Should I still feel somewhat conflicted about this past event?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Not gonna lie, I originally posted this on Reddit and got only a few replies, so I’m tossing it out here for the Dope to chew over. I’ll quote the original post, then a couple of comments I made in response to commenters.

So here goes:

This is a thing from the past, not a current question, but it still comes to mind and niggles at me once in a great while, so here goes:

Many years ago, at the indoor arena of the boarding barn where I kept my horse, a woman was longeing her horse (asking it to circle her at walk or trot or canter on a long lead line) when it suddenly flattened its ears (even tighter than they already were), bared its teeth and lunged for her with murder in its slitted eyes.

I was watching by the low wall outside the ring. Without thinking I vaulted in, ran to the horse, which had knocked her down and was trying to stomp her, grabbed the longe line, and with the help of another person got the horse under control while the woman was assisted from the ring to safety, then the other horse-grabber and I got the horse safely shut back into its stall. (I’m in my 70s now, older, wiser, and way less athletic; this was back three decades or more, when I was fit enough for such heroics, also knew horse handling well enough not to get myself hurt. Well, probably not get hurt. I love horses, but they can be dangerous.)

Well done! Right? But.

She’d bought the young but well trained and well mannered horse several months before and proceeded to ruin it with crappy handling and late-night drunken beatings in its stall. By the time the attack and rescue happened the poor horse was a mental basket case. And yes, people did try to get help for the horse but for various reasons weren’t able to. The woman was eventually kicked out of the barn for the abuse and for failing to pay board (no! really?). The barn owner was retaining custody of the horse for legal reasons but the woman snuck back one night, snuck the horse away, and the next morning all but one of the owner’s goats were sick and shortly thereafter died.

[Obviously I’m leaving out a ton of detail about all this so I don’t wind up writing a doggone novel. And no, this isn’t fiction; it did happen, as wild as it seems. I wish it were fiction; that poor horse didn’t deserve what happened to it, never mind the goats.]

Anyway, the woman had a home near enough to lead the horse to it that night and had [as we later learned] a stable of sorts set up to keep it. Yes, the barn owner tried to get it back, if only for the poor horse’s sake; no, it didn’t prove possible. We also learned some months later that the woman had a habit of taking the horse out for drunken rides in the woods behind her home and that eventually the horse dumped her, seriously injuring her. I never did learn anything further about her or the horse’s fate.

Now, several decades later, I occasionally still think about this and ponder:

(1) Was I wrong to save her from a well-deserved stomping that could easily have killed her? On reflection, I generally decide no, even though she’d brought it upon herself. I believe I did the right thing at the right time without stopping to consider anything but getting the situation under control. That’s just what a decent human being should do, right? Well, okay, if I saw someone pushing Hitler in front of a train, urm…

(2) Was I wrong to join in joking conversations among certain barn friends afterwards about how we should have let the horse get her? (Not in her hearing.) That’s a closer call, and one I don’t look back on with unvarnished approval. That was mean, but then again she did deserve consequences for what she was doing, and it helped me blow off some of the adrenaline backlash and conflicted feelings I was having then.

(3) Was I wrong to be happy she eventually got hurt bad by the horse? (Or call it vengeful satisfaction I felt?) Probably. It’s a shitty thing to rejoice in another person’s pain. Oh, yes, sure, a rough justice was served upon her, but still. I’m not fond of that aspect.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the poor horse afterwards was put down as “incurably vicious and dangerous”; which actually, as I consider it, was probably the kindest fate it could come to. Even if she’d been willing to sell it, no one in their right mind would take on a horse as wrecked mentally as it was by then. So maybe being happy she got hurt by the horse was right as well as wrong?

Anyway, let me wrap this up (if you’ve made it this far) by noting that no, I don’t dwell on this ancient history; I can go months without it crossing my mind; but sometimes it all pops up and I have to look back at my then self and judge her by the terms of my now self. Am I wrong to look back on all this and judge my thoughts and actions as I have? [end original post]

A later comment by me:
it was instinct, not rational thought, that drove me (and others) to intervene. Even looking back with hindsight of what happened with her and the horse afterwards, though, I still wonder: If I’d paused to weigh whether her deserving the stomping justified letting the horse do it, what would that say about me? Beyond that, if I’d deliberately chosen to let the attack proceed, what kind of person would that make me?

And, aside from the moral implications of act/don’t act, who else might have gotten hurt if, after the horse was done with her, it was bombing mindlessly around the arena, a danger to itself and anyone trying to attend to the woman or get the horse under control and removed? For that pragmatic reason it was better to bring the horse under control while it was still focused on the original attack and thus easier to take in hand. Of course, that aspect was not any part of my conscious thinking at the time.

ETA: If you’ve never seen a horse in full-blown blind rage or panic, you have no real conception of just how much damage they can do, to themselves and any humans who try to stop them. [end comment]

One person pointed out: " I can tell you if you witnessed her being stomped to death that trauma would stay with you forever." My response was agreement.

So, fellow Dopers, what’s your take?

2

Last things first …

I think it’s unhelpful to rehash this issue. At all. You cannot alter the past. It seems this rumination is not helping present you. If fact it’s bothering you a lot. So quit doing it. Or get the counseling or a book on CBT or whatever you need to be able to quit doing it.

In the spirit of retarding the rumination I have no comment on the entire rest of the story.

If this sounds harsh or unfriendly I apologize. I’m genuinely coming from a place of helping. Perhaps too clumsily to actually be helpful, but that’s the goal.

3

I appreciate the thought, but it’s not an issue that preoccupies me to an unhealthy level. As I noted in the original post, it’s something that I don’t even think about unless something happens to jog my memory. That happened a few days ago and I started formulating a post about it just as a mental exercise, really – I often do that with random thoughts that pop into my head – and decided it was worth writing down and releasing into an uncaring world to see what responses it might garner. It doesn’t keep me up at night.

I do think an occasional rumination about past events from the perspective of older and wiser can clarify one’s approach to ongoing moral issues. Judicious self-reflection is good for the soul.

4

I think it’s probably like any other situation where you stopped someone from doing something stupid or dangerous. Yes, you need to contain the situation, to prevent harm to the person, or other people in the vicinity. But also yes, it’s okay to then go off on a “WTF were you thinking?!?” rant.

5

One of the most difficult mental concepts to master is to understand that morality does not apply to mere thoughts, but rather to the actions they lead to.

While schadenfreude, or the feeling of satisfaction in someone else’s misfortune, is not laudable, it is not evil in itself. Trying to bring misfortune on someone else is evil, but that’s not what you’re doing here.

So, think what you will without guilt. If thinking about something causes you discomfort, think about something else.

6

I think you’re overthinking it. You were reacting to a potentially-very-dangerous situation in a matter of seconds or split seconds. You didn’t have the luxury for prolonged philosophical inquiry in that moment. You were trying to save someone from serious physical harm.

So, pretty much anything you did - under time-crunch pressure and with serious jeopardy of life and limb in mind - was justified. The consequences of what might have unfolded afterwards weren’t something you could have contemplated, and I don’t think it’s worth dwelling on the path of events of A led to B which then led to C and D and E and F…

7

I do this..Rumination, past events.
Mostly mine were precocious misadventures and how my actions may have hurt others.
Not a heroic act, in the lot.

You thought and said silly things after. So what, at the time you acted without regard to your own safety. IOW, you did the right thing.

Forgive yourself.

8

You did the right thing wether it was thought out before hand or not.
She could have died, which seriously no great loss.
As you mentioned, others could have been hurt.
The horse would have probably been put down.
The horses and woman’s demise, as you pointed out, would have been incredibly traumatic.

As for your barn friends" and your comments, i have no problem with stating the obvios. This person had no business having a horse or any animal. I know you left a lot out, and it was many years ago, but with witnesses etc. I can’t see how animal control or someone didn’t remove that poor horse from her.

Tl,dr
I would not have a problem if the horse stomped her worthless ass. As long asthe horse, you, and other innocents were not harmed in any way.

9

Do you seriously believe you could possibly have done otherwise? I highly doubt it! As you acted without thought, on instinct. And however much you conjecture or ruminate, in a similar situation, you’d very likely do the same again.

You didn’t choose, so much as react. And that’s a drive I’m not certain thinking can over ride.

10

You had no choice. You reacted intuitively.

I’m glad you didn’t have to choose between catching the horse, and changing the rail switch so that the car didn’t go of the rails, but this is not a complex situation for me: I’m not a believer in the death penalty. I don’t think people should be killed for bad driving (I’ve seen someone advocate road hazards), or for murder, or for torturing horses.

11
  1. No.
  2. No.
  3. No.

To elaborate: you’re judging yourself for three separate things: deeds, words, and thoughts.

In the first - and by far the most important - case, you did the right thing. A human being was in danger, and you saved her. End of story.

In the second case, you said some things that were clearly intended as jokes, and were understood as such. How do we know they were jokes? Because you’re actions prove that they were, and actions speak louder than words.

In the third place, you took joy in the pain of someone who deserved it. Those are just thoughts. They don’t mean anything, and you shouldn’t feel bad about them. So long as they don’t influence your actions, think whatever you want, and if your thoughts make you happy, then enjoy them. Let me ask you something - does the fact that you feel happy about her misfortune make you less likely to help another person, should the opportunity ever arise? If not, then who cares?

There. Go now, and sin no more.

12

Thanks, folks, for your perspectives on this.

13

Just a quick note about jokes and humour. In many cases, they are a form of set theory: who’s in, who’s out, as it were, even if the sets are “the guy who slipped on a banana peel” and “everybody else.” Ask any school kid about this. In your case, the sets might be “a terrible person who mistreated an animal” and “people who know and act better and despise her behaviour.” You’re in the right set on this one.

14

Everyone who says you reacted to an emergency the only way you could have were correct.

But also, consider that although the story played out badly, it did not need to. I don’t say that for you to think you did anything badly-- just that there were lots of coin flips after you saved both the woman and the horse. The fact that each one came up terribly is bad luck, but that was not necessary. The story could have had a better ending.

Had you not stepped in, the horse would have been put down, probably that very night. It had no chance whatsoever. And the woman would have died, or lived out a painful, disabled, probably shortened life. That it was her comeuppance for the way she treated the horse is beside the point, because mercy is always an option.

She and the horse each got a second chance. That they would be squandered was unknowable at the time.

15

I’m curious… is the implication being made that she poisoned the goats, or something?

16

  1. If you had the capacity to help and didn’t help, I think that would be far worse than letting her get stomped. You did good.

  2. As for what you said, people cope with stress and anger through humor, so you did fine there. Heck, even if you’d yelled that stuff to her face I wouldn’t fault you for it.

  3. And I think schadenfreude is a pretty natural response when someone who does bad things gets a little justice. Especially in this case where she directly caused her own injury.

Whatever guilt you might still have over this, I think you can release it.

17

The initial rescue was unambigously good and moral. When we see people in trouble, we should try to help them, even if the trouble was self-inflicted.

The joking about how she deserved it, probably also good. That’s part of how we, as a social species, establish norms like “it’s not good to mistreat animals”.

The schadenfreude about her eventual injury, well, probably not good, on the whole, but so long as you’re not doing (or abstaining from doing) anything that contributes to her harm, it’s a very minor sin, and understandable from any human.

18

Given the timing and the person, it was the obvious deduction. The goats lived in a pen by the driveway and were happy to eat anything a human offered them. Besides being a drunken abuser and a crappy rider/horse owner, the woman was self-centered and blamed everyone else for her problems. The vet didn’t conduct necropsies on the goats and there was no way to prove poisoning solidly enough to prosecute.

Justice is not always done.

19

Or it was, but I don’t believe in karma.

I think we have all done things we regret or feel bad about and it’s perfectly normal to ruminate on them. I love the word ruminate.

I don’t think you have any thing to regret or feel badly about with the situation you describe. I have similar thoughts sometimes about something and I always make myself say (or think) “Oh fuck off, you know I don’t really celebrate your suffering but you know you were a shit.” Then I forgive myself and force my thoughts in a different direction.

Sometimes I take the shortcut directly to “Oh fuck off” when I’m not in the mood.

20

I ran this by Sr. Weasel just for fun.

“So there’s this lady on the Straight Dope. She’s a horse person.”

“You mean a centuar?”

After I told him the whole story and the three-point question, he said, “Triple no. It’s too bad it’s not possible to get a light trampling by a horse.”