Why are horse people so god awful?

[sami-joe]

@Angela_Freda

It’s the “you people” that gets me.

Whenever someone starts a sentence with that phrase, I assume he or she is not arguing in good faith and step away.

As for the topic at hand, lately I’ve had reason to question my tendency to critique other women and myself, horse-y or otherwise. As soon as I sense that judging reflex bubbling up, I imagine what we could accomplish with earnest efforts pulling in the same direction, and suddenly my urge to correct shrinks a bit. It’s a work in progress, probably the rest of my life’s work, in fact.

If it’s possible, whether on CE, other forum categories or IRL, to devote myself to factual, verifiable contributions and good faith questions, while stemming judgment and assumptions, that’s my goal. It might take a village to wrangle this tendency, so I’m grateful for any help I can get.

[candyappy]

@RMJacobs

I think you hate CE because your posts get contradicted with facts. Instead of truth, you see hostility. You reap what you sow.

I don’t hate CE or anyone who may oppose my views. That is what life is about because we all think differently ( or used to). What I don’t like about CE is that if you refuse to bow down to the liberal way of thinking you are jumped on.

It is not a sharing of different points of view/ opinions/ facts and definitely hostile in nature. What you call “facts” are just the opinion of the news source they get it from. I agree I have been misinformed a time or 2 in political facts and I admitted that freely.

@fivestrideline

Calling people “sensitive” when they disagree with the words you typed out doesn’t really help your argument here. That’s a cop out.

No it isn’t. I said

@candyappy

If you took an accurate poll I bet a lot of posters have no current horse involvement at all.

Why does this make people so defensive/ angry? Plenty of reasons why people who used to own, ride , lease etc are no longer doing that. Life changes for people all the time. There are people in all sections of the forum here who admit to having no current horse involvement.

Makes perfect sense that they would visit the CE section in addition to all the other sections.

Take a poll on here and prove me wrong.

[ParadoxFarm]

Can we all please return to the nature of this post and leave CE/political viewpoints out?

As far as current horse involvement, I think posters are critical that this sentence seems to indicate that if you are not currently involved in horses, you shouldn’t be on the forum. Well, that’s not welcoming to all those posters who are horse lovers, even if from afar. Who cares?

Please let’s stop.

[TWH_Girl]

@ParadoxFarm

Can we all please return to the nature of this post and leave CE/political viewpoints out?

As far as current horse involvement, I think posters are critical that this sentence seems to indicate that if you are not currently involved in horses, you shouldn’t be on the forum. Well, that’s not welcoming to all those posters who are horse lovers, even if from afar. Who cares?

Please let’s stop.

Actually- discussing the CE section of this forum and responses contained within illustrates the original point of this thread.

[Angela_Freda]

@candyappy

What you call “facts” are just the opinion of the news source they get it from

That is not what a fact is.

[TheJenners]

@candyappy

I doubt a fraction of them are actually horse owning people or horse people at all.

But if you bring that up, you bring a slew of them down on your head TALK about crazy.

@Texarkana

The number of social medial posts I have seen from “experts” diagnosing physical issues in the Olympic horses based off single still images.

I’m about to bounce out of a “shite dressage” page, the name escapes at the mo’. It has been non-stop what’sherface the dressage rider (Charlotte? Caroline? Anyway…) and now it’s just picking on horses, on tack, on riders. One person posted an advertisement of a beautiful woman (I think she medaled) with helmet hair and her clean dressage clothes claiming it would give men the wrong idea because she was clean, like talk about backhanded snark and jealous nitting. So ew. A Clydesdale owner came to the rescue by posting her gorgeous boy, which is really the only reason I joined… I have enough nastiness in real life without reading it ad nauseum on a page meant for humor and people putting up their fails.

[skydy]

I must say, I wish that the “Something, anything cheery” thread could be moved from CE to the Off Topic forum.

I’ve had mostly very great experiences with horse people throughout my life. A few backbiters, like with any group, but I just didn’t hang around with them.

[MinnesotanSoil]

Just curious, why do you wish for that thread to be removed? I think it’s quite fun!

[skydy]

I love it. I don’t want it to be removed, just relocated to the Off Topic forum. Since many people don’t visit the Current Events forum, I think more people would see it in Off Topic.

[sparkygrace]

You can start a new topic here…

[skydy]

Then, so many of the fun things on that thread may be lost.

Perhaps @Moderator_1 can move it if they think it’s a good idea.

[sparkygrace]

You could give the thread a new clever name.

Lots of people who post on this topic don’t got to CE.

Edited to add: the thread was started in CE as an antidote to the often negative political news.

[skydy]

That’s why I was hoping it might be moved to off topic, because some people don’t visit current events. Not all of the cheery thing are horse related, thus the thought that off topic might be the place for it.

[Nootka]

Surely a few of you also have positive stories to share.

I have had great support in the horse world. Specifically, this forum back in the day.

Horribly Sad News - Jingles for Nootka - Sport Horse Breeding - Chronicle Forums (chronofhorse.com)

Of course, Ive come accross my share of A**holes too

[anon40672407]

@sami-joe

As for the topic at hand, lately I’ve had reason to question my tendency to critique other women and myself, horse-y or otherwise. As soon as I sense that judging reflex bubbling up, I imagine what we could accomplish with earnest efforts pulling in the same direction, and suddenly my urge to correct shrinks a bit. It’s a work in progress, probably the rest of my life’s work, in fact.

That’s interesting. I would imagine it’s difficult as well: we’re participating in a sport where many of us ride under instruction, so we’re constantly being corrected, ‘judged’, explained to. Seems a natural extension of that to becoming someone who corrects, judges, explains. (I also imagine this would be the case in any setting where one is willingly under instruction, and trying to improve. Improvement requires analysis.)

I kind of didn’t think much about this angle when I saw the original post, tho. I thought more about how horse people seem, to me, to often be missing the ability to read social cues and/or don’t spend time on the human sides of relationships (because they’re spending a whole lot of time elsewhere). My experiences with horse people demonstrate that they are also some of the most generous people, too, because they have an understanding of this somewhat esoteric field, or at least an empathy for what someone in a hardship might be going thru.

My horse people down in San Diego were a ragtag bunch, but when we needed to do something (evacuate horses from fire, fund raise to buy our riding grounds, fight City Hall who wanted to impose severe limits on horse keeping), we were elbows locked with each other. I was there a long time, and haven’t found such an embrassive home since, but there are other horse associations around that I am sure are similar in nature.

[skydy]

I started this thread on Off Course about the Colorado Wildfires.

“Once again over 100 horses evacuated to The Ranch in Loveland, and once again the community has stepped up and lent their trailers for the evacuation effort. Big trailers of hay have arrived and people are bringing supplies, so much so that they say they are set and don’t need anything more at this time. Horse people.”

“The Alexander Mountain fire is now 6,800 acres with 0 containment. There are two other wildfires burning as well. Firefighting resources are stretched thin.”

The fire is much larger now so I’m sure the number of evacuated horses has increased.

[Vindicated]

Anytime you get passionate people together, there is going to be conflict and egos.
Combine the monetary and time output that horses require…

It really is not just horse people, any group of passionate people is going to have drama.

Another part of it, I feel. We brush off work drama because it is work. The horses are supposed to be our relaxation, so the drama hits different.

At least twice a day, I go to respond to something on here or social media. Most recently, I read a response to one of my posts, and my fingers started typing… Did you even READ my post? or just respond. Then I deleted it. No, it was obvious the point of my post was overlooked by someone that just wanted someone to be wrong. I don’t care to internet scream at people that are not prepared to listen.

I ask my students to leave the arena if they are not listening, I can remove myself from a situation the same way.

[sami-joe]

@anon40672407

Seems a natural extension of that to becoming someone who corrects, judges, explains.

As a third generation HS English teacher, this is my default. Luckily, maybe, because I was a dance student and teacher for a few decades, too, and a lifelong rider – ergo student – I can sometimes manage this teach-y, explain-y reflex in a way that enables me to keep few good friends.

And yes, in the disaster-help department, horse people show up. In the first hours of the Thomas Fire, Dec. 2017, the prep school where I taught had to evacuate 35 horses directly in the fire’s path. Ignited about seven miles away, carried on winds blowing 50 mph in our direction, this fire was the first of several huge, high octane California wildfires. It took all the riding staff, the school’s three trailers, two staff-owned rigs, and basically anyone who knew anyone with a trailer to get the horses to safety.

If you’ve ever loaded horses into strange trailers in 50 mph winds and pitch black – power lines started the fire, so electricity had been cut – you have some idea of what this task was like and people volunteered to do it. Despite the sandblasting and the increasing smell of smoke, the horses and people got it done. Within a few hours of our evacuation, the girls’ dorm had been destroyed, and the fire was burning close enough to the barn to melt a huge section of rubber mats.

Pulling in one direction, we’re mag-freaking-nificent.

[Impractical_Horsewoman]

I’ve been deeply involved in book publishing, THEATER, running, various literary fandoms, and many other toxic subcultures. I still think the horse world is the craziest, simply because you’re dealing with people with a much higher risk tolerance than the average person, safety-wise and financially. This is true of every income bracket in the horse world. The Internet quarterbacking happens everywhere, but the stories of people doing physical harm to one another or to animals in the horse world adds another level of crazy.

Plus, some people who might not feel comfortable criticizing someone directly will do so because they want to “save” the person’s horse–i.e., say things about a rider’s weight, what the rider is feeding their horse, the rider’s discipline–in a way that would be hard to justify in other contexts if an animal wasn’t involved.

I’ve met so many fascinating, literate kind horse people in my life. It’s just that the horse people who fit the stereotype…whoa, were they crazy.

[blue_heron]

Horse people are definitely craziest but HOLY MOTHER OF GOD are fiction writers a close second. Talk about cliques!!