>Short of doing a Psyche
eval on the riders, what do you suggest? This isn't about education...it is
about those who don't care and have some character issues.
Well, for one, how about
intervention when she was leaving to go to a motel? Did anyone run after
her and say Hey, who is in charge of your horse? No, because you didn't
know what the outcome would be. Now you do. Now perhaps you are
empowered to get in someone's face in a situation like this. I hope
so.
>The subject may be old and tiresome to you...but I am in this
sport just over a year and was shocked to see horse's dying. It is news to me so
forgive my emotionality.
No, the SUBJECT is not old and tiresome. What is old and tiresome is
the fact that the SAME emotionality is surfacing A YEAR LATER without any
suggestion of what YOU personally would do if you find yourself in this same
circumstance again. I know what I'D do--and I've had to exercise that
aggressiveness a couple of times. I don't blame you for being emotional at
the time. Heck, I still sit and weep in frustration when bad stuff comes
down. But what earthly good would it do if I didn't then take out that
anger and frustration and examine it, and ask myself what I could possibly have
done differently to have averted the crisis? A year down the pike, what
I'm hearing from you is still how angry you are. I haven't heard a word
about what YOU would do next time if you were camped next to an idiot like
this.
I've always liked the old adage--"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me
twice, shame on me." When I read the material presented in EN about this
protest, one of the things that kept coming back through my mind was that here
were a bunch of compassionate people to whom it never occurred that this woman
wouldn't be back to check on her horse. Well, maybe next time it WILL
occur to those people to not let the next one like her off the ride site without
some pretty specific details and instructions. And perhaps it would have
been edifying to her to have those people who were trying to care for her horse
in her absence digging her out of her motel room in the middle of the night
instead. Maybe not, too. But if it didn't make a difference to
her, it might have been enough of a hassle to make her go get her jollies
somewhere else.
Again, Melanie, anger is useless unless it it empowers you to DO something
if you ever find yourself in that situation again.
It isn't that I don't care--it is that I care too damned much to not move
on to the point that I learn something from the anger and so that I can try to
make a difference next time--if there is a next time. And that's the point
I'm trying to make. I personally find it frustrating to see the emotion
being all that is apparently left a year later, instead of the learning
part. And if the emotion is all there is to offer, then the poor horse
died for naught.
So tell me, Melanie--what WILL you do if you ever run across such a
situation again??? And if you haven't formulated a general concept of
that, I hope you get the gist of what I'm saying here, and do so. THEN
your anger will mean something.
