The Trust We Pay For, and the Truth We Discover
We rarely talk about the moment you realise the person you trusted with your horses didn’t do the job you paid for. That strange blend of shock, sadness and self-blame. But maybe we should, because it happens more often than anyone admits.
There’s a very specific kind of disappointment that lives in the horse world, one that sits quietly in the chest and refuses to move.
It’s the moment you discover that the person you trusted with your horses, sometimes for months, sometimes for years, didn’t do what they said they were doing.
No drama. No obvious disasters. Just the slow, dawning realisation that the education you paid for, simply never happened, and the strangest part? It’s not even anger that hits first.
It’s disbelief.
Because you believed them.
You wanted to believe the!
But for months, the “They’re fine” was repeated so often that it slowly replaced actual information.
Horse owners are optimists by default. We have to be, it’s a survival mechanism.
We want to trust the person holding the rope.
We want to trust the person feeding them daily.
We want to trust the person telling us everything is on track.
So when someone, says, They’re fine we accept it. Not because we’re naïve, but because the alternative, that they aren’t fine, is too heavy to carry.
Seeing the truth...
But here’s the truth we rarely speak aloud. When your horses live somewhere else, the person who cares for them holds enormous power.
They decide what gets done.
They interpret progress.
They control the narrative.
While you, the owner, often have only their word to go on. That’s a vulnerable position, yet everyone pretends it’s normal. But when the truth finally shows up. It often arrives quietly.
Like a moment where something that should be easy... isn’t.
Or a basic skill that should be solid... wobbles.
When a horse that should be confident... hesitates.
Suddenly you see it.
The holes.
The missing hours.
The training that never happened.
There’s no mistaking it once you know what you’re looking at, and that’s when the heartbreak sets in, not because the horses failed, but because someone failed them, You!
What follows is the part almost no one talks about, the shame you start directing at yourself.
How did I miss it?
Why did I believe them?
Why didn’t I check in more?
Am I really that stupid?
No, you weren’t stupid. You were trusting, and trust is not a character flaw.
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Order NowThe real problem in all this is bigger than just an educational mishap. Cause in the world of horses and equestrianism, vague updates are considered acceptable.
They’re fine.
They’re doing great.
They’re coming along.
They’re getting there.
None of these sentences actually mean anything. But we accept them anyway, cause it is within our culture, and basically in our horsey genes to not question "authority".
But once you’ve lived through this, you won’t ever accept vague answers again.
You won’t hand over blind trust, and you for sure won’t assume “fine" actually means fine.
