I’ve got my beautiful 2 horses at a yard that until recently has been perfect. But the atmosphere has changed recently and I feel so miserable there. But I can’t change yards as it’s best for my horses and no other nearby yards offer full turnout throughout the year, so I have to stay here because it’s best for my horses.
I’ve always just kept myself to myself- my horses are on full livery so I don’t go to the yard everyday. They are ridden 3 times a week on average but are fit with it, and they are turned out all the time too which helps. Nobody has ever passed any judgement on my routine until recently.
A new livery moved in around 3 months ago. She is nice but the atmosphere has changed significantly. She likes to do everything together and at times I will school or hack or go out for lunch with them, but generally I like to go to the yard and work myself and sort my horses and go home. With a stressful job it’s my happy place to go to the yard and have some quiet time just with my boys. I’ll always be polite and chat away but I’m a quiet person anyway and I just like to have some me time with my horses so I’m happy to hack or school together sometimes, but other times I want to do it myself. But she calls me rude because of this and seems to think I’m antisocial, and that I should always want to do things together. She’s never liked me- she would say that I’m shy and hard to talk to, but we would make small talk but it was always me being interested in her and she would completely ignore me and then the conversation would just die because she wasn’t reciprocating it.
I was just being polite and accepting we will never be friends but can be civil, but now she’s been talking about me to the other liveries and she’s popular so people who have always liked me are now really close with her and have been acting differently towards me and talking about me too.
She says I don’t care about my horses which is absolutely unfair but I’m just not a hysterical horse owner and with hers the vet is ALWAYS out, there’s always an issue and nothing is ever simple. It’s now a competition with her and some of her other liveries as to who’s horse is more difficult and expensive and half of the time it doesn’t even need the vet. I don’t judge her for it, but she always passes comments that I’m ‘too chilled out’ about my horse, and ‘do I not understand what to do?’ Err, I’ve had horses for 30 years and just because I don’t call the vet out because they’ve scratched their leg doesn’t mean I don’t care.
Recently we had the farrier out because both boys needed new shoes. We all use different farriers at the yard and don’t call them out in sync. Unbeknownst to me, she uses the same farrier and had contacted for an appointment that week. She had been offered the same day as mine and that it would be discounted because he was already coming out to me (farrier is fantastic and would have given me the same discount when it came to paying for it) but I didn’t realise any of this. I ended up having to cancel as I was unwell and the farrier still went out to her but it was full price for her as it wasn’t a shared appointment. Now she (and all her friends) have been furious at me and saying I should have told her I was cancelling and that it was full price because of me, but I didn’t even know she had booked in as well nevermind on the same day!
she is always passing judgement that I don’t come up to the yard enough and that my horses are not ridden enough. Nobody else has ever had an issue with my routine until now and everyone just blindly agrees with her and they’ve all been talking about me.
Ok, you probably get the idea. The atmosphere has changed and I’m miserable going up there now. But my boys are happy and there’s no other yards with turnout as good as this. How do I toughen up and let all this nonsense brush over me so I can keep my horses there without me being miserable?