Best of JN: 5 Questions Your Extended Family Is Guaranteed to Ask This Holiday Season

Holidays are a time for spending time with those we love and being grateful for what we have. They are also a time for our relatives to ask us awkward questions about what we do with our horses.

I love my family, I really do. It is just that most of them really don’t have a grasp on what it is I actually do when it comes to horses. Most of them follow along on social media, shooting a like or two my way every now and then. But when we all get together around the holiday season, I seem always to be plagued with the same questions over and over and over again.

Need a little refresher on what you are about to endure as we all get together for the holidays? Here are five questions your extended family are most likely going to ask you, as well as some approved and frowned upon responses.

1) So, how is the barrel racing going for ya?

What you want to say:

What you actually say: “Well, I don’t barrel race. I do the hunter/jumpers? You know, where they jump the colored sticks? Yeah… yeah what Superman did. Exactly.”

2) My boss’s niece’s second cousin rode a horse one time. I think her name is Ashley something-or-other. Do you know her?

What you want to say:

What you actually say: “No. I don’t believe we have met, unfortunately.”

3) When you gonna outgrow this horse thing?

What you want to say:

What you actually say: “I am quite content with the way my life is going at the moment, thank you.”

4) Are you going to show at the Tokyo Olympics?

What you want to say:

What you actually say: “I don’t think that is quite on my radar yet!”

5) How do you think you can get/keep a husband/significant other when you are gone horse showing all the time?

What you want to say:

What you should actually say: “I think I’ve got that covered, thanks.”

No matter what they say or do, they are our family and we have to love them… or at least tolerate them for the few weeks out of the year that they are around!

Go Jumping!