I started riding when I was 5 years old. I (for the most part, not including one year of “barn bouncing”) have been at the same stables since then. It is the cheapest in the area and one of the only places I’ve found where I can grow as a rider without owning my own horse.
I guess it’s the drama that’s killing me. Horse people tend to have big mouths, at least in my experience. Lately it has become unbearable. I have coworkers and older people coming up and telling me what so and so said about me, what I need to do differently in MY lesson program, that if I want to make a living to get out of horses.
I have passion for horses. However, over the past few years, pretty much since my parents stopped funding my riding habit, I’ve lost the heart for the sport. I work at the same place where I grew up learning to ride. Most of my friends have moved on from this place. I believe I’m paid unfairly. I know I’m treated unfairly by my trainer, who of course gives the majority of her attention to her wealthy clients.
I know most people would say just go to a different barn, but I did try that and other places don’t stack up, either economically or in quality. I’m wondering if this should be it for me.
Please no ride comments. I’m having such a hard time dealing with this on its own.
Only you can make the decision to walk away, but it might be easier to frame it in terms of a hiatus, rather than quitting entirely. Take a year, pursue other hobbies, and see where life takes you. At the end of the year evaluate your feelings on riding. Maybe you’ll miss it terribly, maybe you could take it or leave it. Or maybe you’ll find something that satisfies you even more and you won’t want to go back. I think though that it’s healthier to frame it as taking a break rather than quitting entirely. You don’t know what’s going to be in your future, and a lot of people need to take time to figure out if equitation is really something they want to continue pursuing. And if you’ve been riding for a while, coming back is pretty easy. The muscle memory never really goes away.
I think that it will be difficult getting total respect for your skills in any place where you have been since you were 5 years old. It will be hard to position yourself as an adult professional in a place where you have also been a child and an amateur. And, as it sounds, you are already deeply enmeshed in the dramas of the place. The other folk are not treating you as an adult professional, clearly.
if you want to be a horse professional, same as if you wanted to be a professional in any field, at some point you are going to need to step away from the familiar, and go somewhere different where you can learn different things, and also start over showing the new place that you are indeed an adult and a professional.
But it is also true that unless you move towards the top of the horse profession, you probably will never make a living wage. Long term, you might be happier learning a trade of some kind that will allow you to support your riding habit as an amateur.
My passion is riding, taking care of, and spoiling my horses. My job to provide me with this is being a nurse.
I never wanted to let working with horses interfere with my passion. When you have a good paying job that is outside of the horse world you will probably have more options.
I never wanted to let working with horses interfere with my passion. When you have a good paying job that is outside of the horse world you will probably have more options.
This ^^^ I was a hard head and had to become an instructor/trainer. BOO if I had to do it all again I would have gotten out of the horse business sooner to advance my professional career. I got lucky… I have an awesome career. I got it out of luck too.
Don’t get lucky… plan and succeed
[QUOTE=Tory;9013601]
I never wanted to let working with horses interfere with my passion. When you have a good paying job that is outside of the horse world you will probably have more options.[/QUOTE]
Yes. As much as I loved working on a farm, I knew I would never be able to afford my own farm unless I found a better paying job off the farm.
Adults choose their life. Life is choice. Choice has consequences. If your life decisions have put you into a cesspool of snarky gossip then you can either choose to stay there or choose to leave. The choice is yours; the consequences are yours.
If the above is a troll, then that’s a choice, too. We’ll see if it’s a troll by the responses we get. I presently put the probability at 50%. There will be consequences either way.
G.
I started resenting riding when I worked at a barn where I was underpaid and underappreciated.
When the barn isn’t your “happy place” how can you be expected to enjoy riding?
I quit that job, got one in a totally separate field, moved my horses, and fell in love with the sport again.
For the majority of us horses are our passion but also our hobby. Very few can earn a living on horses and working for a trainer or as barn help is even worse.
You might have more enjoyment in having a job " off farm" and spending your own time riding and showing .
I’m also of the view that you are happier if you can earn money away from horses and have them as a happy place. When you mix the stress of working and conflicts in, the barn becomes miserable. Pursue gainful employment and explore what you want to do in the horse world, particularly in other places. It may reignite the love of it.
Even if you do not leave the horse world, you must leave this barn, for your own personal growth. In the horse world, as in any world, no one situation is going to teach you all that you need to know in order to give a broad base to your knowledge.
You appear to have learned what one person is capable of teaching you, but there is such a broad spectrum of knowledge out there.
The old saying-"You don’t know what you don’t know until you know it."I so very true. So git, while the gitting is good-and possible.
