Thanks In advance to anyone offering advice!
My background is h/j and going to work for a couple FEI riders in Germany and the USA after highschool. I have jumped up to 1m45 and schooled dressage through fourth level due to some amazing internships and a lot of hard work. I had a couple of injuries and went to school (now an RN). I have a great relationship, pets and personal horse. Something is missing. I miss being out in the sun, the people, the hard work… who knows. I’m so driven to drop it all and go back to working for other riders. Everyone I talk to wants me to start my own little barn and not drop nursing but I feel like I’m not done learning! Or have the resources to show on a the level I want to. On the flip side I also love my stable life. Any one able to relate or advise?🤦🻔♀ï¸
I think it’s safe to say that many (if not most) of us on here have had to choose – to some degree – between professional careers and horses. There are some pros here that took the latter. Also, many many ammies that took the former (myself included).
Although it CAN be done, I think it’s incredibly difficult to raise a family while working for other riders of elite caliber. The travel is extensive and the schedule is frequently insane and unpredictable.
When my husband asked me to marry him, I knew I was at a crossroads. Obviously, you can see by my username what I chose.
I have a lovely family now. Two beautiful girls and a loving husband. We live in a nice house, take great vacations, and all that. My job – while not very fulfilling – pays for me to keep two horses. I don’t get to ride or show as much as I used to. I probably will never reach my goal of jumping in the AOs. It stings a little.
As much as I love my family, there are days I regret my choice. When I steal an hour at the barn, but have to rush off to take a conference call or drive someone to ballet. When I can’t show because somebody invited friends for a sleepover. When I miss my lesson day because hubby is traveling for work. When my horse colics and I’m 1500 miles away at his college reunion. Yeah, there are days it really sucks.
But overall, I can’t imagine my life without my girls. So, in the end, I wouldn’t change anything. You may feel differently, but all I have to share is my personal experience. Good luck to you in finding a life you love!
So why not go back to the horses? I’m not saying you should drop the work stuff…I know I certainly didn’t have any other way of paying for the horses! But I kept riding through all of my work/career development and through all of the family stuff including having kids. If you want to carve out time for it you can. It might mean sacrifice (I certainly feel like I’ve made my fair share of compromises and sacrifices), but if you want to do it you can do it. My career has been pretty intense and yet I’ve never cut horses out, and, in fact, showed at the GP level while balancing an executive-level career and a family with young kids.
Professional life can also be hard. Even if you do what you love, you are turning it into a job and putting restrictions and responsibilities on it. I think that there can be a “grass is greener on the other side of the fence” reaction where riding then starts to seem like a freer, healthier, more open option.
But for me a big lure of riding is that I am totally amateur and have no external expectations whatsoever on myself. I look at my trainer friends and i do not want their lives, because they get very little time to ride their own horses, and have money problems, stress, and accumulated injuries. Honestly, a good professional job with time and cash to ride is the best of all worlds for most of us.
You have a good career for horses as an RN. How long have you been nursing? At least around where I live, it’s well paid but also high stress, because most hospitals are deliberately understaffed, so the RNs have to work extra shifts and crazy hours.
I would suggest in your heart of hearts, think about what you like and don’t like about your RN job, and then what you can do to mitigate the parts that are exhausting or boring etc. My guess is that the horses are calling because you have hit a bit of a wall in your experience as a nurse, maybe you have been doing it long enough now that you are getting a bit bored or tired. Maybe there is some way you can alter either your work situation, or go work somewhere else, or find a new niche in the health industry that has better hours or something.
You could possibly also take a leave of absence from your job for a season or even a year, and try out the riding student lifestyle. Or do an intensive training session with someone, that you pay for. But I would be very very cautious about just dropping a good career that you have invested time and money into.
The other thing is that people give chances to kids in their late teens/ early 20s who are grateful, hard working, seem like they are on the way up. I think it would be very different to go back into horses at let’s say 30 or 35, as a permanent groom. The professionals your own age will have moved on further, and will be mentoring new 18 year olds.
Thank you everyone commenting! I’m only 23 and have been nursing for a year now. Even as a nurse I can’t really afford to have a horse in a training program and show without working all the crazy hours… preventing me from showing. Considering just taking 6 months off and going to another internship
Think carefully about what the poster above said … the difference between horses as a horse professional, and horses as an amateur.
A horse professional has very similar stresses and pressures to nursing, if you think about it. Too much to do and not enough time to do it. Uncontrollable hours. Competing priorities. Craziness, of schedules and people, and horses, too. Etc. Not able to enjoy what you like most about it because of the pressure to take care of every detail.
So being a horse professional may not be what you think it will be. Although you do have prior experience, believe me when I say that working life after 22 is very different from working life before that age, regardless of the field, and the difference grows with every year. Fewer highs and greater weight of responsibility, mainly.
You’ve put in your first year of nursing so that should help your future options - less than a year and it makes you not the first choice for employers because they think you won’t stay, and replacing positions is expensive and hard. Whatever you do remember that you have lots of time ahead of you and that every decision you make now counts far more heavily in your future than it ever did before.
If you take 6 months off for horses professionally it might help you make a decision. But do realize that you are in a large and crowded boat, as you’ll see from the many replies still to come. The decisions between a barn life and a “real” life can be hard, because doing both to the max is not realistic, so a choice must be made.
