They do not, as has been said. At best, elite level riders have a partnership share but don’t actually own the horse. At more mundane levels they ride sale horses owned by their business, not really personal horses and the object is to get it sold, not enjoy it and there is much pressure to succeed whether sale horse or multiple owners in a partnership or LLC.
It’s not what it looks like.
This drives me insane. I do not give a flying F about people who have the money to show multiple horses at WEF. I really don’t. Saying they work so hard (sure, they’re in the saddle a lot) and hard work put them on these nice horses and gave them the success they have is a slap in the face to people that have worked 4 jobs at a time to put hay in the feed room and get lucky with one nice horse.
I wish I could like your post more than once.
I agrée! I feel like I am a talented rider but unfortunately I am not given a lot of opportunities to show that and to show/ride horses that can take me through the levels. It’s so hard because even a 3k per month lease (which is fine for my family right now but in retrospect is a HUGE amount of money for the average family) isn’t enough.
Money also buys lessons, quality trainers, horses, shows, flights, show clothes, etc which is a huge huge step forward.
I’ve seen someone go from the 1’9 schooling shows to the 4’3 AA shows in 5 months! Which is amazing and requires tons of talent and hard work, but a lot of financial support is required for that big of a change.
Makes me feel lucky though to have the support I do though!
This is kind of off topic but what jobs can I do to support having one nice horse, a nice house, etc.
I am a high schooler and I won’t chase a job just for money but I do love horses and showing. Showing and riding is one of my favorite things to do and I’m terrified that I won’t be able to afford it one day!
I’m good at math, maybe 3 years ahead from normal path, and I want to become an electrical engineer/ computer engineer with a double major in Econ or entrepreneurship. Currently I am working on some coding projects and stuff which I really enjoy, takes my mind off of the horse pressure sometimes.
I don’t want to come off as money hungry but I do want to be able to support my lifestyle!!
Starting to realize that economics drives most choices in life is part of growing up. It’s tricky being in the upper middle class competing with the truly wealthy because it skews your perception of normal and possible, and the truly would rather get attention for their skills and talents rather than their parents trust funds. So they don’t often let on how much money creates the possibility of success.
The great thing about horses is that there’s many more affordable ways and places to enjoy them than the high dollar junior hunter circuit which has been deliberately designed to maximize trainer income and fast track paying clients. It’s fine to dabble in this as a junior but it’s a tiny hothouse slice of horse world, and it develops show ring skills more than general horsemanship.
Lots of things for teens are made to be super structured super competitive super expensive and rather limited in scope. It’s about impossible to see beyond these boundaries imposed by adults when you are in the middle of all this.
The trainers that sell a horse for $600,000 didn’t buy the horse for that much. Depending on their business model and relations with breeders they could buying yearlings for $30k, bringing them up the levels, then selling as a proven show horse for $600,000 to a child with rich parents. It’s not a 6 figure horse until it’s sold! Or they are riding clients horses during the week. They made the horse, sold it for $600,000 to an ammie or junior client then continue to train it and ride it in open classes to warm up for the ammie.
Did I say “is cash grab” already? Trainers have to make every dollar they can.
Not to mention that constant shake-up in tech. It’s legit a roller coaster and I’ve seen so many people blind-sided by RIFs and I can count 8 people that I know currently that have been laid off from tech and haven’t found a job in 6 months and counting.
It would be my worst nightmare to try to manage to float 2-3 horses without a paycheck.
The tech boom is very much over - and the schools are still pumping out grads thinking they’ll be making $$$$$$ in no time. The landscape is changing, and it’s catching a lot of people off guard. This is not the early 2000s anymore!
So I work around this stuff even though it’s not my job - software/computer engineering isn’t as easy peasy lucrative as you’ll be told by schools and older folks. My brother has 3 degrees - math, computational physics, and software something - and he can’t even find an internship. Electrical engineering is a good option, look into FEA as that’s a HOT job market right now. Mechanical engineering is another route that is very broad and flexible and you end up doing half the electrical stuff anyway. The biggest thing will be getting into a school that has lots of high end internship opportunities and a record of placing graduates in big name companies. Don’t go to a liberal arts college for an engineering degree unless they randomly have a stellar internship program.
Econ isn’t bad, but I’d toss the entrepreneurial track IIWM. Focus your time on the engineering program and free up energy for a relevant side job and internships. Those will serve you better than a million degrees and minors - the jobs don’t really care about your GPA or minor or whatever. They want to see that you graduated and have experience in the lab!
ETA: don’t get me wrong, GPA matters somewhat. Your first job may care. After that - no one cares what your grades were, they care about your experience and whether you are familiar with the software programs they use.
I think that there are many paths to be able to a accomplish that. But the paths that exist today may not exist tomorrow. 10 years ago there was a shortage of engineering talent (software/cloud etc). Now the market is saturated and competition to get a job is tough.
I think being highly adaptable to your environment and making yourself useful/invaluable/well known on which ever path you take will help you succeed. See where the needs are and go that way - where are we predicted to have shortages in 5-10 years?
I am in HR, but focused most recently on health tech startups and my SO is a DevOps guy who doesn’t really want to go into management (and is at a tech giant, but not FAANG). So mid-six figure HHI. If we didn’t have our own small farm (money pit lol), I could probably afford a <$25k jumper type, board, lessons, and a couple of A shows a year. I’m not a training ride kind of person and I like to know that if I need to retire one I have the ability to do that, so the farm works better for me and I have my quirky homebred, trailer out for some lessons, and do some local shows and hunter paces 
This is actually not correct. There are people with fully remote jobs these days, or jobs where you can make an appearance at the office here and there, or just on Mondays, etc . . . that provide sufficient income to winter in Florida. You regularly see people with laptops out at the showgrounds, or dashing off to jump on conference calls. Some people have their own businesses that can be managed remotely, some lawyers work remotely or in hybrid situations, some sales reps can swing it, etc . . . . Now, you’ve likely earned the ability to do that with a lot of sweat equity and capital built up at the office over the years, and you aren’t hanging out at the showgrounds all day every day, you are going back to where you are staying to get your work done after you ride, but it is definitely possible.
Horses are getting more expensive across the board but there are other disciplines that allow you to have a decent horse without the stratospheric costs. Still expensive mind you and a top horse competing in the top level of anything is going to cost big time but if you want to ride and compete there are alternatives.
It me.
Local rider used to finance her 6 month out of the year show schedule by being a high end stripper.
I don’t think her horse was particularly expensive (jumper and eventer), so she didn’t have a huge upfront cost, but she was able to afford a nice truck and trailer and to be on the road showing.
Technically correct, yes, but certainly only legitimately attainable for those under 40, childless and without other significant responsibilities: aging parents, parenting 24/7, major work leadership roles, self/child/family health issues, community jobs (coaching, tutoring, service), pets that can’t travel, owning and caring for a farm. I always laugh out loud when I see people on here making remarks about how they make zoom calls in their cars at horseshows like its a badge of courage. Lordy! Not grumping at you, just at me for being old!
Try eventing 
And yet, I can think of multiple examples of people who are outside of what even you think the parameters are who are able to do it. I would never argue that its easy or widely available, but it isn’t just for people under 40 or who don’t have significant responsibilities - in fact one of the most senior and busy partners at my firm is over 50, competes at the FEI level in dressage in FL all winter and commutes back to the office when she needs to. For some people it actually gets easier over the age of 40 as kids get older. It’s all a matter of what your responsibilities are, whether they can be managed remotely, or whether you can arrange coverage. And those factors vary widely. It’s no badge of honor IMO, it’s more a delicate balancing act in most instances! But the bottom line is that the original comment suggesting it was impossible is just not accurate, the real answer is “it depends” and it doesn’t work for all careers (ie, physicians who have to see patients locally, etc) And, I actually think it has become more achievable post-Covid because work forces demonstrated that you can still be very productive and profitable working remotely.
Thanks for the response and the explanation, I agree, not impossible. Still, that work at the ring during the circuit situation is probably temporary for most people, as the shoe falls eventually, and it is one of great luck and privilege, but of course, I should have mentioned that it is just one of example of luck and privilege in showing at a high level, as we all know there are many!
Actually, there is a national (USA, here) trend of companies pushing back against remote work.
A lot of jobs that went remote are now hybrid, and a lot of positions that went hybrid are now going back to fully in person. There are a lot of reasons for this which I won’t get into, but the majority of jobs don’t actually care that productivity is up for remote workers. There are other motivations to have workers in the office even if they’re calling in to zoom meetings from their desks all day.
Additionally, new hires for fully remote positions are being outsourced overseas at an alarming rate. It is increasingly difficult to land a remote or hybrid position as a new hire, especially if you also want to live in a HCOL area or a remote LCOL area. Aka horse country.
Can these flexible remote jobs be found? Absolutely. Are they as common now as they were 2 years ago? Absolutely not. Workers want remote jobs and companies don’t like them, so the positions are rare and highly competitive. It’s worth doing some market research for jobs that are trending remote as a rule - ironically, all the software engineers and developers I’ve worked with are not fully remote!
Also, the issue of inherited wealth can still be a factor. I’m not saying everyone is a trust fund baby, but having enough money to invest and grow their wealth so someone is buffered against the normal expenses of both a horse owner and the average family (vet or house expense) as well as money saved for retirement is the definition of being truly comfortably off, even if someone is still working a salaried job or has a business.
You will almost certainly have to step back from riding and/or showing at least temporarily at some point, unless your parents are willing to bankroll your riding through your twenties. It’s not the end of the world. It’s hard to imagine as a junior when that’s all you know (speaking from experience) but horses are a long game, and being flexible and open-minded early on can set you up for the horse life you want in the long run. I took a few years off from riding after college to get established in my career and get my finances in order, and it was absolutely the right decision. There are also other ways to stay involved that don’t come with an A circuit price tag, like trying another discipline or bringing along a green horse. Nothing needs to be permanent, stepping back from hunter showing now doesn’t mean stepping back from showing forever. We’re potentially talking about decades of riding, you have time.
Choosing a job based on earning potential and stability is not a bad thing at all, it’s the practical and mature thing to do. You’ll find that the vast majority of people aren’t working “dream jobs” and even those that are don’t love 100% of what they do. Work is work, it exists to pay for the rest of your life. I do like my job but there are plenty of things I don’t like about it, and if the paycheck stopped I would 100% stop showing up.
Look for something that plays to your strengths, suits your lifestyle, and has opportunities for growth. Don’t get too hung up on specific subjects (that’s a very school-centric way of looking at things, which is normal) but also consider the types of work/skills that suit you. Do you enjoy working with others? Solving problems? Getting deep into one project or jumping around? Internships are a good way to figure this out, and as a high school student you can also consider volunteer opportunities or part-time jobs to start getting a feel for how you like to work. College and your early career years are a great time to try different things and see what works, it gets harder to move around as you become more invested in a particular line of work.
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