Support group?

When Eager was first diagnosed with Navicular I searched on Facebook (among many, many other places) for any information I could find.  I found two closed membership forums and I can't really remember finding anything that useful on them that I didn't find elsewhere but, I think it's nice to have a bit of support.  

Rockley have their own support forum.  Strictly for people who have had their horses at Rockley.  Which is great, because there is a lot of negativity out there!

A post last week on one of them happened to ask if there were any Ex Rockley rehabs out there.  I said, I was.  The lady in question was in the US and as she couldn't get to Rockley.  She wanted as much info as possible.  I PM'd her, just giving a brief description of Eager and pretty the rest being what is on Nic's blogs.  Anyway, we got a bit of dialogue going which is not something I would normally do with a complete stranger.  But, I really felt for her and she really believes in what Rockley do but doesn't have a similar place in the US.  It again made me thankful that Rockley is in relative terms,on my doorstep.

Now, the lady in question happened to mention in a further post that one of the trimmers she used to use made her horse sore every time.  She had then changed trimmers and the horse hadn't been sore since.  Pretty innocuous post to be honest.  Not a statement of blame, just a statement of fact.  Whereupon, a trimmer (I so gather) left what can only amount a 500 word rant about how dare she blame trimmers, blah, blah, they do their best in a bad world.... along those lines.  Not content with one post, she then continued to start again in another.

Now......  I took a little exception to this.  As not at any point did my American friend say anything derogatory about anyone, just made a very small comment that one trimmer made her horse lame and the next one didn't....  So, not wanting to really start a row.  I tried to defend my new found friend, whilst also trying to defuse the situation and make a statement I totally stand by.

 

As you can see.  That went really well for me. LOL

I do admit, maybe my NEVER was a little aggressive and understand this could annoy. I then found out this woman was the administrator of the forum and I couldn't really see how this was going to end well.  So, to avoid me getting into a silly online row, where clearly things would be taken out of context (by one person).  I deleted my membership.  So I can't tell you where this conversation went as I can't see anymore!  

I now realise this is a bit of a shame.  As I have spoken to my American friend and she stays on it to try and learn as much as she can about Rockley.  I just can't see how what the nutty trimmer has said is in anyway supportive.  It wasn't a trimmers support group (which she clearly needs amongst other things) it was about navicular? So technically, all the other people out there who can't afford of aren't able to send there horses to Rockley, lose a source of information on how horses are successfully rehabbed.

Situations and actions do create reactions. The fact of the matter is that Eager's weakness in her foot was exacerbated by my farrier leaving the toe too long on the foot.  Yes, I take responsibility for this as I looked at her feet for a couple of months thinking it didn't look right.  I don't really even blame the farrier.  He did what he did with best intentions and how was he/me to know that she had something going on in her foot that means they need to be kept perfectly? With most other horses if may have made no difference.  None of us are perfect, all we can do is the best we can with the information we have been given.  But we do have the choice to look for it.