I've ridden a horse twice in my life: both were bad experiences

Why am I talking about this? Well the other day I met a couple of new people at our bowling outing and one of the new guys was involved in horse-racing out of Taiwan. This is not something that I knew was a thing in Taiwan and I was quite impressed that someone is doing something over here in these parts that isn't teaching English to students that have no desire to be there. I don't know how much money this guy makes but he seemed to be pretty well off... Therefore, good for him! I am constantly critical of people that live over in this part of the world and do something useless or close to useless until they run out of money and have to depend on a family member to bail them out and return to their home country.

It did get me thinking about how I have really not had anything to do with horses in my entire life. I can count the amount of times that I have ridden on a horse on one hand and when I think about the details of them, they were both rather terrible experiences and one of them could have resulted in my death.

Let's look at both of these things and why it is that I don't really have any desire to get involved with horses at any point in the future.

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The first experience I had with a horse is something I can barely remember at all because I was extremely young. There was some sort of outdoors experience something or other than my parents got me and my sister involved in... presumably to get us the hell out of their hair for half a day. We did some fishing, learned some outdoor skills that did not stick at all, and the highlight of the entire day was a horse-riding trek in the woods. I can remember being very excited about this because of the movie-induced notion of what I thought riding a horse was going to be like. Such is the ignorance of youth.

You see, horses are very dangerous creatures. Just ask Christopher Reeve's family members. Horses generally weigh around 900 pounds or more and therefore, they can quite easily accidentally kill a human. The horses that we were riding on were all tied to one another in some capacity and we carried on at a very slow trot. As a bit of a rambunctious kid, I was not pleased with this slow pace because I wanted to charge down the hills like I was a cowboy in a western film.

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We never reached a speed that was any faster than a human can walk so I decided, in my young brilliance, to spur the horse I was riding on in a futile attempt to get some mama speed moment. You are invincible in your mind as a kid so I was unconcerned about how dangerous this would be if I was actually to succeed. A few moments later my horse started to respond a little bit and kept lurching forward into the horse that it was tied to that was directly in front of me. I got great amusement out of this not realizing that horses have a certain endpoint to their patience and after the 6th or 7th time of me accidentally irritating the horse in front of me, it did one of those kicks that we see in movies where the person who is struck by it whimsically flies across the barn and then gets back up.

The reality of this situation is much worse and especially if you are a little kid who is basically tied into his saddle, this hoof would probably crush your skull like an over-ripe peach hitting the cement. My life was spared by a mere two inches or so and I can still feel the wind off of this extremely muscular animal that would have rag-dolled me like I wasn't even there if it had connected.

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The guides noticed this and came over to see what the hell the problem was and of course I lied and said I had no idea but thanks to a-hole kid me, the entire ride was delayed for everyone. So I escaped death and didn't emerge afraid of horses, I just kind of thought they were boring because that experience was not at all what I was expecting.

I wouldn't have anything to do with a horse for around 30 years when I owned a tour agency in Thailand and one of the tours was for horse riding at some location near where I lived in Southern Thailand.

It is quite common for tour agencies to go and do an inspection of the various tours that we try to sell and this is meant to be so that we can explain to the customers what the experience is like. The reason why this was a bad experience I think was because the owners of the horses and the trails were experiencing a great deal of frustration surrounding how difficult or impossible it is for a foreigner-owned business to actually turn a profit. So when me, one of the only foreigner owners of a tour agency in the region, turned up to do the tour for free, I was almost immediately mistreated by the people that owned it that looked at my presence as some sort of "freebie" and the thought they had was that I was taking advantage of them even though I brought 3 paying customers along with me.

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The mistreatment was bad enough, but then when they took us on the trail I was treated to scenery that ranged from winding through a construction site and then lead down to a beach that was covered in horse poop. When we reached the halfway point the guide that was with us still wouldn't let the whole "that guy is taking advantage of the free service" thing go and continued to be unnecessarily mean to me. It was at that point that I told him to just forget it, and to lead me back to the start point as I had no desire to be involved in this tour any longer.

After I got back to the staging area where the horses were the owner tried to do some damage control telling me about how expensive it is to keep horses healthy in the heat of Thailand and she made some sort of attempt at apologizing. I was having none of it though because this was extremely unprofessional on their part. I would understand if I was coming out there for free twice a month or something but I genuinely wanted to get a look at what this was all about because when people would ask me about the tour in my shop, I didn't really have any knowledge of what it was like.

Needless to say that when I did return to my shop I just took all of their brochures off the display rack and then when the owner turned up to hand out updated brochures I remembered her but I don't think she remembered me. I gave her back the old brochures and then explained that my shop would not be selling her tour or even offering it because of the way that I was treated when I came by to check out what they were offering. She acted very hurt and got a bit huffy and loud with me but I didn't have any sympathy for her because she did this to herself by being awful to me all those months before. I simply told her "if you don't want to give away inspections for free, then don't fucking offer them!" That was the end of that. I was never under any obligation to sell her or anyone else's tours so it was totally my choice. It came as no surprise to me that about a year later the horse-riding tour company finally gave up and stopped operating.

Even if I had been treated nicely by her and her staff the fact remains that the trip just wasn't very good even if they had been pleasant as peach iced tea the entire time I was there. The country is just too damn hot and you kind of feel bad for the horses when you are riding on them.

So those are my only two experiences with horses ever in my life and honestly, I will be perfectly ok if I never have any more in the future.

What about you? Have you had any times with horses in your own life? If so I would imagine that your experiences were almost certainly better than mine!