10/23/2025
Rant: the working student
I’m currently reading: In the middle are the horsemen by Tim Maynard. It was recommended to me from Avas jumping coach.
It is extremely thought provoking for me as it is jogging many experiences I might have blocked out as a working student. This is one story that I pulled out of my blocked memory while reading this book.
After college I needed a job and went to work for my childhood lesson barn for the winter. It was a 7am-7pm day of feeding, watering, haying, teaching, and exercising a barn of 50 horses. It was also the worst winter ever- below freezing temps, blizzards, ice storms. I had to often wake up at 5am just to shovel my hunk of junk with wheels out of the driveway.
I learned so much about how to run a barn during the winter. It was the backbone in my education to see if I had what it took to care for horses in the winter. Summer came, and I was no longer needed and so I found a job in Connecticut with a Grand Prix dressage rider. My boss gave me a glowing recommendation and I was hired.
I had never taken a real dressage lesson, had never sat in a dressage saddle, and the only thing I knew was hunters. What could possibly go wrong?
Everything. Everything went wrong. The minute I arrived at the barn with $50 to my name I knew I was in the wrong place. I hated it and was immediately turned off.
The 12 horses were pampered pure bred holsteiners and hanorovians. The barn was attached to the boss ladies house, the barn aisles were vacuumed, the horses were fed 3 different types of hay, the horses only went out when the stalls were mucked, and someone was to watch the horses to make sure they didn’t gallop around while wearing shipping wraps. The day started at 5 am and all the horses were to be ridden by 12. Needless to say I lasted 4 days there. I had no idea what I was walking into and it was the extreme opposite of the barns I had worked in.
The boss woman was miserable, mean, treated her staff poorly, and hated her husband. She tried to give me a dressage lesson and was upset that I had never done classical dressage training . She taught me for a half hour while screaming no! Hold! More leg! Wrong leg! Never been so confused and scared in my life. The horses were incredible to ride though, and she fixed my Anne Kursinksy hunter seat in two minutes.
Her horses lived in padded stalls and were full of anxiety, weaving, head shaking, kicking the walls to be let out of their padded prisons. Their eyes were wild and wouldnt calm down till after their 30 minute exercise ride. These weren’t horses they were prisoners wrapped completely in bubble wrap like fragile eggs. She had one pony that had no ground manners. It bit me, and then tried to kick at me. I screamed at the pony “to knock it off” and that was when I discovered the mean boss lady would sit in her kitchen watching her staff on her barn cameras. She came flying out of her kitchen and said “we do not yell at the horses like that- pack your stuff and leave- the trial is over.” I quickly said. “What a relief! Thankyou for your time” I just smiled- handed her hannibal lectir and packed my stuff. As he bit her arm and she swatted him away like a fly.
I cried the entire way home and when I tried to get my old job back they told me no and to not to ever put them down as a reference again. I blew it- the woman called them to say I was an idiot that didnt know anything.
I had to start over- and so I did- in New Jersey while avoiding dressage barns for the next 15 years.
That was just the beginning. Getting fired from something I knew nothing about was my second greatest lesson in life. Don’t jump into a pool if you don’t know how to swim.
Now I research everything before jumping into something so I don’t set myself up for failure and after all these years my old lesson barn still stays in touch. I dont think I’m banned any longer.
The end.
