How bad could it be?

     By mid summer of last year things were pretty bleak for Jonathan and I in SC.  Our business had shrunk for various reasons outside of our power and we were beginning to freak out. Well, I was definitely freaking out.  The bank account was crazy low, very little was coming in...something had to happen.  I began to hatch plans.  I started with a website that specializes in jobs available in the horse industry.  By using a few different states, I began to narrow down possibilities that I felt Jonathan and I could handle without making us miserable.  All of them were fairly far away from Aiken.  Ugh. Moving, again.  The thought really freaked me out, but I was so sick of living in Aiken and our money struggles that I pushed aside my anxiety.  The one job that we kept circling back to was in Massachusetts. We would be working for a semi-retired older professional, who was in need of a couple who could do all aspects of horse care, plus riding, for some older horses of her own and a few for a private client that she would be teaching a few times per week.  It sounded relatively easy as far the amount of work, but I knew there were always going to be catches with this type of position. One giant catch was that this particular older professional had a tough reputation. And by tough I mean she could be nasty and very difficult to work for (I had multiple people tell me this before we made our decision).  "How bad could it be?", we asked ourselves.  After quite a few telephone calls back and forth with this woman, we decided that we'd give it a shot and take the plunge to move up to MA, at least for the winter months and then see where we were come spring.  We packed very little just taking our winter clothing, essential kitchen/cooking items, our two dogs, two cats and two horses.  We equipped our home in Aiken with a proper ADT system, locked the door one morning at the end of October 2018 and literally drove away to the unknown.


    It was within the first week that knew we had made a very poor decision, but we also knew that we had no immediate recourse so we were stuck.  The lady was one of those people who you couldn't predict how she was going to behave any given time you saw her throughout the day.  Sometimes she was very pleasant and cheerful (it was rare, but it did happen), other times (most of the time) she was horribly mean, degrading and so manaically micromanaging of everything we did in the barn that it made me want to go sit in a corner and cry. I have NEVER been treated so terribly in my life.  She would see me sweeping the barn aisle and storm down to me, rip the broom from my hands then proceed to sweep dirt all over my legs while shrieking, "This is how you sweep!!!!".   If she saw that I had just wrapped a horses legs she wouldn't even stop, but as she walked by she would sneer, "Re-do those wraps!".  I was given "riding lessons" with her, but she never let me go past a trot and NOTHING that I did on a horse's back was correct. NOTHING.  Despite my 30 years of being a decent professional rider, in her opinion I wasn't capable of riding her ancient school horse correctly at the walk.  It was brutally humiliating and really wore me right down to the core.  I started to believe that I was a bad rider, that I should just quit, that she was right and I'd just been fucking it up for years.  She was breaking me down.  I couldn't do anything right in an industry that I'd been making a living in for decades.  Jonathan in some ways got treated better, because she just ignored him. She told him what to do through me, because she said she thought he was mentally handicapped. Wow. Just another little claw into my already fragile mental state. Not one thing about this job had proven to be anything but awful for both Jonathan and I, which was great for our relationship let me tell you.  The two of us began to fight a lot.  Our frustration and anger came out towards each other, which had never happened to us in 26 years of being together.  In my wildest dreams I couldn't have imagined how much of a nightmare taking this job would be.  Yet, there we were.  Everyone of my friends that I called to complain to said the same thing...LEAVE!  But it was more complicated than that, because we needed the money so desperately. We kept telling ourselves to just take in the paychecks and save, save, save until we figured out something else.  She started giving us extra chores, like taking her garbage to the dumpster and picking up sticks and pine cones in the driveway.  On the day before Christmas I got a text message from her instructing us to "scrub and disinfect the entire barn".  Who does that to their employees on the day before Christmas????!!!!  You know what?  We did scrub and disinfect the entire barn that day.  Why?  Why did we do it??  Because it was our job and we didn't want to give her any extra reasons to berate us. We trudged out of the barn that night with aching shoulders, broken spirits and cold, stiff fingers.  It was an awful cycle of constant degradation and this woman was an absolute professional at it. Just when we thought she couldn't possibly do anything worse to us she began to mess around with our paychecks. One week would be a little short, with no explanation.  Then she went away for a couple of weeks, without leaving us any checks at all. I questioned all of it by text, phone, or to her face but it was always a vague answer.  We would eventually get the checks, but it was when it was convenient for her.  The job was a total disaster, but with money coming in we were hanging on by a thread.  When she started messing with our pay, we both started to lose it. Neither of us was willing to go back to SC, so we needed an immediate alternative plan. I'd been looking all along for a different job in the Northeast, but nothing was coming up with the right components.  The line we were treading to hang onto our sanity was becoming thinner and thinner.  To be continued...

An Unpleasant Situation

This past weekend I found myself dealing with a situation that threw me for a bit of a loop.  I'm going to give the most vague description that I can of what went on, because this isn't meant to be a character assassination of any particular people, but merely an observation of what has become normal in the world today.

  I work in a busy stable where I teach a lot of lessons.  The weekends tend to be particularly busy in the mornings so I feel very lucky that we have a few people, young and old who help get the horses/ponies tacked up and ready so I can concentrate on giving my students a quality, timely riding lesson with no outside distractions.  I was passing through the barn aisle on Saturday morning when I noticed someone was intently spraying a specific hair care product way too close to a horse's face/eye region. In fact the mist of the product was upsetting the animal to the point where it was backing up on the cross ties to get away.  As I walked through I asked the person not to spray the product so close to the animal's face/eyes and also,not to get it into the mane (a pet peeve of mine).  I gave a reason as to why we don't want the mane to ever be slippery, BUT I said it in a way that made the person feel like I was personally making her feel inferior for not knowing this tidbit of information since it's not in the forefront of what she concentrates on as a rider.  I swear on the Bible that I never meant to hurt this person's feelings, or make her feel like I was better, or any of the negative, hurtful feelings it caused her.  It was an offhanded comment that I made passing through on my way out to the ring.  It wasn't premeditated, it wasn't meant to come out harshly, and I will own that it could be construed as a poor choice of wording on my part. I really, really didn't mean it to be a judgmental, or negative comment toward this person.  Anyone who knows me well, knows that I have a sharp sense of humor, but in no way am I ever setting out to be mean spirited, or unkind.  I'm so far from perfect, but one thing I'm not ever is mean, or nasty, especially to young people who are devoted to horses and the sport I so adore, which includes all of the various disciplines. We have a wonderful group of people in our barn, of all ages.

   Later that day, a parent of the person that I made the comment to asked to speak with me and my boss.  We were met with a very angry person who informed me that I had told the person in no uncertain terms that my comment meant that they were never going to understand the horse industry.  I was blown away. Of course, I defended myself and explained exactly what I had said, with inflection and context included.  The anger continued.  I was told that I didn't know how to talk to teenagers, that they are very sensitive and take offense very easily so I needed to really think before I spoke.  I was told that I wasn't following the example of what my particular barn's motto is and that we'd all better watch what we say from now, because this parent will be keeping a close eye on things.  My boss and I sat there and took all of this verbal diarrhea.  I clenched my jaw to keep from standing up and jumping down this person's throat, because I realized with all of the anger it wouldn't do any good for any of us.  Instead, my boss quietly defended me and I said that I was sorry.  I wanted to throw up afterwards.  I wanted to throw things.  I was incensed that I was rendered helpless, even though I knew in my heart what I'd said really wasn't anything terrible, or personally damaging, but it busted into a young person's ego who decided to blow it out of proportion and tattle on me to get me in trouble.  It's a funky time in this world.  Not that this sort of thing hasn't gone on since the beginning of time, but the stakes have become higher for repercussions. If I'd been reported for bullying to a higher organization (a too commonly used term in this day and age) I could be suspended from my job, or worse.  What if this person whom I "offended" decided to go one step further and say I'd touched her inappropriately as I'd walked by. What then? I witnessed something ugly this weekend.  It's a far cry from the learning atmosphere of the stables that I grew up riding and working in.  We took criticism and we learned from it.  If our feelings got hurt, we had a little cry then we toughened up and figured out what we were doing wrong.  We got yelled at and told what to do and we did it.  It wasn't all coddling and a you can never do anything wrong type of atmosphere.  I'm not saying that is a perfect situation either, but it's a helluva lot more healthy than what I'm seeing now.  Any time I've ever given strongly worded advice, or raised my voice it's because the situation I'm seeing could escalate to an injury of either the horse, or the person. Otherwise, I try to be light and informative, without sounding like a bossy bitch.  Maybe next time I see something I don't agree with I'll just shut up and allow it to happen, lest I offend a burgeoning horseman's fragile spirit.  Riding and working with horses at a certain level isn't for the weak minded. Trust me, I didn't learn to have the grit and conviction to succeed in this business by complaining every time someone hurt my feelings.  That's not real life in any business.

  At the bottom of my heart, I genuinely was sad and depressed that my eleven word sentence caused a person to feel badly, or angry enough to make such a massive deal out of it.  I never want to be directly responsible for doing that to another person. Ever.  I would've thought that the person knew me well enough to know that I wasn't being a jerk, it was just the way it came out.  Sadly, that wasn't the case.