Ideally a hunter or sales type but jumpers is fine too. Wonder who is out there that you enjoyed working for? What type of experience did you get? Did they offer bringing your own horses/showing? Was the salary fair? Basically pros and cons and different types of positions offered.
I am in Canada but willing to go to states as well. Not looking for a working student position.
TIA feel free to Dm if you don’t want to say publicly.
Edited for emphasis on good people to work for don’t care about whether or not people think bringing my horses is feasible.
I dont know the market but my guess is that if you go to work for someone else the expectation is you spend every waking moment looking after first, their clients’ horses, because they pay the bills. And second, the employees’ sales horses. Your own horses are a very distant third.
The jobs you mention all take very different skill sets. A groom is on the ground mostly during working hours. A manager needs a pretty advanced comprehensive skillset. It might not be too hard to manage a lower level lesson or recreational barn, but being barn manager at a barn that will help you meet your goals for your horses requires substantial experience at that level.
I am not sure where a job as rider fits in. I think it could be something like assistant trainer. I don’t think rider per se is a job category in jumpers like it is in racing.
What is your current experience? Do you have enough successful experience on young horses and competing to market yourself as an assistant trainer to a show barn? And realize that you’d be spending ten hours a day on clients’ horses.
Have you done any working student or groom jobs in your area? Do you have decent trainees?
Honestly if your main goal is to focus on your own horses and own riding you are probably better off as an ammie working a well paid indoor job and getting excellent lessons. Once you go pro the clients’ horses are your priority. If you want a career training horses for other people and putting your own on hold that works. If not you will likely be frustrated.
Most working in a barn don’t have personal horses there, working students may, but that is a different position.
As a worker/rider/assistant trainer/trainer/ barn manager, all you do in a barn is taking care of that barn’s facilities, clients and horses.
Everyone I know working in barns that has a personal life with family, pets, horses, lives somewhere else where they keep and take care and train their horses on their own time and place.
If barn worker’s horses were to use stalls, turnouts, pastures, arenas and other for their own uses, they would become clients and pay for those?
As a working student, then the pay will be none or a token and other will make up for the work the working student brings, some of that may mean keeping it’s horses there, taking lessons, etc.
Yes. If you got free housing or a discount on board that would be taken out of your salary. And you’d still need to ride after hours, if there is any after. Most grooms can’t afford to keep two horses in a $1000 a month full board training barn.
The jobs you are discussing do not have any emphasis on bringing along your personal horse’s training. If you go to a show you will be busy 24/7 grooming for clients and if you ride, it will be sales horses.
There can be some good situations, just hard to find. Years ago, I was a barn manager, had free room and board, for me and my horse, free lessons from an Olympic level coach, free clinics with high level visiting coaches, and full use of facilities. My time was my own to manage, as long as I got the job done to the highest standards. It was an amazing opportunity, AND I was paid!
There are jobs out there like that, but they are hard to find. Most horse people expect you to work for peanuts and put yourself last above clients, horses, and probably even the barn cats.
The ones that are good employers never have openings. I’m serious. You will find that people who pay well and treat their employees well will have grooms that have been there for 20 years.
Most places will not be ok with you having your horses there. Many barns actually have rules against having employee horses on the premises.
I’d suggest looking for work near a trainer you admire and taking lessons from them. You could see about trading weekend work for lessons.
As someone who tried several times to break into the field of grooms/horse care, I left each time because of bad bosses, badly run programs, or burnout. It’s a very tough field to be in. My best advice is that if you want to be a horse groom or barn worker, start out by being ambivalent towards horses and riding.
OP, maybe not quite right, but Pippa Moon in Aiken, SC is advertising on FB for a rider. She is an eventer, but does hunters and jumpers as well. Hers is a sales barn. She seems nice and is rumored to be good to work for. This is not advertised as a WS position, so I think it could be a more professional gig than that.
Yeah, burnout is a real issue. Growing up my farrier had horses but didn’t ride, they were all ancient. I know one farrier who’s wife rides. All the others don’t have horses.
Even with grooms, the top grooms rarely have a horse. Most spend all day with the owners horses so they get enough horse time from that. If they want to ride usually there’s some horses who need to be worked anyways.
I worked as a groom for about a year. It was a really great learning experience but I would never want a career of it. I found that the more I worked there the less I wanted to be around my own horses. I’d get home exhausted and just wanting a shower and to go to bed.
