On March 31st, a friend of mine moved out of the barn and was replaced by someone I’d never met. This girl walked into the barn with her morbidly obese warmblood, looked at my mare on the cross-ties, and began our first interaction with “God, does [barn manager] even feed these Thoroughbreds?”
I was annoyed, but all I said was that we were trying to put weight on her. My horse is a high-energy OTTB with a fairly heavy workload; she has muscle, but we’re working on fat to hide those ribs a little better.
New girl then asked, “So she’s off the track? Did you get her by yourself, or did a trainer really suggest that one?” There was ridiculing of my horse’s high withers, followed by the derisive question, “She really doesn’t have the best conformation, does she?”
I am piiiiiiissed. I love my horse. My horse has pretty decent conformation in my opinion; at the very least, good enough to come away sound from five years of racing. This same girl, in fact, commented on a video last week and said she liked her. I told her to leave my horse alone and she acted like I was the hostile one.
Everyone who knows her says she has a big mouth and doesn’t know enough about conformation to judge, but they’re surprised that she treated me like this. She apologized after I told the barn manager, but she rolled her eyes the whole time. She’s continued to be really goddamn annoying and condescending about the fact that she was schooling 3rd/4th level dressage with her horse before said horse blew both hind suspensories. And honestly I’m going nuts. I try not to let this crap bother me, but the barn is supposed to be a place where I don’t feel stressed.
Ugh! Advice? Other than “ignore her”, because I’m trying to ignore her but she’s still pissing me off.
I’m sorry she said those things about your horse. Who cares what her conformation is like- obviously she suits you, since you bought her, and that’s all that matters.
