I am absolutely furious. Here's why: people don't have common sense!!While my yard is mostly focused on hunter/jumpers, there are a few horses that are used for rodeos stabled as well. Here in CA there are many Mexican rodeos that take place that are quite popular within the Mexican population. Tonight, one of the Mexicans brought his friends and family out to play with their buckskin. When I say play, I mean putting their 10 year olds and even their non-talking toddler on the horse without a helmet. They obviously can't move their horse off leg because they were using a whip to make him move. Why? I haven't idea as a few of them couldn't seem to stop him!
When I went to ride Otto today his left hind leg was swollen from a couple of scrapes on his leg (this is another total mystery to me). I ran cold water over it and decided to hand walk him a bit in our outdoor arena. As we were walking one of the women who were with the owner (male) galloped by just outside of the arena. She had asked for the gallop (without a helmet of course) and they raced by at full speed to the point where he was completely flat. This totally caught Otto by surprise and set him off. He was rearing, spinning around, jumping off the ground, etc. I tried to tell him to knock it off, but he wouldn't stop. Everytime I tried to get him walking again he'd hop around and rear. I finally managed to get him out of the arena where he kept spinning and trying to rear. My friend at the barn came out to help me and she tried walking Otto up the hill to stall while I held her horse. What do the people, who have been watching my horse flip out from above the hill do? Why, a man who has replaced the woman on the buckskin starts to walk down the narrow hill again, thereby setting Otto off again. I kept yelling at him to get out of the way but he just stood there like an idiot.
I had no choice but to let Otto go in the arena as he was difficult to control and the other wouldn't wouldn't take their horse out of the area I needed to get through. He was starting to scare me, but this time I'd already been kicked, which was luckily and mostly absorbed by my cellphone in my back pocket.
Am I completely wrong to be mad? I understand that people obviously have difficulty controlling their horses, but these people do things like this deliberately all the not. I mean, not deliberate in that the purposely tried to scare my horse, but deliberate in that he don't give a rat's ass about other people and their horses besides them. It's not like they haven't been asked to gallop by without warning, they've done it several times and have been asked not to as it scares most of our horses.
I'm normally a non-confrontational person, but this just made me livid. Sorry this is so long.
