I’m a horse girl, I told them that on the application. I explained in detail how I started riding at a young age and how my skills advanced quickly because my horse was, to put it simply, challenging. It had been several years since I’d been in the saddle but I still felt confident about my horsemanship and I was excited to get involved with a horse rescue as an adult.
I showed up to volunteer wearing reasonable leather boots, but not cowboy boots specifically. In fact everything I had on was perfectly functional for the occasion. But I could tell they’d made up their mind about me just by looking at me. They didn’t think I knew shit and treated me poorly.
Before the day was out I did have a chance to ride. They put me on a horse that didn’t want to go anywhere without a mean kick in the side. I believe in training horses to respond to a gentler touch and so I was disappointed to discover how this horse had been treated.
We road around the paddock a bit before hitting the trail. At which point another rider knocked over a jump very near to my horses legs. It spooked my horse, causing it to buck like a mustang at a rodeo. I stayed in the saddle and reigned in the horse, no problem.
And that was when they quit judging me by my ‘city’ boots and skinny jeans.
One outfit doesn’t always do justice to our multitudes.