I think this idea has merit. Fancy, expensive spa retreats like Miraval have unmounted horse therapy for $100-$200 a session, and a brief google search confirms that there are places that specialize in using horses for mental, not physical therapy. Staff it with a horsewoman who has a degree in counseling and you can meet the demand of people who want to be around a horse to benefit their mental health.
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High maintenance horses are a whole other thread! Then again it gets you into the black hole of either keeping that horse who needs high monthly maintenance / medical costs OR choosing to find a less costly, healthier horse for your riding pleasure and ( dare I say) allow the current horse to permanently go to greener pastures.
Eliminating frequent vet bills/ meds and possible higher farrier costs associated with 1 horse can make a huge difference but I know not a popular option here.
Where you are in the US definitely will determine what it costs to keep a horse , even at home and also if you grow your own hay or have to buy from someone else.
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Iâve never really thought about this before; but it does seem like nearly everything has a competition component to it. This was a big part of why I never participated in school sports; the time commitments were too big and everything was too serious. I preferred things like theater; both acting and doing set crew and also enjoyed choir and show choir a lot. I did band until mandatory band camp interfered with my horsey summers and decided to quit (you couldnât do concert band without doing marching band 
). They lost their first chair flute on that occasion. Im wondering now if those had more appeal to me since they were out of the competition realm to me and seemed more âfunâ. I was a kid that if I wasnât 1000% invested in something, I felt like it was being forced on me and hated it. Still a little bit that way as an adult!
Iâve seen so many kids/teens run through the ringer of activities before they even get to high school, that I as a kid would have been burnt out beyond belief. Being with horses has always and to this day, shut off the buzzing of âthe real worldâ and have been eternally grateful to have something like that in my life.
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My horse was all I ever did. I hated school and never wanted to be apart of any of it once we were let out for the day. After school and weekends were spent with my horseâor at the part time job ( s) I had so I could support him!
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I agree!! The good memories are the silly fun stuff we did with our horses or a few incredible wins when you werenât expecting it.
And good grief, the market wants it so the shows provide but there are entire divisions for show seasons devoted to cross rails, 12â-18â jumps. 
That use to be a height you schooled at home with the goal being to get to 2â so you could show a small pony. Times have changed.
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Are we sisters from another Mother??? I remember my parents sitting me down before my junior year in high school and saying âYouâve got to pick a couple school activities to participate in so your college applications have some balance to the horse stuffâ 
So I hopped in the school yearbook and newspaper clubs because those activities took place during the school day.
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We just might beâŠ
I think we agree on more than just this 
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I was a very involved teen even 20+ years ago. I was in band, plus my schoolâs ensamble stage band. I did sports: field hockey, swimming, track. I was on several academic competition teams. I was in 4-H and FFA. I was involved in several plays and theater productions. Who knows what other clubs Iâm forgetting. AP and honors classes. Top of my class. Also had a part time job.
Plus I showed a lot. Mostly locally, but some A circuit stuff.
But it seems different for kids today. At my high school, we never took ourselves very seriously. The only pressure I ever felt was my own intrinsic desire to do well. I donât look back on my teenage years and feel like I was oversubscribed. Honestly, when I think about my high school years, it feels like I spent all my time in the barn and riding. The other stuff doesnât seem like it took up much of my time at all.
Today it seems like practices last longer and are more frequent. The competitions are more serious. Coaches expect you to dedicate yourself entirely to your sport. The seasons for some of these sports never end with summer travel leagues. Adults start talking about potential college scholarships every time their kid takes up an activity. Plus the fees to participate are sky high. All of those extracurriculars I did through school were more or less free.
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Genuine question with no snark attached - what part of what I said made you infer the horse[s] were high maintenance?
I remember you are in a very different part of the world than me so that likely influences your perspective. For my region, my horses would be considered objectively low maintenance. Five out of six of them are barefoot, the sixth is shod year round but works hard for his keep. Two of them are in moderate work, two are in light/occasional work (hacks) and two are totally retired. They all are grain free (well, they get RB). No supplements except Vit E, which is a requirement in this area.
Routine vet maintenance for me isnât monthly injections. Itâs dental (every 6 months), inoculations, and pulling titers for Coggins and Lyme. Some people will do chiropracting, acupuncture, massage, kinesiotape too â this likely comes across as frivolous for a casual riding home like trail riding or pleasure, but they are proven performance-enhancers for equine athletes that are competition horses and beneficial bordering on necessary as the demand for work level increases. (As an aside: even trail or pleasure horses could benefit from these services).
I do have one horse on the payroll who could be considered on the higher end of low maintenance, in that he gets once yearly injections (~$400) to maintain his performance as a competition horse. If he was retired or putzing along on the trail, he wouldnât need it though he likely would benefit from it either way.
But! It could also be my threshold for what constitutes as high maintenance is higher than others. For me, a high maintenance horse is a horse that needs a lot of monthly veterinary intervention to be kept comfortable, or a lot of food to be kept in good condition.
Unfortunately in my area feed costs are through the roof. About 70% of my horse costs is purely forage related.
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The fact that many supervisors still retaliate against employees for even asking a coworker to talk about wages and salaries tells us all we need to know.
Wage transparency and equity have improved. They need to improve more.
Waaayyyy off-topic: for a studentâs history project this week, I had occasion to discover what the donations totaled at one of MLKâs last Poor Peopleâs Campaign speeches would be worth today. In 1968, a roomful of broke MLK supporters in Eutaw, Alabama, donated $86. Today, that would be nearly $800.
No field Iâve worked in (horse care, science, public school teaching, reporting, or public radio) has had the value of its compensation grow one-hundredfold since '68.
i.e. Our compensation has not remotely met inflation.
This is a systemic problem that is not going to improve as automation replaces more and more labor.
Maybe the mods can tell me whether cross-posting is a thing here, and Iâll delete this if Iâve upset anyoneâs sensibilities.
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Same for me. Your extracurricular list is longer than mine, but I did work over the summers in high school. When I reflect back though, most memories are horse ones.
I agree too that it feels different today; it seems that maybe some of it is more parental push for college apps and the like.
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Those are becoming increasingly difficult to find in some areas.
In my area, the choices are high-end with good footing for about $1200 - $1500, or backyard with crappy footing and broken fences for around $800. And everyone I know at the latter type of barn faces ongoing problems keeping their horses sound.
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My three equines pay for themselves (and my own weekly lessons, online classes, riding apparel, books, first year doing rated showsâŠI spend all my money on horse stuff) with a backyard lesson program working less than 15 hours a week.
Iâve been doing this for over a year and I am stunned at how much fun it is, how good itâs been for the horses, how lucrative it is, and how Iâve been able to make a little community of horse people whoâŠfor lack of a better phraseâŠdo things my way. Like, if the horse is anxious because a neighbor is doing something loud and out of character, we donât ride and do unmounted work instead. Iâm doing a fun dressage barn show this weekend and if students want to enter xrail classes at our forthcoming barn h/j summer show they have to get over 65%. Everyone gets longed for about half of their lesson before we do the second half exercise. The adult weekly unmounted horsemanship class practices meditation, Masterson method work, and dives into seat technique which is the kind of education I wish I had gotten when I first started to interact with horses and ride. I just love the beginner horse crazy kids and itâs been win/win/win for me/horses/students. Teaching from the longe first has been amazing and since they do all these stand/sit exercises at the trot before posting, Iâve yet to see anyone have any issues with posting for the first time, which is so cool. And we regularly do bareback so thereâs no complaining about no-stirrups work. I could go on.
Itâs so fun and cool to make money and a community with my horses. I still suffer from imposter syndrome and I worried my horses would be too high strung or it would mess with their education but neither of those things have happened at all. PM me with any questions.
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Hey, if they have a spare couple hundred grand lying around to eventually retire their horse without owning horse property, more power to 'em.
I however looked at the 15 year projection and thought to myself, âI, too, would like to retire one day.â
This was the time where that iron was hot for my horse, not five years from now when heâs 20.
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It is different. Absolutely. I think much of this goes along with the loss of land, so many kids today have no idea what it is to just run outside and play. There is so much âmediaâ presence on the salaries of professional athletes it is no wonder everyone thinks thatâs where to go and who to be.
Along with 2 parent working households, or single parent, came âwho watches the kid while Iâm not homeâ = activities to stash the kid in outside of school hours. A whole other discussion.
There is a LOT that is different in todayâs world vs when you and I were kids, Iâm not doing a very good job articulating it. k
Loss of land, kids living in apts vs homes, cities vs acreage, societal issues such as âstranger dangerâ and gangs etc. Parents actually parenting vs one activity after another which, letâs face it, means you donât have to spend much âface timeâ with your child.
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What you describe and what all you are doing is EXACTLY my dream. Heck Iâd want to come ride at your barn! And Iâm serious. Your program sound so rich in experience versus lessons where you just mount and ride in an arena. Yes, I will PM you. Thank you for posting!
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This part. $ 600 every month for food, shoeing & routine vet maintenanceâŠ
Either hay is very expensive or horse needs tons of supplements, bagged feed or vet care. That is high maintenance to me. ETA: are you talking $600 for the multiple horses you own or just 1?
My 3 cost me $ 70 a month (total for 3) for farrier, $33 for 1 bag of RB and 1 is on MSM which is $7 a month. Nothing more unless I have a vet bill but that is rare. Low maintenance is what I am used to and all my horses for the last 45+ years have been that way.
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Unless you already have a degree or background in counselling, Iâm finding itâs tough to make a go of a set-up like that. In Canada, itâs almost impossible to set-up as a charity or non-profit unless you have many like-minded individuals coming together and some kind of funding (from âŠ??). In the US, however, there seem to be fewer barriers to entry.
In 2019 I began taking my trained pony into retirement facilities (the facility we visited last fall enjoyed our visit so much theyâve rebooked us every single month from spring until fall this year) - but my ultimate goal was (is?) to connect with youth in elementary schools with a program using a pony to promote kindness and respect (essentially anti-bullying). Unfortunately Iâm not getting any response/interest from schools, which is discouraging.
And throwing the words âtherapeuticâ or âtherapy horseâ around these days is like playing with a stick of dynamite, there are virtual seminars Iâve attended whose sole purpose was to convince people in the industry that unless theyâre licensed therapists they shouldnât be using any variation of the word âtherapyâ in their business name or description.
A program based out of the barn to bring together like-minded youth who could use the opportunity to connect with others similar to them in a setting where the focus is on something else (pony) and work on building-up their self-esteem through activities centering around said pony would be wonderful - but would that not require some kind of official background or credentials in social work to support the development of such a program?
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I used them for Melly.
I thought they buried at their farm, but they might drop at the landfill.
Yo went to Walter V at Equine Skeletons. Com to be composted and reused for art or education.
Iâm not sure thatâs just at a big show, it seems standard to spend more than three times what my horse cost in '91 on a $$$$ saddle and then routine fittings, etc.
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