Horse Chiropractor

I’ve been on many dates, but none quite as memorable as the one with the horse chiropractor. 

I was living in a small town up in northern rural British Columbia, Canada. Living there already made dating challenging. Most women my age were either already dating someone, married, had children, or were in the process of having children. It was no surprise they didn’t care to befriend a guy they didn’t know, nor introduce me to any of their cute single friends since there were almost none to be met. I had to go to the larger city one town over. Not just for basic shopping needs, but for any sort of romantic possibilities. 

I was no stranger to online dating at this point and I’d like to think I was pretty adept at it. I was not shy to message a woman first; I was engaging and tended to ask open ended questions in order to get to know them better; and I filled out my profile in detail so to seem like a well-rounded and interesting person. I had mild success and had gone on a few dates, but follow-up dates were rare. It was always difficult to actually get someone to commit to a plan, even just to meet for a casual coffee date. It didn’t help that I didn’t live in the same town where most of the women I was messaging lived.  I also wasn’t making a lot of money. This last point may seem shallow, but it’s relevant in describing the social culture of the community and how it affected the interaction between people. 

The main resource in the region was resource development – dams, pipelines, camp jobs, etc. These industrial jobs paid incredibly well and were dominated by men. As such, it became common for woman to act as ‘gold diggers’ – woman who only dated wealthy men.  Sometimes this was literally written on some women’s dating profiles. “Just looking for someone to pay my bills.” “Looking for a sugar daddy.” “If you don’t make more the x-amount, don’t bother message me.” A colleague of mine told me that one of the first questions her friends would ask prospective boyfriends was “how much do you make?” If it wasn’t above a certain amount, they would literally just walk away. I thought she was joking but she assured me it was true. Not every woman was like this, but it made dating a challenge for a local government intern on a meager income. I had a rusty lemon of a car and a student loan I was trying to pay off. Needless to say, I was not in the financial position to wow people, so I utilized my gift of gab to compensate. I could hold a conversation and hoped that might help me stand out more than how much was in my wallet. In part, this worked, especially for one particular woman.

She was my latest focus of my attention on the dating website. She seemed attractive enough, but much to my surprise, she reciprocated the conversation which was what I really liked. It helped that she thought I was clever and funny, so that gave me some confidence. I was coming back coming from a work related trip and was planning on stopping in her town for dinner. On a whim, I asked if she wanted to join me for a short-notice dinner date. She admit she really wanted to but unfortunately had to work. In addition to being a horse chiropractor, she was also a pilot truck driver and had just been called into work that night. Disappointed, she asked me to postpone going to dinner right away and that she would try to get her shift covered. I was ecstatic! Not only was she interested in me, she was actually making an effort to see me, a change of pace from always having do the majority of work and instigate a date myself. This woman would literally meet me half way which made me patient, yet eager for our dinner date. It might also been because I was genuinely hungry and actually needed to eat before my long drive back home. Thankfully she was able to get her shift covered by a co-worker and she met me shortly at a nearby pub. It seemed like a great turn of events, which made it more surprising with how badly things went as soon as she arrived.

One of the first things I noticed was how she didn’t look anything like her pictures. I knew it was common to use old photos on a dating website, so I suspected that was exactly what she did. I try not to be judgemental or focus much on physical attractiveness, but I almost didn’t recognize her when she walked in through the front doors. I pushed aside my ego and waved her over. She ordered a beer, I ordered a burger, and we began to chat. 

She described her work as a pilot truck driver, how boring it was, and how annoying one of her co-workers was. It took me a few minutes before I realized she was talking about the same co-worker who had covered her shift less than an hour ago. It felt quite rude to bad mouth someone who had just done you a huge last minute favor, but I didn’t know the woman so I decided not to say anything. One technique I learned when meeting people is to ask them questions about something they’re passionate about. Finding it unique, I asked her about her other job as a horse chiropractor. She humored me and described how she got into it and what she did. It was more or less what I expected, although she began to go into great detail of horse injuries. At first it was back injuries, but then she started explaining the more nuanced parts of horse health, horse ailments, and then horse injuries beyond what you’d expect a chiropractor to deal with. These consisted of injuries like protruding bones, lesions, growths, and infections. She even showed me some of the more gruesome examples on her phone. This was all while I was eating my burger with as much poise and grace as I could without losing my dinner as some of the images truly were disgusting. I was famished and didn’t want to not eat the burger I was hungry for. 

The conversation about horses and horse injuries shifted to how she co-owned a horse with an ex-boyfriend. Horses can be expensive, so I could see how a couple may might want to share the costs. I’m not a jealous kind of person, but the way she described her ex-boyfriend made it sound as though she interacted with him a lot. I chalked this up to him sharing custody and care of the horse, but she explained in minimal detail how he would sometimes stay the night at her house and they would share the same bed. With no prodding questions from myself, she admit how it was still confusing sometimes for her as to how their relationship had changed. This was really when I started sensing some red flags. I don’t care about ex-relationships, but when one continues to strongly affect your finances, how you care for a shared animal companion, and leaves you emotionally confused when they stay the night in the same bed, I begin to question how this might impact a new relationship, namely one with me. 

When she wasn’t complaining about her ex, she insisted on showing me more pictures on her phone. Having run out of images of grotesque horse injuries, she began to show me internet memes. Normally I wouldn’t mind sharing a laugh or two over the latest pop-culture joke or picture making the rounds online, but she continued scrolling through them, one after the other. It stopped being fun very quickly but she insisted on showing them to me like an eager child to a bored parent. 

I tried to actively relate to the memes or her own stories and share some of my own. “Yes, I get it. Something like that happened to me.” “That reminds me of this one time…” I also attempted to explain my job, a fairly standard practice when meeting someone. She didn’t seem very interested in what I did no matter how enthusiastically I tried to describe it. I assumed she might have been nervous and ran out of things to say, which made it all more frustrating when she would interrupt even my most exciting of stories. Not only would she would chime in with an opinion or story of her own before I was finished, many of them somehow came back around to the topic of her ex-boyfriend no matter how unrelated. Once I noticed this pattern, it dawned on me that I had actually contributed very little to the conversation between us that entire evening. I don’t think she intended to dominate the conversation, but it became very clear that in addition to it being one-sided, we had absolutely nothing in common. This was not the same woman I had been messaging with the past few days. On her latest tirade about her past relationship, I could feel myself mentally checking out and accepted this was not going anywhere. 

She must have caught me looking off into the distance and looked at the time on her phone. Somehow three hours had gone by. Normally this would indicate two people having a wonderful time and losing track of time, but that was not the case. Any connection I thought might have been there at first had dwindled down to a complete lack of interest. The expression on my face must have betrayed me as she offered to pay for dinner. “I might as well. You only had the burger anyway. You didn’t even drink anything.” Looking at the table, she was right. The six empty beer bottles in front of us were all hers. I didn’t know if that indicated something more about me or more about her. Given how disappointed and eager I was to get home, I quietly accepted her offer. As irresponsible as it was, I decided not to say anything about how she might not be in a sober enough state to drive. I wanted to leave.

Despite this, I asked if she could stick around for a minute as I started up my car. I had briefly mentioned to her I drove a vehicle that was sometimes unreliable but she must have underestimated just how bad it was when I pointed it out in the parking lot. At this point, I was well past trying to impress her. However, I politely asked if she could stick around to ensure that my car would start. It had been an exceptionally cold week that winter and my car sometimes wouldn’t start. I prayed that it would turn over and that I wouldn’t need to rely on this woman to jump my car battery, but I didn’t know what else I could do if I was stuck there that night. 

Much to my relief, my car started. I thanked her for waiting to which she responded to with a grunt and the roar of her own Ford 150 which peeled out of the parking lot. I took a minute to let my car engine warm up and for me to gather my thoughts as I tried to figure out what the hell happened that evening. It had truly been one of the worst dates I had ever been on. As I drove home, I vowed to abstain from online dating. At least for the next few weeks.