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which_chickTrys's friend has been her friend since grade school. She hung out at Trys's house when they were kids, riding ponies. I remember her jumping Mead (bareback) over a haybale again and again. Mead was pretty tolerant and just... did it. A. would have been about twelve at the time, skinny legs dangling and just trotting up and popping over the bale repeatedly. So A. did ride, some, at one time. She never rode alone, she never rode a horse that she improved, she never rode a horse she was responsible for keeping mannerly. She rode well-broke ponies that were maintained in their brokeness by other people, largely out of her ken.
Later, before she got married and had kids, she got a buckskin pinto colt from Trys's mom and named him "Brisk". Fine. We (me and Trys and possibly Laur) went over to where she was keeping him as a youngster (long yearling?) because she was having difficulties. I noted that here. She did not get over herself and instead sold the horse because he was "vicious". He was not vicious. He was 100% not vicious. She accused him of trying to kick her. He was not trying to kick her -- he didn't know how to pick up his back feet.
She got married and had kids (two) who are now big enough to be of a size to play ponies. She has a small place in the country. She got two small, fat ponies "for the girls" and they are Shetland sized, so really not something she can ride. They are pushy and nippy and sort of jerkish, which they may have been when they were purchased but should not CONTINUE TO BE. Like, that shit can be fixed, forthwith. It has not been.
She bought a pony for her, a "packer" and it did not work out. So she returned it. And she bought another pony for her and put her husband on it with a huge stock saddle that went from withers clear to point of hips. Pony bucked. She is now unhappy about this. She does not think that the saddle fit "should matter" or that putting her two hundred pound non-riding husband on the ill-fitting saddle on the pony might be a cause for difficulty.
The problem isn't the ponies. The problem is A. She does not understand "being confident" and "being a leader" and having effective horse body language. She cringes backward at anything unexpected, gives ground, flinches. Without being in a program (lesson, instruction), even the very quietest, best horse in the world is going to take ground from A. because she not only fails to assert her own position, she doesn't even understand that this is how horses WORK.
There's a meme in the horse world -- a picture of an angry mare face. It look like this:
A. is firmly in the "normal people" group and has no idea that there is a horse people group or that she isn't in it or how to get from where she is to the horse people group.
And, as can be seen from her involvement thus far with ponies, Dunning Kruger is kicking her ass. I am not saying this from on high, where I have always been very good with ponies and just natively understood how to work with them since forever. I mean, I'd love for that to be my past and I'd love to have been that person. But no.
I have been where A. is.
I thought I could ride. I could not.
I thought I was ready to start a horse under saddle. I was not.
I thought I knew what I was doing. I did not.
I fucked around for five flipping years with my bay mare and she still put me off at will. I don't just "remember" this, I documented it. Here and here should give you some idea of how it was going. It wasn't good and it went on in that vein for about five years being NOT GOOD. I did not, in all honesty, EVER solve the car problem. I just stopped riding her where there was traffic. But I did ride her, a lot -- three times we went to the competitive ride up in Rothrock. Three summers we conditioned for that. I rode her a shitton, in spite of my fears, and I got better. She got better. Would it have gone better and easier with a kinder, less ... challenging horse? Yes. Of course. It would have been more fun, too. I did not want a different horse, though, so, yeah. Water under the bridge there.
Anyhow, when I say that it is very difficult to accept that you do not have the skills that you thought you had, especially when they are bound up in your perception of yourself as "a rider" or "a horseperson", I know this from deep and personal experience. I'm not just saying it. I lived it. A. is not alone in her unwillingness to accept these informations. Many, many adult ammie riders are just like her, funding a mountain of industry to support and further their delusion. Some do, I suppose, level up their skills when it becomes clear that reality and their self-perception are out of alignment but a hell of a lot of them... don't.
Later, before she got married and had kids, she got a buckskin pinto colt from Trys's mom and named him "Brisk". Fine. We (me and Trys and possibly Laur) went over to where she was keeping him as a youngster (long yearling?) because she was having difficulties. I noted that here. She did not get over herself and instead sold the horse because he was "vicious". He was not vicious. He was 100% not vicious. She accused him of trying to kick her. He was not trying to kick her -- he didn't know how to pick up his back feet.
She got married and had kids (two) who are now big enough to be of a size to play ponies. She has a small place in the country. She got two small, fat ponies "for the girls" and they are Shetland sized, so really not something she can ride. They are pushy and nippy and sort of jerkish, which they may have been when they were purchased but should not CONTINUE TO BE. Like, that shit can be fixed, forthwith. It has not been.
She bought a pony for her, a "packer" and it did not work out. So she returned it. And she bought another pony for her and put her husband on it with a huge stock saddle that went from withers clear to point of hips. Pony bucked. She is now unhappy about this. She does not think that the saddle fit "should matter" or that putting her two hundred pound non-riding husband on the ill-fitting saddle on the pony might be a cause for difficulty.
The problem isn't the ponies. The problem is A. She does not understand "being confident" and "being a leader" and having effective horse body language. She cringes backward at anything unexpected, gives ground, flinches. Without being in a program (lesson, instruction), even the very quietest, best horse in the world is going to take ground from A. because she not only fails to assert her own position, she doesn't even understand that this is how horses WORK.
There's a meme in the horse world -- a picture of an angry mare face. It look like this:
A. is firmly in the "normal people" group and has no idea that there is a horse people group or that she isn't in it or how to get from where she is to the horse people group.
And, as can be seen from her involvement thus far with ponies, Dunning Kruger is kicking her ass. I am not saying this from on high, where I have always been very good with ponies and just natively understood how to work with them since forever. I mean, I'd love for that to be my past and I'd love to have been that person. But no.
I have been where A. is.
I thought I could ride. I could not.
I thought I was ready to start a horse under saddle. I was not.
I thought I knew what I was doing. I did not.
I fucked around for five flipping years with my bay mare and she still put me off at will. I don't just "remember" this, I documented it. Here and here should give you some idea of how it was going. It wasn't good and it went on in that vein for about five years being NOT GOOD. I did not, in all honesty, EVER solve the car problem. I just stopped riding her where there was traffic. But I did ride her, a lot -- three times we went to the competitive ride up in Rothrock. Three summers we conditioned for that. I rode her a shitton, in spite of my fears, and I got better. She got better. Would it have gone better and easier with a kinder, less ... challenging horse? Yes. Of course. It would have been more fun, too. I did not want a different horse, though, so, yeah. Water under the bridge there.
Anyhow, when I say that it is very difficult to accept that you do not have the skills that you thought you had, especially when they are bound up in your perception of yourself as "a rider" or "a horseperson", I know this from deep and personal experience. I'm not just saying it. I lived it. A. is not alone in her unwillingness to accept these informations. Many, many adult ammie riders are just like her, funding a mountain of industry to support and further their delusion. Some do, I suppose, level up their skills when it becomes clear that reality and their self-perception are out of alignment but a hell of a lot of them... don't.
