Interesting Article About the "Good Old Days" of US Riding

[TheDBYC]

Judy Richter: Then and Now - The Plaid Horse Magazine

A dog-earred copy of Judy Richter’s Horse & Rider was among my most treasured possessions as a preteen & teenager so I especially enjoyed this interview. Something that also stood out for me is how Ms Richter’s descriptions of her childhood riding & early-to mid career as a trainer highlight a point I’ve argued occasionally on past threads – namely, the stark reality that it is much more difficult for even the most driven, talented young riders to break it & make it in the H/J/Eq world now than even 20 years ago.

Some of it is economics: rising land prices mean fewer folks keeping horses at home & kids missing out on the opportunities to just noodle around in an unstructured way on horses. I personally lay a lot of blame at the feet of our corporatized healthcare system with it’s big $$$$ bills that has made liability such a nightmare scenario, too. That’s out of the scope of this thread, though.

Coincidentally, the owner of a dressage barn I used to barter for just fowarded me an ad for a new show groom position their resident trainer was looking to fill. Looking it over, my immediate thought was “Wow, that’s an amazing job. They’re going to have a very tough time filling it, though.” It is a fantastic, meaty, opportunity in many ways – no heavy barn chores, and lots of stallion handling, lunging, and starting horses. However, the hours requested are midday-only & very limited, with no housing offered. This would work mainly for riders in their teens/early 20’s. Yet, few young riders possess the skillset being requested for the job. Not because they’re lazy & don’t want to work; but because few such opportunities exist anymore here to gain that kind of experience. Otoh, the more mature, experienced riders tend to be looking for full-time, lead trainer opportunities and are often starting to feel the effects of old injuries & don’'t want to be up on a 4yo stallion.

And I’m not sure where I’m going with any of this, . Other than that the Plaid Horse article was an especially interesting read back-to-back with the job ad the day before.

[Alterration]

@TheDBYC

Some of it is economics: rising land prices mean fewer folks keeping horses at home & kids missing out on the opportunities to just noodle around in an unstructured way on horses. I personally lay a lot of blame at the feet of our corporatized healthcare system with it’s big $$$$ bills that has made liability such a nightmare scenario, too. That’s out of the scope of this thread, though.

I think both of those are a factor, as well as laws that mean you can’t keep a horse on less than x acres, and a public that is farther and farther disconnected from ag, and parents who think their children will become the next Pele vs enrolling them in a lesson program. Then there’s the whole competition thing. It’s no longer enough to be sitting on an ancient nag and running free in the fields. No, now we have to have the nice pony and go to the fancy shows and the whole thing is just exhausting.

I’m middle-aged. When I was a youngster, 10-13, I had a not fancy, moved like a plow horse, ex-broodmare who I rode in the mountains by myself all day. There is no way a parent today would let their kids out of their sights for that long. I rode through drive throughs, and I rode to the store. I didn’t have a trainer, not until much later. And even then my trainer was really my “instructor”. She had no control over me or my horse but was kind of like a weekly clinician who helped me get better.

That is not the experience of kids today even if they do get riding lessons.

The riding schools are disappearing. Farms are disappearing and being sold for development land. Trainers have learned that they don’t make money on lesson horses. Not and care for them properly, and the “needs a little bute to be sound” lesson horses are going away. The difficult ones aren’t being used because of liability concerns.

We can’t go back. I don’t think that’s possible. But we may need to reimagine ways of creating horsemen that suits this new era. I wish I knew what that looked like.

While that’s all super depressing, I did have a wonderful moment where I saw a kid who I knew (sold her first horse to her) riding bridleless the other day in the arena. She’s doing barrels and gymkhana, and has that same free-spirited experimental vibe that I did at that age. And two kids, one a friend of mine’s daughter, who grew up riding rank sale barn horses and is now making it as a hunter trainer and another a neighbor who I would see riding her pony gleefully everywhere she went is getting sponsorship as an eventer.

The common theme among them is that they not only love horses, but have been given the freedom by parents to ride crappy horses, dare to do something dangerous, and ride on their own terms.

[Janet]

@Alterration

I think both of those are a factor, as well as laws that mean you can’t keep a horse on less than x acres,

That isn’t anything new. We had those rules 60 year ago, and it didn’t stop kids from “noodling around in an unstructured way”.

[Alterration]

@Janet

That isn’t anything new. We had those rules 60 year ago, and it didn’t stop kids from “noodling around in an unstructured way”.

Well that’s true and I wasn’t so specific. What I mean is - the areas in which those rules apply continue to grow as suburban land continues to sprawl.

[TheDBYC]

@Janet

That isn’t anything new. We had those rules 60 year ago, and it didn’t stop kids from “noodling around in an unstructured way”.

That’s true. Though, you could argue that what has changed is the existence of residential parcels meeting those requirements & relative affordability.

Growing up in Fairfax County (which requires 2 acres), I had several classmates who kept horses at home. With the exception of one, the daughter of two lawyers who lived in a nice but unremarkable house in Great Falls, all were from basically average middle class families. While Fairfax Co wasn’t exactly cheap to live in even 35 years ago, real estate prices were nowhere close as expensive proportional to income as they are now. There were several largish farms (20+ acres) on the outskirts of my hometown. Even an old man that drove into town every Wednesday in a mule cart to shop at the A & P.

With the possible exception of the Great Falls friend’s 2.5 acre farmette, none of those horse properties are there anymore. There is currently a single residential property with a 2 acre lot on the market in my home town. $1 million+ with 1500 sqf house, being sold as a tear down, and not zoned correctly for livestock. Even the remaining large parcels in Great Falls are being subdivided & subdivided some more. The land requirement hasn’t changed in my lifetime. What did change was real estate zoning & tax rates, unfortunately.