“Regret is unprofessional.” — M, Skyfall

Never say you’re sorry.  That was the cardinal rule of wrangling.

In customer service, the customer is always right.  Not here.  Here, the rules were a little different.  If something ever went wrong–and something often did–it was not the wrangler’s fault, it was not the horse’s fault (“Our horses don’t do that.”), and it was quite obviously, but always implicitly, the guest’s fault.  All that was usually true.  More importantly, in never saying sorry, we tiptoed across the legal tightrope of culpability and lawsuits, safeguarded by our training, first aid and CPR certification, and our trusted ability to make good decisions.  To apologize was to accept fault.  We did not.

I was amazed by two aspects of this equation: first, the general senselessness of guests and lack of regard for one’s personal safety around large and unpredictable animals (even in the case of some…