About 40% of the country's 1.8 million horse owners keep their animals in group barns, where misbehavior among the human crowd is a common hazard. "Barn drama," as equestrians call it, is a catchall term for all manner of interpersonal unpleasantness. It tends to revolve around the use of shared amenities (such as grooming areas and riding arenas), the "borrowing" of other people's stuff and animal welfare. It happens between fellow boarders, but also among barn staff, and can quickly escalate from petty bickering to screaming matches to vandalism.
....The setup of a boarding barn almost guarantees unstable behavior: Take a group of passionate, opinionated individualists. (Riding, a solo activity, doesn't attract "team players.") Give them a consuming hobby centered on a delicate, expensive living creature. Put them in close quarters, often with children and dogs that run amok, spooking the horses, and let the backbiting begin.Which is all too human. Maybe there ought to be a lesson here for all those who think that people can be manipulated--their wages, rental contracts, job promotions, business profits and losses determined by disinterested third parties--without nasty consequencess. Some of the people who appear in this video, for example.
Something as simple as providing space for a horse is contentious. Because human beings are complicated.
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