Entitled Parents

Entitled mom caused me to break my arm

I'm a equestrian, and I started riding horses again after a 4 year break when I was sixteen, so three years ago. I'm definitely not the best rider, but for the amount of time I've been riding I'm pretty decent. The incident(s) happened at the riding facility where I take my weekly group lessons (on top of this I take 2 private lessons every week). I usually go to the barn way ahead of time before my lesson, just in case I need to saddle my horse or muck out the stalls. If another person from a group before you is riding the same horse as you, you don't need to saddle it up. That's what happened this time. Since my horse didn't need to get saddled because someone was supposed to ride it before me I decided to go watch the lesson before me. The lesson was for students that have been riding for about 10-12 years, so they were decently experienced. I sat down on the bench outside of the arena.

The horse I was going to ride, Dragon, is a pretty big horse compared to me. He was about 16.3 horse hands (meaning that the base of his neck/back is about 5.6 feet up) and I myself am only 5'0" tall and weigh 95 pounds (I know, pretty tiny for a 19 year old). I waited for the lesson that was before my own to begin. But then, as people started to mount their horses, I noticed that there was a student there in the middle of the arena without a horse, next to her mom (our EP). But, there was no horse anywhere to be seen. Then I realized that there was a horse missing, Dragon. Therefore, I concluded that the girl in the middle was supposed to ride Dragon as she was the only one without a horse. However, Dragon was nowhere to be seen.

As our instructor entered the arena, she noticed the girl didn't have Dragon with her and asked her where he was. The girl, who was about my age (19), opened her mouth to speak but her mom, EP, cut her off.

- What do you mean? I thought you guys brought the horses into the arena before the lesson? She didn't have to saddle the horse last time. EP said, sounding incredibly annoyed. At this point I didn't blame her though, maybe she genuinely didn't know how things worked around there? The instructor then politely said that no, everyone saddles their assigned horse unless someone is riding that horse riding before them.

The mom scoffed and then asked rudely if they didn't have staff to do that for them. She and her daughter apparently didn't want to "smell like horse" when they got home and they didn't want to risk getting their clothes dirty. (Then why would you go to a barn and ride horses in the first place?). The daughter was just standing there tapping her toes impatiently, and was wearing white riding pants which are used typically for competitions and not normal lessons because they get dirty so easily, and you can expect to get dirty at a barn.

- If your daughter wants to ride, she has to go down to the barn and get the horse ready right now or else she'll miss the whole lesson. The riding instructor said, still as calm as ever.

- We are not going to touch some horse we don't know. Someone else could do it for us. My daughter is too good to be brushing horses and getting all filthy! The mom exclaimed, still wanting someone else to saddle the horse for them.

- I didn't pay for my daughter to have to spend quality-time with some horse she doesn't care about, she wants to ride the mom then continued

The instructor and the mom kept arguing back and forth, my instructor claiming that if her daughter wanted to participate, she had to saddle the horse. You can't expect to ride without getting your horse ready for the lesson. After about five minutes, with 55 minutes left of the lesson, I got sick of their arguing as it was getting nowhere and the EP and her daughter clearly weren't going to saddle the horse. I had nothing better to do anyway, so I offered to saddle Dragon for them. They agreed nonchalantly and stood there and watched as I brushed the horse, not even handing me the saddle or bridle (that way they would save some time since the lesson had already started). I had to do everything myself while they just stood there. Occasionally the mother would impatiently ask me to "hurry up" because her daughter was missing out on the lesson that she had paid for even though the whole process only took about 10-15 minutes.