Not having been to a ride in the past year (I'm going through
withdrawal) I haven't had to deal lately with the funny looks, but used
to get them regularly when I was going to rides every weekend and
trained on some very crowded trails in L.A. So some of the reasons I
gave for the numbers on horse butts were:
1) It's not an ID, it's a scoreboard of how many times I've been bucked
off this fool.
2) I have so many horses, I paint numbers on them to keep track of them
all.
3) It's an advertisement of how much I'm willing to sell the horse for.
4) Yes, of course I've been trying to sell this horse at auction and if
he would just stop leaping into the grandstands and trampling the
auctioneer and spectators maybe I could get a decent bid.
5) The number indicates the number of pounds the rider needs to lose
before she can ride as a Lightweight.
And yes, once I'd had my fun I always explained what the real reason was
for the number. I always looked at it that there were lots more
irritating things to gnash my teeth over (like the people who accused
you of abuse without bothering to ask questions first) and if it gave me
a chance to tell more people about endurance, then that was fine by me.
Just my two cents, of course :->
Susan Evans