I think it is kinder, rather than dump friends in order to not talk trash about them to others, to simply develop the art of the noncommittal reply. It’s a useful skill.
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Well sure I’ll cut loose folks that are being truly awful. But OP’s friend is just buying horses and matchy matchy accessories. Not exactly a moral failing.
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Re: Venting
So… You’ve read my threads/replies about my questionably horse-wise friends? 
Guilty as charged 
But they do have redeeming qualities, so I just try to keep things non-horsey or do a lot of lip-biting & try to stop eyes from rolling.
The Struggle is Real.
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It’s called a Ride and Tie. I was all for this until I found out each person has to take their turns running. LOL
I had a friend once ask about riding one of my horses. Neither is suitable for a beginner. When I told her this she replied that she’s not a beginner. She rode a horse at the beach once. You know, one of those rental string horses.
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Me to guy on the phone representing himself as an expert who wanted to teach his girlfriend on one of the barn lesson horses, that is, teach her himself: “So you’ve ridden before?” “Oh yes, I’ve ridden!” “How long?” “It was all day!”
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Well that gave me my first real laugh of the day, and I needed it, thank you.
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I was eating. Inhaling rice is unpleasant. But that really gave me a laugh. I can hear it in my head very clearly.
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I used to work at a dude ranch and testing the clients’ skill level in the ring was one of my duties to check if they were REALLY as skilled as they claimed.
Hint: almost none of them were.
This one time, I sat an adult man on one of our calmest mares, as he wanted to go on a wtc ride and I needed to test his ability. He was almost insulted - as he was VERY experienced and once, on a beach ride in Cyprus, was even able to sit through the mad galloping of an out of control Arab stallion!
“See, see?! This is how fast he was going!” - he exclaimed with excitement, as a young child trotted along in snail-pace on the back of an ancient gelding.
The client ended up being taken on a walk-only ride.
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I worked at a local TB farms, breaking babies and galloping 2 year olds, and they pretty much had an help wanted ad for exercise riders running all the time. The ad explicitly stated “Must have experience galloping TB race horses.” The people who showed up to apply for the job were…interesting. Lot of backyardigans, people who had never ridden outside a ring or faster than a lope. It was both fun and scary to watch. My favorites were the ones who showed up in sneakers and didn’t have their own helmet. But they were all “very experienced.”
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My husband and I went to a fishing lodge by Yellowstone, and they also offered trail rides. The deal was I’d fish with him if he’d ride with me.
The wrangler asked the group questions about their experience, and out of the 8 there, my husband was the only one to say he really wasn’t a rider. Everyone else said they were experienced. We walked, trotted and loped along for a couple of hours.
Next morning, as the guests came into the lodge for breakfast, I was the only one not limping.
The wrangler stood up and said she had an announcement, that my husband and I were the only ones that weren’t either delusional or liars. It was pretty hilarious. One man asked me why I wasn’t sore. I answered that I rode three horses a day, five days a week, so I was used to it. He definitely had a light bulb moment as he said “Oh, I guess it’s exercise after all”.
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Lord help you when you advertise a horse as suitable for a junior or amateur. That one showed up in a pink velour track suit with the requisite white tennies. Amateur has different meanings to non-horse people.
I’ve shared this one on the board before: Horse was advertised as suitable for the whole family to ride. Well, the whole family, including Grandpa, showed up to spend the day riding.
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I was picturing everyone wanting to climb on board together,
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hahaha did we work on the same ranch?
I can almost recount the same story, but the man insisted he had horses in Texas and rode them all the time. Yet this jerk would grab the horn and yank the reins out of fear anytime one of our saintly trail horses shuffled into a jog or had to take a large step to get over a rock or tree root.
After witnessing enough mouth-snatching I told him that if he did it one more time I would take his reins away. He wouldn’t listen to any riding tips or instructions - every time I woudl offer a correction he would snap something about how “that is how he did it in Texas” Sure enough Mr. “Experienced Rider” kept yanking on the reins, so I removed the bridle, and ponied him off of my horse (all horses had a halter under the bridle). He was upset that I interrupted his “cowboy fantasy” but i’m not going to sacrifice a good horse to fuel his delusions.
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I think I shared this one too. Went with hubby and his friend on a charter fishing trip on the Peninsula (WA state), well they fished and I went go ride at a rent-a-horse place. The deal is to go in the barn and talk to the person there to pay and get an assessment. She asked what experience I had and told her I owned and showed 3 day and trail rode on occasion. She gives me a side eye and hands me a slip of paper with “I” written on it, I assume it meant intermediate. I take it out to the barn and told the guy that she gave me an “I” but I’m better than “I” He gave me one of the best horses in their barn to ride and he was great. It was supposed to be a walk only ride down the beach but I talked to the leader in letting me take the horse for spin and he said sure, you know what you’re doing. I said, told you I was better than “I”
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I always say intermediate at those places. Beginner means you are given a horse that doesn’t want to go. Advanced means you are given a horse that doesn’t want to stop. Intermediate means a horse that will go and stop.
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I am curious … do places that teach flying lessons in actual airplanes have randos coming in claiming “oh yeah I can fly”. Turns out a pilot friend of theirs let them hold the controls for a few minutes while the pilot also kept a firm grip (if that’s a thing, I don’t know). And now they want to take an airplane up by themselves. (I gather there are strict laws about that, though.)
Do people who have never ridden anything bigger than a scooter try to take jet-powered racing motorcycles out for a spin? (If there are such things.)
Do people claim to be expert mountain climbers and head on up Mt. Everest when they are really just gym climbers … oh wait, I already know from books and articles that the answer to this is YES! They do. And they die up there on the regular, but as long as they pay the fees, the country of Nepal seems to be fine with it. Have heard that there are bodies here and there on the main path up Everest because it is really hard to get them down and no one is responsible to do it.
Just wondering if this tendency is broader than just horses. I don’t know what it is about horses. It seems that either certain kinds of people and/or certain kinds of sports create massively delusional self-images of mastery that does not exist at all.
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I know that people buy over-sized engines in motorcycles all the time when they aren’t experienced enough to do so.
I think though because horses are so niche, and the mythology is so…mythological - I mean, everyone has seen the Black Stallion and Spirit and all of these movies where someone just has a magical connection with a horse and it carries them across the desert with no reins or tack and it’s just wonderful…
As a barn owner and former trainer, I hate it. The worst people to deal with are the people that have a little bit of knowledge. The beginners are scary, but those people…oh man. They think they actually DO know things and love to provide advice to others. Literally nothing makes me crazier than that.
Anyway, to the OP - I sympathize. The best thing you can do is gently extricate yourself and learn the “oh dear” and “yeah, I’m not sure what I would do, you might want to ask your trainer” answers. I tried hard for years and would get involved and literally no good ever came of it. Almost lost a few friends, one of whom I didn’t speak to for almost a year until she finally figured out that I’d been right about the whole situation with her horse. I usually ended up with the horses after the disasters came to a head and the horses became dangerous and/or unsound. It happened to me 3 times before I wised up and learned how to stay quiet and refer to their trainer for advice.
I do the same thing with the vet and farrier. I will no longer give people feet or care advice. It’s never worth it.
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I’m willing to wager it does go beyond horses, but maybe rental providers are just better about being cautious and weeding out the over-inflating liars due to insurance/ law suits?
I had to try to think about things that you rent and if any require some form of “experience ranking” to rent them
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ice skates - nope. you could have never seen ice in your life or be Michelle Kwan and you ge tthe same pair of skates
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skis/ snowboard - rental equipment is the same, maybe different model for advanced
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jet skis - I know when we rented them we had some old-school stand up models that you legit had to have arm and core strength to ride as opposed to the sit-on models. We did warn any renters who were potentially interested in the stand-ups that they can be hard to ride, so experience is recommended. Most people were dissuaded by that, but some tried to be impressive and had to be rescued when they fell and could not stand up again. Truthfully I kind of liked it when that happened since I got to go ‘rescue’ them on the big jet ski and take a few turns on the stand up model before bringing it back to dock
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wetsuits/surf equipment - no experience nessecary.
SO I guess it comes down to a personality trait. I think a blow-hard is a blow hard. The same guy who overinflates his horse experience is the same dummy who tells the rock climbing guy he is an experienced climber but gets stuck on a ledge, or tries to rent the ‘fast but hard’ jet ski and flies off of it when he tries to corner. Any outdoor outfitter worth their salt doesnt rent the good equipment that a truly experienced person would use - so its all pretty much beginner level. Maybe that is how they mitigate their losses.
I do think that people tend to underestimate how hard horseback riding is compared to other outdoor sports. Maybe its because it is more nuanced? They survived one trail ride at a walk so now they are pros?
I think its because there is just so much ignorance concerning horse sports. People who have never galloped think that a trot is a ‘run.’ They have only ridden a walk so how would they know the difference? They also think all horses are the same, so they are able to ride one dead-broke 18 year old trail horse means that they can ride that 5 year old OTTB.
Another aspect of this is how Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced are purely subjective. A girl who goes to summer camp and gets a basic pony 101 and 2 weeks of riding is now called “intermediate” by her camp standards, but compare that kid to a junior competitor on the A circuit and that camp kid is a total greenhorn. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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I found a really great question to ask prospective students was what they were currently working on or what they had last been working on in lessons.
So if they said they were advanced and were still working on diagonals and leads, that was a big tell.
If they said they were working on counting strides and getting the correct number between fences, I knew exactly where we were.
If they didn’t know what they had been working on (otherwise known as riding aimlessly around in circles with an instructor that had given up on them learning) that was a bigger tell.
But my all time favorite was a somewhat delusional lady who insisted she was ready to event and show, and when I asked her this question, she cheerfully responded that she had been working on making the horse’s head go back and forth. I responded, you’re working on following the horse’s head and neck gestures? Meaning you’re learning to ride on contact? NO. She was working on MAKING the horse’s head go back and forth.
Put her on a horse. Couldn’t post. Couldn’t sit. Couldn’t steer. Like, didn’t understand leading rein and tapping leg. But she was an advanced student!
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wow - makes me wonder if she was even working with an instructor at all or was" self-taught" via youtube videos.
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