So - I didn’t see the original post and advance apologies if this gets long & I’m sure it’s the type of story many on here have heard before.
I rode at the same barn from age 10 through my early 20s. Small, backyard place, nothing fancy, nothing formal, instructor was the daughter of the farm owners. Everyone mainly rode Western though some of the younger lesson kids (and later, myself) took an interest in English.
When I started riding there, in hindsight it probably wasn’t “ideal” but I was 10 years old, not from a horsey family, and didn’t know what I didn’t know. The horsemanship was still decent enough when I started though that all declined as the years went by.
I was content just riding, putzing around in a western saddle on whatever horse I happened to be riding that year - could’ve been a dead-broke QH, could’ve been the easily spooked mare who survived a tornado before she landed at this place, and so on. Still remember my first winter of lessons, the instructor had me sit in the tack room and take what seemed like every piece of tack apart and put it back together. I showed occasionally but never anything bigger than the county fair, and the instructor and her mother (who was also a regular presence) really basically turned me against showing from early on, telling me how only the rich kids whose parents bought them dead-broke $10,000 horses did well, and those kids couldn’t REALLY ride, certainly they couldn’t handle some of the horses I was riding (e.g. the mare who survived a tornado and spooked easily - started riding that mare when I was…12, rode her until I was maybe 13-14ish when I outgrew her, size-wise as she was barely 15 hands and I’m 5’8 as an adult and grew a ton around 13-14.)
When I was in high school I started riding an OTTB that these people acquired and then turned out in a field for a year or so before I started riding him. I rode this horse western until I was approx. 18, at which point I concluded that if none of the western saddles in the stable fit him (he had rather prominent withers) then I’d just switch to English - which, really, I was never that interested in Western, when I was a horse-crazed kid with no access to horses, all I wanted to do was jump, I was hooked on the idea, and wound up riding western by default as that’s what was available in the area. So, 18 years old, hadn’t taken an official “lesson” since I was 14 as the “instructor” concluded that as I had no interest in doing a whole lot else with my riding, there was nothing more to teach me (instructor herself really didn’t have a strong background, just typical small-town “I’ve ridden since I was 18 months old” type, didn’t show a lot and there’s a lot of red flags I’ll get to with these folks’ attitudes generally).
So, I rode english. Ultimately “adopted” the OTTB (when I was in HS these people started a “rescue” after taking in several horses from a local neglect case). Showed in one small schooling show in dressage on the OTTB the year after I graduated high school, OTTB died when I was 20 and the same year he died, a few months later, I fell off a different horse that I had started riding instead and broke my arm. That’s when I really started realizing the barn situation I was in wasn’t “normal” at all and started moving to get out.
Red Flags:
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These people were rough with the horses, always had been, and it seemed to get worse once they got more lesson kids riding and became a “rescue farm” after taking in horses from a local neglect case. But these people had always subscribed to the “crank n’ yank” school of horsemanship and if a horse really copped an attitude that horse would get a “come to Jesus” meeting. I still recall seeing my instructor lay into my OTTB, basically whipping him with the lead rope for “crowding her space” (side note: this horse had better ground manners than probably 75% of the horses in that barn) when I was probably 17 years old. That horse did NOTHING to deserve that treatment, the instructor was just in a bad mood and she took it out on the horse, basically.
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These people I swear to god had some mental screwiness going on - not gonna play armchair psychologist but:
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The instructor was in her mid-20s when I was a 10 year old lesson kid, for reference. As I got older, I noticed she almost seemed mentally stuck in that high school drama phase. She was still bitter about her own show career in 4-H approximately two decades after the fact. She probably is STILL bitter about her show career in 4-H and she’s definitely in her early to mid 40s by now wherever she is as she was approx. 15 years older than me & I’m late 20s. She resented all the people who had the money to have horses, etc. and do things. She herself never put the work in, she had a nicely bred warmblood mare, how anyone at this place afforded that mare, I do not know, the mare was an Oldenburg-Trakehner sired by I believe Iron Man. Sent that mare to a trainer for dressage, mare was somewhat trained, don’t know to what level myself, but I had the chance to ride this mare once briefly and she definitely knew her stuff and was solidly trained. Instructor never did anything with the mare, mare loafed around in her stall or in the field 99% of the time, instructor would get a wild burr up her butt, decide to show, sign up for a show, show day would roll around, she’d haul the mare out, put her in a trailer after much fuss b/c that mare barely left the property and show and get lousy scores in the intro class and wonder why.
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They were all beyond catty. This one girl left the barn, this was when I was late teens, like 18-19 first year out of high school, so I was out of 4-H away from that particular bit of drama directly. This girl is still in the area enough to be showing at our county fair. Younger lesson kids in 4-H were all told by instructor to not to talk to that girl. Girl was nice, and even tried to help one of our riders.
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The horse I was riding that I fell off of and broke my arm on, they got it in their heads he was “crazy” (he wasn’t, he just, like 90% of the other horses there, had been loafing around doing basically nothing for an indefinite period of time). And would constantly tell me they thought he was crazy. Oh and they basically forced me to adopt him, he had originally belonged to the owners’ son who never rode him, son was my instructor’s younger brother, probably in his 30s at this time, and a county sheriff deputy to top it off. I pull into the barn one day, recovered from the broken arm, and son is approaching my car, adoption papers in hand. I told them let me ride and I’d think about it (and was dang lucky to buy that much time) and get back to them. I pretty much, with everyone there, had no choice, if I’d said I wouldn’t adopt, they’d just keep heckling me until I did and giving me grief about how the horse was good enough for me to ride but not adopt, etc. Note - the adoption was free but still, I had zero intent of owning that horse. Me owning the OTTB was ultimately by choice.
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The instructor herself was a bully. She screamed at people most of the time. God I want to explain what else she’d say but I think I’ve forgotten a lot of it. Oh, wait, she liked to tell me I was lazy and didn’t want to put the work in, meanwhile I was 18-21 years old, riding English left to my own devices, figuring out everything mainly via books, magazines and the odd youtube video (yes a certain former Practical Horseman columnist who infamously critiqued riding photos is a disgusting dirtbag perv who deserves to rot but his columns circa 2012-2014 when a lot of his cracks about weight and appearances had been toned down were effectively how I figured out some basic equitation stuff riding English. I hate saying that, given what’s long since come out, but, yeah.)
They’d never let me forget how I treated the OTTB I had - I didn’t know what I didn’t know and only knew the horsemanship I’d been around so at one point, yes, I went through a phase where my solution with the OTTB was cranking and yanking and hauling him around in a tight circle if I didn’t know how to get XYZ from him, basically - I’m not proud of it, I regretted it as soon as I started learning better, I was NEVER as bad as any of these people were with the horses, but they always held that over my head the year or so I was still there after he died.
In the last year or so I rode there, it got to a point where I’d purposely try to plan rides there when no one but the lady who fed in the mornings was around. It got to the point where the “instructor” and I would get into a knockdown drag-out argument over christ knows what that would at times end with me heading back to the barn in tears or heading home and swearing I’d quit riding.
The last straw and it was coming before that but this just sealed it really - my instructor decided she wanted to show the warmblood mare at a local horse trial that also had some dressage-only classes basically meant as practice/for fun. This was at a really reputable barn in the area. Instructor is already crabby upon arriving at the show because we got lost and were running late. I’d tagged along with one of the then-HS aged lesson kids, I was early 20s. I wanted to watch some of the eventers because I was really getting into eventually doing eventing. So, we’re all there. Instructor is dressed really not that fashionably compared to like, literally everyone else and this isn’t a fancy show - she’s a short, fat woman, tatty-looking tan breeches, older boots, tank top and instead of, like, an actual show shirt she wore this…like…dickey type deal that, if you pop a jacket over it, looks enough like a show shirt to pass muster, as it had the collar and whatnot, but it wasn’t really a shirt it was like a bib made to look like a shirt. Then she’d put a jacket on before heading into the ring, anyway I’m watching her and everyone else warm up and thinking she really looked pretty terrible (I’d tagged along also to take some photos) up there. Anyway, she goes in, rides her test, wraps up, heads back to the trailer, gets her husband to hold the horse, she heads back up to collect her score. I sat on the side of a hill watching the eventers warm up, including one stable that I knew to have a generally excellent reputation, basically horse-nerding out and soaking in everything I could. She comes back to the trailer absolutely FUMING at us all (me, lesson kid, husband who had a drinking problem to boot, lesson kid’s mom who I vaguely remember also showed up to be supportive)/the world in general. Why? Well, she came all this way (note: we spent over an hour getting there but had we not gotten freakin’ lost that farm was an hour, max, from us) and ONLY got a participation ribbon because the dressage-only classes weren’t being placed (I almost guarantee you there was some fine-ish print somewhere explaining that those classes weren’t being placed/ribboned) and if she was at an actual show she scored well enough she could’ve gotten a ribbon. Folks: I do NOT know how I kept it together, this was a YEAR after I lost my OTTB, we barely ever got to show and I’d always wanted to compete a little locally with him. I’m thinking to myself, “you’re out here, competing, you’re lucky you HAVE a horse, lucky you HAVE this opportunity and what do you do COMPLAIN” I mean, I was friggin’ livid, ranted to my mom about it when I got home, still get ticked (though not as ticked) thinking about it, god, probably seven years later now. And what’s the instructor who was all mad about this do? Take it out on the horse as always. In freakin’ public to such an extent I wanted to crawl in a hole and die and I was just a bystander here. She tries to load the warmblood on the trailer, warmblood is picking up on the bad mood and tension and is having none of it. She gets a lunge whip and she’s hauling and pulling and screaming and generally losing her temper while her husband vaguely shoos at the horse with the whip (he didn’t actually whip the horse, just sort of made a shooing motion from what I recall). Horse has planted itself and not budging. Another woman (well, really girl, I was probably 21 when this happened and this woman had to be younger than me) comes over, offers to help, instructor is all “no we’ve got this,” and the temper tantrum recommenced.
That paragraph right above, the incident at that show. That was my last straw and it was already coming before then - I’d lurked on COTH forums w/o an account off and on enough (also, thanks to anyone on here who’s shared a crazy barn story over the years as some of that probably helped me realize that my situation then was also crazy) that year (and generally read everything I could get my hands on) to also have a sense of yeah this stuff is crazy and noooot normal. I started looking for another barn, tried my best to get the horse I’d had dumped on me into another home but basically these folks had the adoption papers such (well frankly I doubt the papers would’ve held up under real scrutiny as they appeared to be forms printed off the internet) that any horse adopted from there must be returned there so that didn’t pan out and even if I hadn’t been a college student unable to afford board elsewhere well (these people never charged anyone a dime, everyone was pretty much “barn family” you could say), I doubt I could’ve gotten him off the property without them putting up a fight. Sadly, he’s probably still there and my only regrets are that I didn’t get out before losing my OTTB and didn’t at least get the other horse post-OTTB-death out (tried my best to get him out - had a person interested in him as a trail horse but the barn owners just went nooope and insisted they had to approve any adoptions and I couldn’t just sell/adopt/give away my horse w/o their say-so/approval)
Anyway, found another barn, spent probably a year and a half learning to ride better and unlearning the 10 or so years of just straight up bad habits from riding at that first barn so long. Now horseless and not positioned to afford it all anytime soon, thank you post-college and the struggles of adulting generally, not that I really mind - horses will still be there when I’m ready.
