03/17/2021
I respect Kris more than most anyone. She’s a rated judge and one helluva horsewoman! And all around wonderful human. Lend her your ear please. Here are her words about this article.
Dear Anonymous Young Professional,
I read your article. Three times, in fact. Each time I read it, I got a little more annoyed. I used to be you. I grew up on a horse farm. The most expensive horse I ever rode growing up cost $500. Any USEF (or in those days, AHSA) show record any horse I rode had was whatever class I rode it in. When I grew up, I decided I wanted to be a professional, so off I went and got a job. I made $150 a week, and worked 6 days a week, from whatever time I needed to be there until whatever time all the work was done. And the work consisted of literally whatever came up. To paraphrase you, I rode bad horses and taught beginner lessons. I also groomed, body clipped, loaded the trailer, braided, lunged, cleaned stalls and got yelled at. A lot. I got treated like I didn't know what I was doing. Because I didn't know what I was doing.... But I also loved it. And all my friends did the same job, and they loved it too. We learned that you can't make mistakes when the welfare of the animals is at stake. We learned that getting paid even a little bit to RIDE A HORSE is a privilege. We learned how hard it is to make it in a business that is driven by people's leisure income, and how lucky we were to even have a job, because there were ten more nitwits just like us who would die for the chance we had.
Riding and training horses is a competitive sport, and also a business. It takes a long time to become even adequate, much less good. The people who have made it had to learn a lot of things the hard way. Most things, probably. You are expected to pay attention, to work your ass off, to get dirty, to stay up all night, to get fired for a million reasons, to not get paid for a million more reasons, and to show up every day with a desire to not only ride a lot of good and bad horses, but to teach a bunch of people to do the same. It hasn't changed in the several million years since I was a young professional. You better love it, and be willing to do all the things.
So instead of anonymously trashing an entire generation of professionals, I'd suggest you evaluate your options and your desires, and either jump back in, or mosey on down the road. Because there are still ten more nitwits right behind you, waiting to take a swing.
BY AN ANONYMOUS YOUNG TRAINER I frequently hear horse trainers complain about their young assistants. Their criticisms include things like, they don’t work hard enough, they get burnt out too quickly, they’re too slow, they don’t want to teach, etc. But as a young professional in my early twen...
