I'm not a big fan of the I-Told-You-So but in this case I will make an exception. My sister recently was vacationing in the Appalachians and decided that horseback riding would be a good adventure for her, her two sons (my most amazing and adorable nephews), her sister-in-law, and the children of said sister-in-law. Of course she was wrong because horseback riding involves horses, the most unreliable creatures ever to populate the earth even going all the way back to sabertooth tigers who usually look pretty insane. My sister is comfortable with both horses and Appalachia, which means that she is either crazy or just has really big cojones. As expected, horse drama ensued.
At first everything was fine and everyone enjoyed scenic views on horseback, clip-clopping along with only coconut sounds to disrupt the beauty of nature around them. That could only last for so long, though, since horses are unstable and pretty much prone to chaos at any moment. Sure enough, my younger nephew's horse wanted to be in the woods more than on the trail, and tried to exercise its will in that direction. Fortunately Nephew was able to reign that fucker back in, but he is probably now aware of the fickle and uncontrollable nature of the horse. My sister's horse wanted to lead not follow so it kept trying to overtake other horses. Since she had rural friends as a teen she knew what to do. It worked. I myself do not know what to do with an overtaking horse; my methods would probably run to pinching its neck and screaming, maybe even jumping off.
Those are just the small incidents, though. My sister's sister-in-law was tooling along, or whatever horse walking is called (I think it is so obnoxious that their walking and running get special names.) when her horse actually fell over. It totally fell over with her on the horse. Unacceptable. And it faltered a few more times over the course of the ride. SSIL was okay, albeit slightly bruised and highly distrustful of horses from here on out (as she should have been to begin with had she taken even a moment to look into their crazy ass eyes). As it turns out SSIL's horse was broken. Broken! A broken horse is so much worse than just a regular functioning horse. My sister saw the whole incident from right behind the broken horse. Its leg actually collapsed, causing that giant ton of crazy to fall on its side even though it was supposed to not fall because it was carrying a person. My sister told the Horse Whisperer that the horse's leg was faulty, but this information was disregarded. So this broken horse kept having its leg collapse, because clearly it had horse polio or something, and my SSIL had a stressful unrelaxing nature trail experience. At the end my sister again pointed out that the horse was only three quarters successful in not collapsing its legs, only to be met with further brushing off by the Horse Whisperer.
That is all kinds of fucked up. Not taking horse collapsing seriously, what is that? I would be all over it in two seconds, if I cared about horses and was in charge of taking them on trails with unsuspecting humans on their backs. Those prancy prehensile lips-having equine danger pods are already pretty much on the verge of killing people; why would the person in charge of them accept even further instability? And weed out the Overtaker and the Forest Escaper, too. That's not on; scenic trail horses should follow the scenic trail only, not think independently about improving their position or finding greener pastures. All in all I do not accept the attitude of these proprietors of horseback riding.
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