The Onion nailed it on this one! People just don’t understand the risks they take when they let their children feed other people’s horses.
I’ve had to put up a second fence line and signs to keep people away from Zelda and Curly and the owner of my barn has found families standing inside her run-in shed, having climbed over a stone wall and through a wooden fence. Another friend found a toddler standing in her field with their arms around the neck of her pony . . . only to have the pony latch onto the kid’s ear!
So true. And people can get nasty no matter how patient and kind you are. It’s frustrating. Luckily, my horses are well off the road to get to the barn where I board now. And the only other “boarder” is the owner of the farm. I’m so blessed!
For 15 years I was at a barn that abutted the trail system but wasn’t right ON the trail. Now, our pastures are on the trail that people take into the woods. I am constantly amazed and appalled by how many people and dogs find their way into the pastures — with no regard to their safety or that of the horses.
Awhile back I was working in the pasture and a man came and started to pat/feed the horses over the fence. I asked him to please not do that and his response was that he had his own horses so he knew how to pat them safely! I tried to explain that he was setting a bad example for the people who didn’t know any better, but he just got mad. That’s when I put up an internal fence. It keeps the people out, rather than the horses in.
I witnessed a situation several years ago where a woman came out to see a horse that was listed for sale. The horse had been advertised as NOT FOR BEGINNERS. She left and we (this was at the stable where I boarded) all went back to our business. Until someone yelled, oh my god, some kid is hanging on to Smoke!.
We went running as Smoke had a reputation for being unreliable,, and who in the heck would do that? No one in our barn had children that small. Well it was the woman, she’d left to get her kid…a three year old…and put her up on Smoke without so much as a by your leave! She was running alongside a circling, cow kicking Smoke, the kid was screaming and hanging on for dear life and only because Smoke was in his turnout paddock had he not bucked, bitten or thrown the child off.
Then she had the …gall, the utter chutzpah, to scream at us about how dangerous the horse was and she was going to sue.
Go for it, lady…the owner of the horse was a lawyer. She never came back.