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It’s been a busy couple of weeks, and at the end of the day, I have to admit I’m less than enthused about sitting down at the computer and attempting to type coherently.
The new Carnival of the Horses is up at Innstyle Montana. I am not on it because I had an out-of-state wedding to go to and didn’t plan ahead and submit early. Is anyone surprised? No? Me neither.
Riding: things are going good. Last lesson we worked on the sitting trot a little and that improved (more weight in the stirrups + more relaxed knee = looser hips and better sit).
Also, remember all those pregnant mares I was walking all winter? I got to see them and their babies while at the wedding. They are as cute as you would expect foals to be; I was unbelievably tempted to smuggle one home with me (it could fit in a large dog crate, right? No one would miss it…).
And an aside: a couple weeks ago I had Pookie at the vet and overheard a woman screeching into her phone at the police. I don’t know the surrounding circumstances, but based on the overheard conversation, the impression I got was that she was poor, loved her dog very much, thought the vet was obligated to save her dog’s life, and did not think she should be responsible for any part of the bill that she couldn’t afford to pay.
Which was baffling to me. Can I walk into a car dealership and get a half-ton truck and only pay what I can afford? It’s not very much, but I would really love the truck. The dealership will understand, right?
Maybe because horse owners are more open in general about these things, but most people I know have said that they have made a decision on how far they will go in treating their animals. It’s usually some combination of what they can afford and how good the prognosis for treatment is, but they’ve thought things through before they happen. I don’t think anyone likes admitting that finances are a part of this decision, but I also don’t think someone who wracks up more than they can afford in veterinary bills and then offloads the bills onto someone else (usually by making the vet clinic write off the cost) is somehow a more “responsible” pet owner because they “did everything they could.” Actually, they let someone else do everything they could, and the owner just walks away. (This is fundamentally different than someone who gets into more than they can afford but has a plan to get out of it—like picking up an extra job. It’s the people who expect someone else to fix their problem for them that I don’t understand. Either you are solely responsible for your pet, or pets are a luxury you cannot afford.)
Sorry. I’ll put my soapbox away. I don’t know why the situation nettled me quite so much that two weeks later I am still a little dumbfounded by her attitude. I realize it’s possible—maybe even likely—that normally she’s a perfectly reasonable person who is making superhuman efforts to get by on a nearly impossible budget, and then got swept into an emotional situation she was unprepared for, but that’s not how she came across. Why do people expect someone else to clean up after them? How did people become so entitled?
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