Would you consider leasing a horse to get your scores?
If yes, can you provide details, annual lease or month-to-month, expectations/obligations, fees?
If no, why not?
I get that six people will have six positions on this topic, but I’m curious, and am interested in different perspectives.
I am working on my bronze right now and I think it depends…
I use my own horse and we need one more 2nd level and one 3rd level score. For me the fun is to do it with my own horse and to move up the levels while doing it.
I guess if you lease a solid 3rd level horse you can get the scores in 2 weekends. That would keep the leasing cheap but not sure if it would be as much fun.
I agree with Manni01. The Bronze Medal is a goal, but only if it is done with my own horse that I have trained and ridden through the levels. It is not a goal just for the sake of being able to say I have achieved it.
Agree with Manni and Leheath. Schoolmasters are fine for learning, but what I’m after is the satisfaction of doing it myself.
I can let you know from my perspective, leasing my horse. I sponsor (that’s what we call leasing here) my mare I showed to PSG (has piaffe and passage) to someone who only has been riding a year when she started (because I have her two daughters and can’t ride more.) In about 2 1/2 years she just got her bronze. I don’t know if she’ll stay at 3rd because she needs to work on getting the changes, but she got it.
I don’t think there are many opportunities like this available. She just pays the costs for the mare, which is very little where I am, about $300 a month to ride 4 days a week. I set her up with a trainer who knows her stuff and will come to the barn for only $60 a lesson. And the mare is dead broke fun on the trail and to deal with, though not the easiest ride.
I do it because I can, and I want to make sure the mare is in the right situation.
Ah, well, if my horse ever recovers from his injury…I have a thing about doing it myself, on my horse. That’s just me. My joke is that I’d like to get my bronze BEFORE we do our Century Ride. I’m 71.5, he’s 12. LOL
I would lease an FEI horse, if I could, on which to learn the moves, and then, continue to lesson on my own horse, and to show my own horse even more quickly to the Second and Third Level scores that I need.
I mean, I would take two lessons a day, one on the more trained/ more accomplished horse, and yet only continue to show my own horse up the levels.
I have even considered purchasing a horse for this purpose. But it’s complicated for a number of reasons apart from cost, including that my boarding stable is currently at capacity. But leasing would be preferable to buying, if there were such a lease to be had.
Hope that makes sense, it’s sort of a yes, and no answer :lol:.
Its true OP there are lots of perspectives and the only one that matters is the one you think works best for you. I am finally going to take the plunge at third level next month…gulp! The partnership I have with my horse is everything. A bronze medal even if we just squeak by with a 60.00% wouldn’t mean anything to me if it wasn’t with my horse. However, there are several people I know who have leased or purchased a schoolmaster with solely the intent of earning their medals. There are no right or wrong ways to achieve what’s important to you.
I’m similar to the above - you can absolutely lease a horse and many people do, but for me personally it’s gotta be my own horse. I actually have my silver and the 3rd level scores for my bronze. The horse I got my 3rd level scores and my silver on was a horse I retrained and brought to PSG. I just never showed recognized below 3rd with him, hence no bronze. I plan to get my 1st and 2nd level scores next season and with luck, eventually my gold medal, on my young horse who I backed and have done all but the first two months of training on. While it’s absolutely legal to buy or lease a horse for your medals, I personally see it as a challenge to not only ride a horse at that level, but to have trained it too. I think you just have to decide for yourself whether your goal is to competently ride at that level or if you want to do it on a horse that you have been able to both ride and train to that level. No shame in either path.
I currently have my first level scores, and would have gone for my second level scores on the mare I was leasing but she went back to her owner right before I had the chance. I helped train her along with another half lessor so I felt that I had really “earned” my first level scores.
That being said, around the same time a grand prix schoolmaster came up for lease in my barn. He was having a few soundness issues as he got older so his owner and my trainer decided that he should take his workload down a notch which worked perfectly for me. I’ve only been leasing him for about a month but I’m thrilled to be working on third and fourth level work just as much as he is! I’m hoping to get my second and third level scores for my bronze at the beginning of the new year, but I have to admit that I feel a bit guilty getting them on such a trained horse. I think I’d like to learn as much as I can on this horse and then eventually go back and do it on a horse I train myself. I think there’s something to be said about both accomplishments.
I’m aiming at a bronze with my horse, hopefully in the next year. We’re doing it the hard way (mare was pretty green and not young when I got her and I’m bringing her along with the help of weekly lessons and occasional training rides from a very good trainer). I wouldn’t have it any other way.
If I weren’t pouring my heart and soul into this horse and the project of progressing together, I imagine I’d have jumped at a chance to lease an FEI schoolmaster for learning purposes. But to me the medals are only meaningful as a symbol of all the work that goes into getting a horse there so I would never consider leasing for the express purpose of getting a bronze (or silver, or gold).
When I was an AA I had a schoolmaster…I didn’t show him recognized except once. He was my first dressage horse. I now own a horse I bought when he was 6 weeks old and I backed him when I was 49. He is now 11 and I did get my bronze on him, have my 4th level scores and working towards PSG for the spring (He had a lot of time off last winter). I have him with my trainer and she is teaching me to train him to the levels and she also rides him.
I can’t tell you how much more satisfying and rewarding training the young one has been. It’s my goal to get medals on him, I have been offered other horses to get scores on but I will keep tring with this one until we have gone as far as we can together!
Talk to me in a couple of years when I’m 60…if I don’t have my gold then yes, I may lease. lol
[QUOTE=Reynard Ridge;8934217]
Would you consider leasing a horse to get your scores?
If yes, can you provide details, annual lease or month-to-month, expectations/obligations, fees?
If no, why not?
I get that six people will have six positions on this topic, but I’m curious, and am interested in different perspectives.[/QUOTE]
I consider myself a rider, not a trainer, so for me, the goal was learning to ride a horse that already knew the movements, not trying to teach us both at the same time since I had no idea what those movements were supposed to feel like. (I brought a horse to scores at First, but couldn’t get the hang of Second.) I would rather own the horse I show, so I bought a PSG schoolmaster, and got my bronze in two years (the first year was figuring out how to ride him!) and my silver the year after that.
A trainer I was riding with at the time still didn’t have her PSG scores yet (the horse she had retired, she couldn’t afford another, and we don’t have many FEI riders or horses in our area), so I let her show mine, and she got both scores in one weekend. It wasn’t a paid lease, I just let her ride him a couple of times a week for a few weeks, then show him, basically just as a thank you for helping get me there, and to help boost her business since she could now claim the Silver medal.
Now I have a GP schoolmaster (trained in GP movements, but hasn’t shown at that level), and am hoping to go for gold. We got the I1 scores in our first two rides. But GP is hard, and it’s going to take awhile to get it showable! (I’ve had him 3 years, and we’ve had some setbacks.) I do like that neither of us have shown the level, so it makes it a little sweeter if we can get there. I still admit that I could never train a horse to that level, but will be happy if I can ride it.
You have to have a suitable horse to do this sport. In most cases, if you have a Training Level horse with suitable forward response, who has achieved rhythm, relaxation, and straightness, and impulsion required for Training Level (which is not much impulsion), then you can get to Third Level with this horse.
But maybe you cannot get to Third Level with your current trainer. I would invest more in a great trainer, rather than leasing or buying another horse.
A young rider friend of mine got all her Bronze Medal scores on a leased horse. She got the first and second level scores in four rides on one weekend (two separate one-day shows), and got the third level scores in two rides six weeks later.
She had been riding for years - mostly in IEA programs - but would spend her summers as a working student at the barn, learning dressage. Last year, before she headed off for her freshman year in college, she and her mother made arrangements to lease a horse from someone at the barn, for the specific goal of earning the Bronze. I think she leased her for maybe 3-4 months in total. The lease ended at the end of the month in which she earned the final scores, but I believe it was going to end then anyway, since she had gone off to college (she actually came home the weekend of the last show, just to ride in that show). They picked up all expenses - board and training (she was in a full training program), farrier, etc.
Yes, I would lease but find its incredibly difficult to find that sort of horse (at least on my budget) - I’ve been plugging away at it for more years than I care to admit, but for those of us that can’t afford to own a horse, I would love to see more lease options. I did my first level scores in college on a school horse, and was able to do my 2nd level scores this summer in one weekend on a horse my coworker very generously loaned me - she is trained much higher but given I have had little to no riding in the last 5 years, I don’t feel particularly guilty that I didn’t train her myself - for me, I take what I can get!
For someone such as myself, a half “free” lease with option to ride 3x/week (pay 1/2 board & vet/farrier) would be the only viable option at present, but I understand that the lease is far more valuable than that…but that’s just where I am right now.
I’m hoping there are people out there who want to lease a horse that can do that sort of thing. I am considering leasing out my GP horse, who is 20 now and no longer needs to be doing heavy collection but has a great work ethic and could still do well up to PSG or so. I don’t have as much time to ride him as I’d like and I would love for someone else to benefit from the years of training I put in. He’s not terribly complicated so someone probably could just lease for a few months and get their scores in two shows, but I’d like to find a rider who is also interested in learning from him in the longer term (and who would love on him, hack him out too, etc).
ETA: I think most of us would say there’s a difference between leasing a horse JUST because you want to get your bronze medal, and leasing a schoolmaster-type because you want to learn from it and maybe get your bronze medal along the way. I’m guessing the second option is relatively common.
In the world of Big Eq, there is a leasing system, with expectation of cost based on riding a finished horse to get to Finals. I have not experienced this kind of ‘system’ in the dressage world.
I was chatting with my trainer about leasing made horses, specifically in the context of bringing rideable, AA friendly horses up to third level and then leasing them out as bronze schoolmasters, and she just looked kind of horrified. :lol:
There are a couple of riders who I know who are struggling with pretty basic dressage principals, and frankly, their horses are lovely, but maybe not all that well suited to their abilities. They dropped a lot of money for really nice horses that they don’t ride all that well. I look at those situations from the outside in (and, really, it’s none of my business) and wonder if a lease wouldn’t be a better option. If we did have a system of having more rideable horses available for learning, as the hunter people do, maybe it could be a positive influence.
I’m bringing my own young horse along with the expectation that we can achieve the bronze medal together. He’s not really FEI material, though. I would seriously consider leasing a schoolmaster to work on the upper levels, if such a thing were possible.
No, I would never lease a horse for medals or any other reason. Leasing a horse to me is like leasing housing rather than owning. It’s just not the same.
I have to feel like I have contributed ‘something’ to the improvement my horse’s training.
I also have no interest whatsoever in medals and don’t get why they are so important to people. I have my 3rd level scores and my 4th level scores, but never showed 1st or 2nd. I could easily have gone back and gotten those scores for the Bronze, but why? So I could go on a chatboard and tell everyone??
My trainer has FEI scores on several horses and also GP scores. Never applied for medals.
I’m chiming in only because I plugged away at this for a long time. I decided I wanted to do it on my own horse if it took forever. I did it on my PMU horse I have had since he was 6 mos old. We finally got to third and he got a hind suspensory injury. I figured that was it. I would have to wait another eternity to get my young horse there. After two years of rehab he was showing great this year and my trainer decided we should go for it. We picked a show and went for it and got the third level scores I needed.
Over the course of all this I also had many conversations with myself…like oh hell, I’ll just go lease a horse to finish it. I ultimately decided, for myself, it only really meant something if I did it on my own horses, even if it never happened.
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