Recently the horse community has been getting me down a bit. I find it really sad that this group of people who have so much in common, seems to be so judgemental and full of anger and hatred towards each other. Now before you all come at me, I know full well that it is only a minority of people causing problems, but the negative always seems to make more of an impact than the positive.
Everywhere I go, people are judging others for their riding ability, tack choices, what shoes they put on their horse, if they don’t put shoes on their horse at all, whether they turn their horse out, what colour rugs they buy, if they choose to go un-rugged, the list just goes on! At the end of the day, the one thing I’ve learnt about horses over the years, is everyone has their own way of doing things. Now isn’t this the same as everything in life, we all do things our own way, and if that works for us, what is the problem? It’s like marmite, you either love it or you hate it, but neither is wrong!
I appreciate people have the right to an opinion, but there is no need to push your opinion on others in such an aggressive way.
On the other hand, I have recently got first-hand experience of the best side of the horse community. I posted on a Facebook group last week, looking for some advice. I have been having some motivation issues since the retirement of my horse. (I won’t go into all the details now but if you’re interested let me know and I will write another blog about it.) I posted fairly cautiously, fully expecting to receive a number of judgemental and blunt responses. In fact, the response was so heart-warming I could hardly believe it. I received numerous kind words as comments on my post and a few people even took the time to privately message me. The vast majority of people didn’t judge or pry into my choices or decisions, they simply expressed empathy and shared personal experiences.
So please, can I just ask that we’re all a little bit nicer too each other. Rather than judge how others choose to do things, let’s just be supportive and encouraging. It’s great that we have such a huge community of crazy horse people and we should make the most of it!