I think it’s fairly self explanatory. If you’re the minority opinion, move to another barn where what you want to do is normal and everyone else is comfortable with it.
What is customary at that barn, what the horses and riders are used to and accept, what people ddon’t go running to the manager or complaining to each other about, what doesn’t disrupt the people at the barn, what the manager allows (unless s/he thinks s/he has the right to scare the snot out of the boarders). If there is a whole arena full of handicapped riders with severe balance and strength issues, you behave a little differently than if you are in an arena full of jockeys exercising race horses.
Id someone is in the ring with a skittish young horse, YES, in some cases, if she’s having a really hard time, and it would make a difference, and you can see the rider is getting more and more frantic and afraid because of what you’re doing, DO let her have the ring! You’re at a public riding stable for ordinary people, not the Olympics, grow up. YES they can’t ride, YES they can’t train their horses, welcome to reality. It’s not your job to tell them what to do or to try to make them put up with your ‘philosophy’.
Was at a barn where one of the riders, an older lady, would get absolutely petrified if someone rolled open the big sliding doors at one end of the ring. So? Lecture, force her to freak out to ‘teach her a lesson’ or ‘toughen her up’? No, she was never going to toughen up. Actually, it’s very simple, don’t open the doors while she’s in the ring, she rode for 15 whole frikkin minutes.
Was at a barn where people jumped a lane set in off the track and horses had to go around either side. SOme horses were fine, others freaked out. What to do, what to do? Maybe common decency. Let the riders who it bothered, know when the jumping lessons would be. Ask the riders who are bothered by it if a schedule can be worked out. Maybe the manager tells them they can’t set up a lane in the indoor arena! The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. They put a jump lane out in the jumping ring, maybe, or maybe they even wait til summer when they can set it up outside.
Was at a barn where the mere tidbit of information that I had a rescue pony, without it actually ever doing a single thing except trot quickly on the longe line with its little eyes showing the white, scared the crap out of a local gal who obviously didn’t like being in the ring with the pony. ‘Is he…is he going to get excited? I don’t want him to get my horse excited, I have to go to a horse show and I don’t have time to work my horse down…’ Forget the preachin’, forget the self righteous better-than-thou, for the fifteen minutes that she is going to ride, guess what! I can lead my pony in hand. No one is inconvenienced, no one is forced to handle something they don’t want to handle, and I get more time with my pony.
Was at a barn where my very quiet young warmblood scooted one step when a horse fell in the barn aisle, the elderly lady riding in the ring with me didn’t say a word, but she immediately dismounted and scurried out of the ring. YOu don’t have to be told, you don’t have to get in a fight with that lady, let her have the ring if she’s getting off and running away every time you tack up! For heaven’s sake, most of these people ride for 10 minutes! Yeah! LET 'em have the ring!
You will never, ever make all people agree with what you think is right. More important to work out something that works for all concerned.
The examples of the riders out swinging ropes and bag poppers is ridiculous. It doesn’t matter where exactly they were standing. It’s inconsiderate; horses often are far more excited by something they can barely hear or see from a distance anyway.
Just remember - you are not in charge of what scares other people or other people’s horses, and you can’t guarantee they won’t be hurt because of what you do, and the bottom line is in a public barn, it isn’t your business to decide what people should tolerate; instead, accomodate.
“A real NH’er wouldn’t”
[B]Actually the entire cultishness of the thing makes it far more likely a real NH’er would, the entire basis of NH is that they have discovered THE way, and it is better than everything else and transcends ALL riding styles, and this leads to an IMMENSE amount of prosteletizing.
For example, I have never in my entire life had a hunter rider accost me while I was eating in a public restaurant, and tell me I MUST go to a hunter clinic. I have never had a polo rider, or a jumper rider, or a western pleasure rider, or ANY other kind of rider, get up in my face and tell me how wrong everyone else is, tha thtey have all the answers from on high, and if I don’t drink the coolaid, I’m going to ruin my horse and well, just be doing everything so wrong, and this has in fact happened repeatedly to me over the years, and ONLY from NH folks. No other sort of rider has EVER gone in my horse’s stall at a public riding facility and taken it upon himself to ‘train’ my horse for me, without my permission, either.[/B].
I’ver never EVER had any OTHER sort of rider get in the stall with my horse, chase it around, lay on it, slap it, shake stuff at it, slap it more, and tell me how great all that crap is for an abused, terrified pony who is sweating, neck and back muscles rigid and trembling, literally shitting himself, climbing the wall in terror and does same every time he even catches a scent of the person and required two years of very gentle, quiet desnsitization, not the rough housing and abuse they think is desnsitization.
And the bottom line is,[I] it ain’t your horse and it’s not your job to decide how to train it, whether to crawl in its stall or to even get up in my face and tell me what’s good for it. It is my pony, I will desensitize it my way on my schedule. And said pony will stand for all sorts of ropes, harness and jumk tossed at it or on it now, AFTER months of undoing the damage the NH’er did.
By GOD are these people self righteous and pushy and arrogant. It’s one thing to pronounce the joys of NH on a bulletin board, quite another mindset to go into someone’s horse’s stall without their permission and proceed to terrify the crap out of it. [/I]
The very rigidity of thinking leads them to use desnsitization so arbitrarily, so unskillfully, and so ineffectively. The methods have even been compared and measured, and the NH way is so stressful for the animal biologically that there is no comparison. I watched the colt starting competition with absolute disbelief, it’s only drinking the purple coolaid that could make people believe it is good for horses - any of it.
