A Dummies Guide To Yard Etiquette
Welcome back. I’m genuinely surprised you’ve returned, so either I didn’t bore you completely, or you’re in the same situation and looking for emotional support! After a long week, we ended the weekend with a lovely trip to the yard, I hope you can feel the sarcasm through the screen, but in my idiocy I concluded that if I went to the yard and ‘helped out’-a loose term of trying to help but mostly just getting in the way, things would get done quicker and we could spend more quality time together at home. But how wrong was I! I was tasked with sweeping and mucking out, but then the wife seemed to disappear and not come back, only for me to find her having a gossip with the other livery round the corner like they had not seen each other since 2007 and when I mentioned I could do with some help, I got told off because I had not shut the gate.
Turns out survival tip number one is to always shut the gate, apparently not shutting the gate is the likewise equivalent in the horse world to leaving the back door open in a zombie apocalypse, but no one told me. So follow along for my latest survival tips for your life and your marriage.
You must say hello to everyone, the yard cat although it may scratch you, the horse who is just as uninterested in you as you are in it, the other liveries even-though your wife moans about them on the daily and the yard owner, she sucks the soul out of the place, but it pays to be nice I am told anyway. Then you must also say hello the the yard dog even when it barks at you but it is their home I suppose.
The horses always have right of way around the place and apparently they are scared of everything. You may be in a rush to get back to the football, but to ensure that you can watch the football in peace It is imperative that you do not move, do not speak and more importantly you do not breath. If you do and the horse thinks you are a fire breathing dragon then you are in for it, an afternoon of blame for your mere existence. Instead you see a horse coming in the distance, stop what you are doing, move yourself and your tools out of the way. But make sure you put them back where they were as otherwise you are disrupting the organisation that apparently has taken the past two months.
The final sacred rule which I tend to use when I am not sure what I am meant to be doing is to ask, if I need to hold something. More often than not you will be handed something, sparkly, fluffy or with tags on. Now the most common next question to a normal person would be ‘what did you buy now?’ instead it is much better to ask what it is used for and always state that it looks nice, even if you think it looks like something you would moor a boat with, but it must be useful for something. If you follow these rules, try to be as unnoticeable as possible you cannot go far wrong, until the horse misbehaves and then the best piece of advice I can give you is to hide in the car, trust me!