08/05/2025
"Barn Rats" or Barn leaders as we call them are emerging independent and knowledgeable horsemen/horsewomen They are often the first to catch cuts and scrapes on the lesson horses I wish more farms allowed this generation to experience first hand the knowledge you gain from being hands on
Just 75 years ago, around 1950, the USA population was about 150 million. Today itās about 330 million, and that more than doubling has had a profound impact on the humans who are involved with horses.
Far fewer kids live in close proximity to horses, so they donāt become familiar with what horses are actually like. They donāt know how to take care of them, how to handle them, how to āreadā horses.
They arenāt allowed to be barn rats, so they donāt become horsemen and horsewomen. These modern kids like horses but they donāt know horses the way their parents, and especially their grandparents knew horses because they took care of horses.
It will only get worse, the split between those who like horses and those who know horses, because the population is growing, suburbs are replacing open countryside, and not many kids will get up in the morning to go feed the pony before school the way so many of us did growing up.
Horse loving kids will get taken to a barn somewhere that still has bits and pieces of open land usually within a 20-45 minute drive from where they live, get their lesson, and get driven home.
Itās not the fault of the kids that they arenāt true horse people. They would prefer the old ways, but the old ways, by and large, are gone.
This scenario is a by product of population growth, and that isnāt anything over which almost anyone has the slightest bit of control.
