me (though I understand for others it may be the healthiest way for them to eat) I would certainly be willing to try eating vegan for some of my meals. Though I am beginning to see this may not just be about eating, for him, and unfortunately, that will probably be tough for me to compromise on.
I’m curious - if you were in a similar situation, how would you go about educating someone? I have ideas, but will be flexible based on what he says. I do love to talk to people about horses and expose them to things they don’t know about horses/barn life. But what would you tell him? What would you specifically show him at the barn? It’s interesting to think about.[/QUOTE]
OF beat me to it, but I’ll chime in anyway. Sharing your experience with your horse might be helpful to him. If you can, take him to the barn - “Yes, we can go do your thing, but I need to stop at the barn for an hour; can we start earlier?” and then show him how your horse and you interact and point out whatever he does that shows PBF your horse is happy you are there? My mare really, REALLY likes it when I curry the underside of her neck. She stretches out and the lip sometimes goes all fluttery. Whatever your horse does to show he likes something, have the guy there while horsey is saying “Oh, yeah!”
And showing him the existence many mustangs, and actually most wild animals have these days, may expand his horizons too. In the world we have now, most wild things are fighting a losing battle for living space they need being eaten up by developers. The world envisioned by some of those folks just doesn’t exist anymore. So a lot depends on how indoctrinated he is to the “all horses should be wild” view. Is he willing to enjoy the view of starving horses without water on limited pasture, because humans have taken it all?
In one of Michael Pollan’s books (don’t remember which, but I think this idea is in a section that references potatoes), he starts the book out talking about evolution and how the plants have enhanced their evolutionary success by being something humans want/need. The same can be said for domestic animals; if we didn’t need them, there wouldn’t be so many of them! And there are some theorists who believe that the Woolly Mammoth was actually hunted to extinction by the North American locals. What all this means, is that horses might not even exist if we had only thought of them as food. The fact that horses were willing to carry us (so we needed them ALIVE) was their evolutionary salvation.
I was raised in the Seventh Day Adventist Church, so have been exposed to vegetarian diet for most of my life. And also for most of my life have followed the recommended diet, which was pretty much as shown in the old testament for Israel, in that if you eat an animal, it must have fins and scales, and it must have cloven hoof and chew cud, but it would be better to not eat them. That’s how I was raised from childhood and am still a lacto-ovo-vegie. I have always wondered about the people who get so up in arms about my choices. And some do. It never pays for one group to get all blustery with the other. Like so many things, it all boils down to mutual respect of personal choices.
Junebug, because you didn’t describe him as ADAMANT about it, I have a feeling he may well be able to be enlightened as far as using horses goes, and if he comes around, great. But if he doesn’t, that’s okay too. But in that case, I think your decision will be made for you regarding him.
