Yeah, I I ow sleeping in my car isn’t good. I meant more like hanging out in there when I have breaks. I would still be in a hotel because a lot of braiders i know charge a fee for hotels. Obviously if I’m showing I would get a hotel or rent a house!
I think it would be really hard to stay up all night braiding other people’s horses and then stay up all day riding and competing for a week. Even for a high energy teen!
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And somehow fit school in between
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I did it. There was a lot of coffee involved. Youth is a hell of a drug.
Once I got my driver’s license and could swing doing this myself, there was one particular show that was 10 minutes from my high school. I spent the night braiding, maybe napped on some trunks under a fly scrim, and then showered in the morning at one of the facility buildings. Hit Starbucks on the way to school and walked into 8AM Economics double-fisting venti red-eyes. After school, went back to the show, groomed until the horses were tucked in, went to sleep for a few hours, and woke up at midnight to do it all again. The show always ran over the first week of school so homework was minimal enough to do during lunch, and I got lucky two years in a row with my first English text of the semester being something I’d read before.
Summer break was a whole lot easier. If I had 8 horses to do and then the 8AM Maclay, at least that was more fun than Econ. And I could go back to the hotel and sleep in a real bed, too.
I can’t imagine doing this now, but it did pay for all my horse shows my last two junior years.
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Do you mind if I PM you some questions I have about braiding? Only if you want to, I just was wondering because we have similar timelines and situations!!
You’re welcome to. I can’t give you any current advice because I only braid occasionally at this point, but happy to talk about how I managed things as a junior.
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Can I ask what you’re practicing on in this photo?
I’ll feel like an idiot if you say “a real horse!” But I’m always looking for something to practice on at home and ever hopeful someone’s found a hack.
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Not the OP, but I recognize the model, I use it too. It’s Breyer horse head. I got mine off the eBay. It’s marketed to young riders, however it helped me teach myself the Dutch running braid
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THANK YOU!!!
That’s brilliant.
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I am practicing on an American girl doll horse! It’s actually really useful because I can practice and it’s not super small!
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Oooh, I’m going to have to check that out. I was looking at the Breyer heads last night and wondering --also, if I was going to have to, ah, shorten its mane up a bit!
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Oh yeah!! I definitely had to cut the make of my American girl doll horse which was fine for me because I don’t use it for anything other than braiding. Also the mane is a little slippery because it’s synthetic, so it’s hard to grip sometimes!
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Now, if you find a solution for practicing tails, too, definitely let us know!
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So on the horse head, the forelock isn’t a bad tail substitute, or I take a big chunk of hair and pull from underneath on the mane
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Not gonna lie. This middle-aged lady was once seen toting a Barbie head out of Goodwill to try to practice on because I have no French braiding skills as a foundation.
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Braiding is so fun!!! I never get to do it anymore and whenever I try to teach kids they’re super uninterested 
I was never as good as the professional braiders you see at most shows lol but I was pretty decent. I would say my braids look alllmoooost as nice but 10-20% don’t survive rubbing lol.
But I think practicing a lot really helps. Just over and over again. I only charged $20-50 for braids since I wasn’t pro quality and that gave me a lot of opportunities to practice. And just braid your own horse when you show all the time. My horses loved being braided and it was a great distraction from the anxiety of showing 
I would think it’s good money for people who are good at it. I had a pony braided for lead line at HITS Ocala and she did him in 30 minutes for $120 and he looked great I would have paid her more if she had asked for it.
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