PART 7 - MY JOURNEY WITH MJ

One of the hardest lessons horses have taught me over the years is that people can sometimes be surprisingly unkind when you’re already struggling. During MJ’s rehabilitation in 2020, shortly after the suspensory injury had been diagnosed, somebody I knew through horses messaged me to tell me that I’d effectively brought the injury on myself. They said I shouldn’t have been riding her and that she’d probably been favouring the other leg while I was working her. The comment completely floored me. Partly because it felt unfair, but mostly because at that stage I was already emotionally exhausted and doubting myself constantly.

The reality was that I hadn’t been “working” her at all in the way the comment implied. We had been following the rehabilitation programme from the vet school exactly as instructed. At that point she had only been ridden in walk for 10 minutes at a time as part of the rehab plan. We were doing everything as carefully and responsibly as possible. In fact, it was during this time that we taught ourselves to ride completely tackless…and I did put this on Facebook as I was so proud of that little achievement whilst still following the rehab plan to the letter. Never did I expect to be pulled apart for it!!!

But when you’re already in a vulnerable place emotionally, comments like that go straight into all the cracks that already exist in your confidence.

I remember immediately questioning myself all over again:

• Had I missed something?

• Had I pushed her too much?

• Had I somehow made things worse without realising?

Looking back now, with a bit more distance and perspective, I can see that the comment probably reflected far more about that person than it did about me. But at the time, it genuinely upset me deeply.

I think one of the reasons those sorts of comments hurt so much is because horse owners already carry an enormous amount of responsibility and guilt. Particularly when you have a sensitive or injury-prone horse, you spend years second guessing yourself and worrying whether every decision you make is the right one. The last thing you need when you’re already struggling is somebody adding shame on top of that.

Sadly, through the work I do now, I’ve realised just how common this experience is. Riders regularly tell me about comments that have stayed with them for years. Often the person making the comment only witnessed a tiny snapshot of a situation, yet their words become something the rider replays over and over in their head. One of my favourite parts of my job working with riders is identifying and addressing the root cause of the confidence issues through regression. However, many times what I hear makes me so angry….people have been ready to sell their horse feeling like they’re not good enough, based on comments about their riding from years ago. Their conscious mind hadn’t realised that their subconscious mind had felt this so strongly as to give them such negative feelings.

I also think social media has made this worse in many ways. People feel far more comfortable passing judgement on situations they know very little about. One thing I know for certain now is that most horse owners are genuinely trying their absolute best. Especially the ones who are constantly worrying about their horses. The people lying awake at night questioning themselves are very rarely careless owners.If anything, they care too much. Horses have taught me many things over the years, but one of the biggest is probably this:

Be kind. Or say nothing at all.

Because you never truly know what somebody else is carrying behind the scenes.

Ironically though, despite everything we’d been through during rehab, some of our biggest achievements together were actually still ahead of us. Although from the outside that probably looked far more glamorous than it really felt internally for me at the time.