My 2 cents as an over 50 re rider. Finding a barn that is willing to work with an adult rider is like finding a unicorn. I started riding in Northern CA and found it hard to find a trainer who would take me seriously. I would spend a lesson with the instructor on the phone or paying attention to other riders. There was no discussion of flatwork/dressage. No correction of my posture for the most part. And I didn’t know any better. I moved to GA and found a barn that actually corrected me. They paid attention. I started reading COTH and realized that I could expect better. Now I’m in PA with a trainer who is very attentive.
So I agree about more attention needs to be paid to a program to train instructors. As a teacher, I have to be certified, it would be lovely to know my riding instructor is.
Also, I agree about the lack of online presence. It’s been really frustrating to try to find another lesson barn because they don’t have prices or information about lessons.
Well, Cali is it’s own beast they say.
My dressage horse doesn’t hack out quietly with anyone so I feel you there. He hacks out but the quietly bit is a work in progress.
My perspective is coming from someone who grew up riding in first 4-H/Pony Club type programs, and later h/j barns that had lesson programs as well as decent horses to lease for local or even small rated shows, and then came back to horses as an adult in the same general area. I’ve found that it’s increasingly difficult to find those smaller barns that have school horses available but aren’t basically lesson mills. The h/j barn that has good instruction and is focused on the local circuits (which are competitive in Maryland) is also increasingly difficult to find–it seems that every trainer thinks there’s extra cachet in taking their kids to HITS Culpeper for a few overnights every few months, even if only 2-3 of their students can actually afford it and they’re showing in the unrated divisions, rather than bringing along a string of beginners and more advanced riders who don’t have the financial means for rated shows but the desire and wherewithal to do the local circuits. 
So that has definitely changed–there now seems to be a wide gulf that doesn’t cater to riders “in between”. You’re either a weekend warrior with little intention of owning, who is happy just learning to w/t/c safely (no criticism at all implied…more power to all of those people), or someone with deep enough pockets for at least the smaller rated shows. So for a kid (or adult) who has a bit more talent and/or desire to move beyond the basic learning phase, there isn’t always much of a path to do so.
As for innate desire–I’m not sure if that has changed now, but I suspect that some kids (and adults) have always just gotten the horse “bug” while others just…don’t. I teach a few up-down lessons at the barn where I now board (that is a little closer to accommodating the in-betweens I mentioned above) to help defray the costs of keeping two horses in a high cost of living area, and while the lesson program currently has a massive waitlist (think, 100+ people) and lessons aren’t cheap, plenty of the kids who show up week to week are obviously only riding because their parents think it’s a good activity, or they like the “idea” of riding. I’ve lost two students in just the last 6 months that petered out and lost interest as soon as lesson got a tiny bit harder than the “pony ride” phase of learning. And I said, I teach just a handful of kids…this happens throughout the program with the more beginner riders, especially the “covid crowd” that has been clamoring for lessons since spring 2020. And more than one of the kids I teach now have very little desire to actually learn anything about horses–they have limited interest in even learning to groom correctly, much less tack up independently or retain any basic facts about horse anatomy, care, etc. week to week.
I’m starting to think this has just always been the case–some kids are just happy to show up once a week for a fun hobby that they’ll only sustain as long as the lessons stay low-key and Mom and Dad keep paying the bill. I get frustrated with their attitude at times because I would have killed for regular lessons and support as a kid, but at the same time…these are the clients that help keep a lesson program going since at least they generally show up and do pay on time. I just tell myself that they help keep the barn open and running for the rest of us.
A few observations from the trenches:
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Beginning lessons are booming. Tons of new people trying to enter the sport, with a noticeable pick up since COVID.
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As an industry, current participants do not tend to show a lot of respect for barns and trainers that cater towards developing new riders competently, even though every single horse discipline depends on our ability to do this well. There is a lot of elitism, including on these boards from time to time, about “up-down” lessons or the idea that a once a week rider will never develop, which is flat out not true.
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The elitism can make it hard for lesson barns that have competently developed riders, because the wear-Parlantis-showing-2’6" crowd can convince these competent riders that the cool kids go to local horse shows every weekend. A true lesson barn cannot go to horse shows all the time. The bread and butter of most lesson programs are weekend lessons. That perception that going-to-shows-must-mean-I-am-a-better-rider/in-a-better-barn siphons off the riders who have acquired some skills, when their developed skills can help tune lesson horses and counterbalance so many pure beginner lessons.
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There are parents galore who will talk about weekly lesson fees or summer camp being a stretch, but once there are ribbons involved, can’t wait to pay a small fortune at the local show barns. It is the darndest thing.
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I don’t see anything from any federation or association that is designed to support barns like mine, as opposed to supporting the horse show industrial complex. I don’t just mean from a subsidy standpoint. I also mean from a basic respect/recognition standpoint.
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The industry publications spend a lot of time congratulating owners who will fund high-end horses for a rider or two. I do not see much time being spent recognizing the people who are feeding the pipeline by developing new riders, often by subsidizing the barn or lesson string.
Oh boy can I relate to #3 as a child and even a little bit as an adult.
I work in a tech field and although I work remotely with some flexible hours, the majority of my riding does need to happen on the weekend regardless if I am lessoning only, part leasing, or full leasing. My very involved work pays for my riding, I am usually slammed for 9 hours solid each workday and can’t always find match between my schedule and a trainer’s lesson schedule.
My favorite schedule riding looks like this: Friday grid work lesson, Saturday technical flat work with poles preferably a lesson, Sunday course work lesson , Monday off, Tuesday flat with poles or dressage on my own , Weds flat work - transitions focused or hack out walk only maybe walking up and down hills or if conditioning maybe trot and canter sets on my own, Thurs off.
I am hard pressed to find a barn that has a trainer (even an assistant or competent WS) teaching lessons on both Saturdays and Sundays AND that isn’t gone 2x a month to a show during 9 months of the year. I don’t live to show, I rather clinic and if I DID show, I would like to do it less than 2x a year and make a vacation out of it for my non-horsey SO or do it on the LOCAL A or regional circuit where I don’t have to take off a ton of time from work.
Horses are a hobby and a personal development journey for me - my profession and some other areas of my life will always come first to a degree.
As an adult (this happened to me this weekend), weekend lessons were canceled for the next few weeks due to trainer schedule and shows. I was offered hacking rides (zero cost to me) on the part leased hunters in which I schooled some of the nappier habits out on the flat. I would have way preferred lessons, but I don’t ride much as it is these days as I am not leasing so I take what I can get.
I historically got shafted from part leases in CA because of my lack of desire to show despite putting in 3x/week lessons and doing as many clinics as possible and paying my more than fair share for a half lease + expenses. I refused to own a horse in CA due to lack of turnout.
I wish more barns maintained a decent assistant trainer or WS that stayed home during show season to teach clients on weekends who aren’t interested in showing but ARE interested in a Richard Spooner / or Boyd Martin clinic at 1m/ Novice level. I am barn searching starting in a few months and this is concept high on my priority list.
@Natalie_A omfg took the words out of my mouth. I also have a pretty decent budget all things considered (think mid 5s) or a reasonable 5 figure/year lease fee - but it is so frustrating to have instructor hours 10-5 Mon-Sat
I was so excited when our show barn got an assistant trainer for this exact reason…except then they started sending her to shows, too! I was floored. When there aren’t shows, both trainers typically take Saturday/Sunday off. End result: I still can seldom get a weekend lesson. During the week, I have to play hooky from work just to get a lesson in, because the kids take up all the time slots from 3:30 on. So, some weeks I don’t get a lesson at all. It’s rough!!
I found the most amazing barn, that is, until they moved to a new facility that had 100+ existing lesson students! Now as a working adult I can’t get a lesson spot. I went from two lessons a week to only 8 lessons since the end of September. Even if I give them one week lead time, I can’t get a lesson as there are no horses available, or no trainers available, or whatever. There was a show assistant who resigned at the end of the season, so the “home” assistant trainer has been at WEF for the past 3 weeks, and the Sunday trainer resigned due to family issues. I feel your pain!
My horse is currently in a program in Florida, and will likely come home at the end of the 2022 season. But I can’t bring him home to a program that can’t stay in communication with me and can’t squeeze me into their program. It’s a shame because I really, really like them! A LOT! But I keep falling off their radar. I actually thought I was fired as a client before Christmas, but I got invited to the Christmas party. I think they’re just overwhelmed. Such a shame.
Well said! I agree with every single aspect of your post.
All of the above, so well said. I think #2 and 3 are especially worse nowadays because of social media use in teens. Kids are RUTHLESS to each other on social media and often times that teenage cattiness makes for poor stewardship of our sport on those platforms. Plus, influencer culture is huge too and there are always the big popular accounts showing off the latest and greatest fancy gear, pics from all the big show circuits, you know the drill. That can be harmful to young kids new to the sport because it breeds comparison, especially at that vulnerable age where you really start to care what people think of you. Shoot, influencer culture comes for us all in every facet of life even outside the equestrian world. It hurts my heart to see how some of these kids act on social media and the effect that it has on them. Signed, someone was going through that vulnerable age when social media became big and am now seeing the negative effects it has had on myself and my peers’ lives.
Oh geez. Even as an adult, I had to make the conscious decision to go through my instagram and unfollow all of the random horse accounts that weren’t tied directly to an international competitor whose name I knew.
I’ve found the international riders don’t have time to make glamorous reels every day, or do fancy photoshoots, etc. and their posts are generally more educational and leave me feeling like I can do better during my own rides. All the other accounts just reminded me that I didn’t have millionaire parents who bought me a 100k horse, 3k boots, a 10k saddle, and so on, to go jump GP in Wellington for 6 months of the year.
Don’t get me wrong - I don’t begrudge anyone who is so fortunate to be able to live that lifestyle, but it’s difficult to look at that every day and not feel completely defeated knowing that some of my riding goals may very well be unattainable purely because I don’t have the independent wealth to get me there.
I actually think it’s the really good, old-time pros who most appreciate a barn that knows how to introduce new riders to the sport and establish really correct basics. In my area, it’s the smaller show barns that are sending kids around 2’6" “Derbies,” wearing shadbellies, unbraided, and all wearing the same helmet that seem to be encouraging the weird materialism where some of the kids seem to think “the look” and “the stuff” is important than the horse. Don’t get me wrong, either–people should not be braiding at local shows if we want to try to rein in exorbitant horse show costs, but they also shouldn’t be wearing shadbellies (!) and looking down their noses at kids in Troxel helmets and half chaps.
The horse shows in my area are feeding the beast with ginormous ribbons and glam year end awards banquets, at facilities that are WAY overbuilt for the ground rails-2’6" that is their prime market (even the 3’ divisions are not filling, and there are almost no entries 3’+). I think we could all make a conscious effort to try to praise/encourage/value people and barns who are trying to feed the pipeline and make riding accessible, instead of only praising the creme de la creme, or the people who are trying to LOOK like the creme de la creme. I happen to have done well in another industry and can ask myself, “Do I want to buy an expensive high end hunter for me and put her through the stress of horse show travel, or do I want to try to open the door to others in the sport and create a nice life for lesson horses at my home barn?” While people are not required to share the same values, I just want to remind everyone that we have choices on goals, what we are trying to achieve in this sport, and why. IMO, trying to look the part of a venture capitalist kid should not be on anyone’s goal list. No criticisms for those who want to look like a Big Eq star, as long as the goal is to ride beautifully and improve any horse, and not just to wear the trappings or accumulate horses like high end commodities/equipment.
Interestingly, one of the big name hunter riders from an old East coast family rode with my mom at our barn in the 80’s while in college. No monogrammed chaps for her–she used to wrap her own legs in polo wraps or Ace bandages to ride (before half chaps), and said she learned that from the exercise riders on the track (where her family had elite racehorses!). Around the same time, there was another gal from the same college who used to talk about how her parents had bought her a $400,000 junior hunter (in the 80’s!) who was named after a famous artist friend of theirs…the poor gal never got to ride her junior hunter (for fear she would mess them up), and by the time she got to our barn, she didn’t even really know how to tack up (definitely had the monogrammed chaps, though!). One of these gals has withstood the test of time and is an important contributor to the industry, and it’s not the monogrammed custom chaps gal.
Taking the long view of our many thousands of students over the years, it is not the ones who showed the most who ended up sticking with it the longest and/or turning pro. Not sure if that gives anyone solace, but I wanted to mention it.
I find the original question interesting because I have always thought horse lovers were born, not made. Maybe a good TV show or movie with horses sparked the desire to ride in some kids, maybe the sight of horses in the field lit up their hearts, who knows. I didn’t come from a horsey family and I grew up in a city so I can’t point to any specific place my love of horses came from, I just remember always wanting to ride.
Based on my experience and observation, I wonder if the lack of commitment comes from the parents, not the kids. My parents were not horsey and they were only interested in footing the bill and standing in inclement weather for a sport they were not interested in for so long. They had other children and commitments so the nearly 1 hour round trip drive to the barn, 1 hour lesson + the time it took to tack and untack was a time suck they really couldn’t afford. When money got tight they tried to drop me off at a barn on a Saturday for a work-to-ride type deal but at three separate barns I worked all morning only to be told I wouldn’t get to ride because there were no horses available. I gave up trying to do that.
I definitely think this is a part of it as well. My parents were largely the same. Fortunately at the time, my barn was only 15 minutes away, but 2+ hours a week to stand in the cold was still not their favorite thing to do…
My last barn was an hour away, and I rode 4x/week. That’s 16+ hrs/week devoted to my hobby, and tbh, on top of my full time job and home responsibilities (and I don’t even have kids!), that was a stretch. I knew it would only be temporary for me, which helped me push through when I was losing determination to spend 4+ hrs after work going to the barn, but if it were a permanent situation, I don’t think it would have been sustainable whatsoever. I can’t imagine devoting that kind of time and energy to someone else’s hobby, even my kids.
True confession: when I started taking lessons at age 11, my very non-horsey parents were incredibly tolerant of waiting around for me, but if time was getting tight, they’d walk down to the lesson barn, which required going through a concrete drainage ditch that usually had no water in it. If that happened, I’d finish up quickly – no hanging around to pet my favorite ponies and sneak them treats.
Then my mom messed up her knee and was in a hip to ankle plaster cast. In the winter, when the drainage ditch was decidedly NOT dry, so she couldn’t come find me. No cell phones; this was the mid-1970s. She couldn’t find anyone at the show barn to go over to the lesson barn to get me.
I played with the ponies for the entire time of the next lesson, and it was only when my instructor came back and found me still there that she reminded me that mom couldn’t come to me. Oops.
My parents did not use physical punishment (they figured out very early on that it only made things worse with me), but I really felt like I deserved it. Mom was LIVID and had every right to be.
I find the original question interesting because I have always thought horse lovers were born, not made.
Well, to be honest, I probably did a shit job of explaining myself based on some of the responses. LOL
The “desire” definitely can’t be forced. Totally get that. But what I more meant was an example I used at dinner last night with some trainer friends.
I think reining looks awesome. I own horses, I’m an experienced rider. BUT I’ve never ridden a reiner. I live in the middle of horse country right down the road from Tim McQuay and the McCutcheons and Kole Price and all of these big names in the reining industry.
Y’all.
I cannot find a single barn that has the ability to let me come ride one. Whether it’s no school horses, or the wrong insurance, or they want to train horses and not riders, or whatever. Can’t find information on anything.
I’m someone in the industry. Who knows what she’s doing. And I’m coming up lost. Imagine someone outside of the industry who doesn’t know what they’re doing.
How do we create that desire when we don’t even give people the opportunity? I don’t know if I’ll like it - I think I would - but there isn’t an opportunity for me to find out, so I guess I’ll never know.
How will Susie know if she likes the hunters, or the jumpers, or the reiners, or maybe she’s really into driving miniature horses or doing CDEs. She won’t - unless opportunities exist for her to dip her toe in and have an experience that cements that desire affirming that this is the path she wants to take. How do we set up new riders to have those experiences that make them want more? I think it’s selfish and elitist to say “well if they want it they’ll find a way”. But aside from walking Dobbin down the street, how the heck do we as an industry tell people - “we’re here and we want you to come experience the magic of horses, and if you hated dressage then try cutting and if you hated cutting try driving!”
Does that hopefully make more sense? 
I totally understand what you are getting at! Even if the original question might have been misunderstood I’m glad you asked it because it’s opened up a lot of great conversation.
Maybe it is less about creating the desire and more about, like you said, creating opportunity to welcome new members into our sport. So much of the equestrian world works by word of mouth, but more online advertising or online presence could help in that direction.
(Scroll up a few posts and you will see me groaning about how awful I think social media can be, but it can be used for good as well!)
Even just things like up to date websites, Facebook pages, even Instagram pages can do a lot for getting your business out there and more accessible to the general public. Something that pops up when you Google “horse riding lessons near me” and there is valid and correct contact information available.
I certainly understand, but it is tough to keep “schoolies” in general, much less reining school horses. Sliders are always an issue. Ranch riding/Western Horsemanship is probably a more reasonable start all around.
Come to Ocala. I can’t begin the list of people who would have you go with them to sorting on Sundays.
This is a good point. Likely the reason you can not find reining horse lesson strings is because that is not the entry level point for that discipline. Ask one of those reining people you know where one starts taking lessons to develop the skills to move up and then learn to do reining, not ‘where can I jump on a reining horse to see if I like it’.
Another option is to go to a show and hang out during the lowest level classes, and ask questions of the people hanging around on the rail.
Some disciplines are definitely more “entry point” friendly than others. I am not complaining (well, maybe a little), but it’s difficult if you don’t own or lease to take regular dressage lessons. I’m currently lessoning on a schoolmaster, but most barns don’t have very many and (perfectly justifiably) the schoolmasters’ schedules are carefully limited to keep them fresh and tuned up.
I think that’s why for so many of us, the entry point (at least in the English world) is a lesson barn, often with rather sour school horses, doing w/t/c crossrails, perched in two-point, while the instructor says “heels down” to a group of kids riding in a circle. It’s not uncommon to get your feet wet that way with 2-3 lessons per week (or maybe a half or quarter lease), get frustrated with the lack of progress (or horsemanship or horse care), and then look for a better situation.
Or at least, that was the entry point, since, as others have noted, decent lesson barns are dying out in many areas, and now it’s more common to just take a few lessons on a semi-retired horse of the instructor before being encouraged to lease/own to progress.
But this may also be why hunters tends to be the most popular English discipline in so many areas, too. Although there is a big saddleseat barn in NJ with a similar type of lesson program.
