Grandma Weighs Granddaughters Before Letting Them Ride Ponies, Mom Is Furious — Who's Right Here?

One of the most beautiful, but also damning things about the internet is that nothing is ever truly deleted. While this is great for anyone who wants to pull up receipts on something, it's pretty terrible if you've ever made a fool of yourself and it was recorded/disseminated online.

And in the case of this great child-weighing-pony riding debate, the former applies — as the original poster's upload to Reddit's r/AmItheA------ sub was deleted, but was saved on a sister sub appropriately titled r/AmItheAngel.

However, judging just from the the title and the responses made to the deleted post, it was easy to discern what OP's gripes were: he wanted to know if he was in the wrong for telling his wife that his "mother doesn’t need to apologize for putting [their] daughter on a scale to check her weight for an activity."

The activity in question, according to the saved post uploaded to the r/amitheangel sub, was riding a pony. Now, horses are big, strapping creatures that have backs that look like they're primed to saddle up and be ridden. It's probably why some 5,500 years ago (at least) our ancestors took one look at these things and thought — yeah it's a good idea to domesticate that.

However, if you're too heavy for a horse or encumber it for too long, it can create a physically, and visually, uncomfortable medical condition called "swayback."

Over time, the horse's vertebrae gets bent out of shape due to the additional stress being put on its body, so it's imperative that the weight of the rider is checked before they hop on.

After all, these are living things we're riding on top of, not a Toyota Tercel. Apparently, OP's wife didn't like the fact that his mother decided to weigh their daughters before placing them on one of the ponies at his mom and her new husband's ranch.

"They own a few horses and ponies, which the two girls have been begging to ride. Her husband agreed and was going to saddle them up. They are too short to go on a full grown horse so they were going to ride the two ponies."

However, like OP said, this was the source of the issue — he knows one of his daughter's "is overweight" and that he and his wife "have been working on it."

But that didn't really help the young girl ride the pony at the time.

Weighing the children angered OP's significant other, which he further explained in the post: "My wife was pissed that she weighed the girls. She wanted an apology and my mom refused, saying it is common sense since they wanted to ride. That she isn't going to injury an animal by not being safe."

This is where the uploader came to Reddit for advice — he stated that his wife has been "cold" to him since the incident and thinks that both he and his mother are "cruel a--holes" by weighing a child before putting them on a pony.

He explained further that his mom didn't tell kids they were too heavy to ride a horse but that the weather was too bad to take them out and they could ride the ponies at another time. The reason why his girls, which were 7 and 9 years old, didn't go on a larger horse and the ponies, instead, was because they were too small, so it's not like there was a back-up plan to make sure they were able to ride them, either.

Different users had different replies to the post; there were many Redditors who seemed to think that OP's mom was in the right and didn't do anything wrong by requesting his children be weighed before they hopped up on the horses, like this person who penned:

"NTA. Horses are animals that you can't over encumber. Too much weight will hurt a horse, and possibly cause an accident that will hurt horse and rider. Also, putting your daughter on a horse she can't handle is extremely dangerous to the rider and stressful to the horse. You mom was in the right. I would ask your wife why she was so upset by your daughter getting weighed."

Another person wrote: "NTA I worked at a dude ranch type deal when I was 17. The ponies weren’t supposed to carry more than 60 pounds, they were capable of more but they were working horses that went for multiple hours daily and if they did get more than that they got aggressive with the handlers and occasionally the child riding so we lowered their limits."

In the r/AmItheAngel sub, however, there seemed to be some people who questioned whether or not OP's mother was being a little too overly cautious when it came to weighing his daughters to see if they could ride a horse: "Most ponies can carry a full grown adult. 110 pounds isn't an issue unless it's a mini," they claimed.

What do you think? Was OP's mother in the wrong? Should she have asked the parents the kids' weight beforehand so as to avoid any potential awkward situations? Or is this just a matter of someone making sure an animal isn't abused and OP's wife has to just get over the fact that life, including the laws of physics and mother nature, aren't going to change just because your feelings are hurt?