No. They have NOT always been big, or “commercial”.
I would NEVER suggest to someone to go to a “big outfit and trail ride” if they want to learn good basics and horsemanship. The people at those places are no more “committed to being a professional instructor” than someone doing it with 5-10 stalls? I really don’t see the connection there. Not sure how size of program correlates to “personality issues” either.
Also, not everyone lives in a place where these big operations exist? Big, commercial programs like this require access to tons of land - unless you live out west or extremely rurally, the places that used to do this have been gobbled up by development or sold when the original owners retired.
Honestly, maybe we just have different experiences, but I don’t see how wanting to do something on a smaller scale (which ABSOLUTELY used to be possible in the last 20 years) is such a bad thing.
That is just untrue. Maybe where you live or during your lifespan but in many many areas, small barns used to be successful and they used to dot the landscape and be hidden inside of cities. That’s where many many people learned to ride, back in the day.
In the 90s I lived in a college town in a state that had a lot of rural areas. Despite that, there were at least 4-5 prominent facilities right in town (within a 10 minute drive) that did lessons. I think the biggest had 15 lesson horses. They were run as businesses, I don’t know where the assertion comes from that all small barns are subsidizing your personal horses but that was not the case 40 years ago.
They were driven further to the outskirts by development and now they are all an hour outside of town - those that have not closed or transformed into show barns with only 3 lesson horses and the rest owned or leased horses.
Most large operations around me in the area I live in now have 1-3 lesson horses and they quickly push people into ownership. Every boarding facility within an hour radius requires lessons and/or training with board - at least all the ones without barbed wire fences and terrible maintenance.
The landscape is changing and rapidly. The area I live in now used to be the king of saddlebred training (STL) but taxation changes to livestock rules and rapid development in the cities pushed that all to KY or further out to Columbia.
Dressage? Not one barn in our area has lesson horses. If you want to take dressage lessons you’d better be prepared to own and to pay a trainer.
The hunter scene is popping but those barns are all pretty far out and they push you into rated shows quickly. I know - I have one of their discarded lesson horses.
I think the western scene here is a little different but again, I don’t know of any barn with a huge lesson horse string that I’d say “yep, go there - they’ll teach you strong basics”. The ones who have the knowledge are running serious AQHA programs where again, the goal is ownership.
I wouldn’t touch the main huge facility with a 10’ pole. People I run into who have spent any time there have abominable horse handling skills, and horses have been injured and died due to terrible maintenance. The whole property floods.
Anyway - the smaller facilities used to be a way to make a living. Not to get rich - no one is saying you get rich doing it - nor even to have enough for vacations etc. But I had many very good trainers in my youth who lived exactly that lifestyle and did ok.
It did for me. None of the places I’ve mentioned had spouses with lucrative careers. In at least two of the cases both partners worked on the farm. In another the woman was single. I worked on those farms and apprenticed with them. I saw their books. I also was deeply familiar with their family circumstances - they were not left with money. Only one beyond that was, her husband died from cancer and that paid the farm mortgage but everything else was equine.
I know you want to extrapolate your experiences to everyone’s experiences but it isn’t true. I recognize that barns like you are describing exist, but barns like I am describing did exist - I was there for it.
This was a million billion years ago and those horses worked hard. I’ll describe one of the scenarios below:
They did 3 lessons a day, 6 days a week. All the lessons were group lessons of an average of 6 horses each, and cost $35 per rider. They got ridden in terrible non-fitting saddles because that really wasn’t a thing, and though the quality of the horsemanship was terrific in many ways (horse handling, balance, etc) the horses were fed on straight grass hay and oats, no fancy supplements and the husband shod them. He taught some of the more advanced riders and took care of the mowing/trimming/fixing.
Neither had off farm jobs.
The older safer horses were all questionably sound, and the newer ones were mostly nuts If a horse didn’t work out, it was sent down the road pretty quickly after us young crash test dummies rode them.
It was an income of ~$189000 and the hay costs back then were $2 a bale, less if you bought a lot and/or got lucky. I think at one point I bought hay back then at $0.75 a bale for grass hay. The math worked out to a salary for them at about $75,000 combined in an average year which went a LOT further back then. In comparison my Dad as an engineer made $79,000 and we were considered relatively well off in our town - not lawyer money - but nice suburban money.
It was profitable, and by that I mean, they made a living, had groceries, etc. And the lesson program was full. They had barn rats like me who were willing to work mainly for the opportunity for more rides on crazy horses. And the barn was close enough that I could ride my bicycle to it.
They did a show or two of the local rateds but it was mostly fun shows, and summer camps. We helped run those summer camps as barn rats.
That particular barn is gone now. Replaced by apartments. It was prime real estate once the Wal-mart moved in.
Less than 20 lesson horses? Yes absolutely! Multiple that I know personally.
Okay I think I see where we have a disconnect - I have been talking about the viability of a lesson program as a profitable business that makes the whole thing worth it (in relation to why they are disappearing). Funnily enough, a profitable business does NOT mean “can support a family or make a living off of it” it means makes a profit. Logically, if the profitable business makes very little and is a huge hassle and very risky, people are less likely to continue with them.
This doesn’t make every small professional a bad business person with personality issues who should’ve married better or bought 300 acres a lifetime ago, it means that a lot of things have changed in the world that made a once-profitable and “worth it” business model into something unsustainable. Which is why lesson barns are disappearing.
This is going to be long, and for that I apologize.
The barn I own has 20 stalls. Currently 5 acres but it was an 80 acre farm. It used to be a more suburban area outside of the city but now it’s kind of been consumed. For years, it was a western lesson barn and boarding stable. It was more like the kind of place you describe. The husband worked at the local quarry, and did roping horses, the wife was the trainer etc.
It became more lucrative for them to parcel out the land until it was down to what we own now, and then the last guy ran it as a boarding facility but didn’t make any real repairs for 20 years. So it was profitable, but ehhhhh falling apart. Huge outdoor. No indoor.
We bought it mostly for my own horses (2 of them at the time) because of its proximity to the city and inherited the boarders. I analyzed whether it would be possible to run it as a profitable boarding and/or lesson program and came up short. I could potentially do it if I sank half a million into an indoor if the county would let me, which is questionable. Plus I don’t have half a million sitting around and a loan of that nature would never be able to be paid back. When the boarders were here, my day job subsidized them which is just silly but I was slow to remove them because it was fun. For awhile. Until they started to not understand that while yes, they were paying “a lot” for boarding it was not nearly enough to even break even on their horses and I was busting my a$$ taking care of them while they still had vacations and sometimes paid late because they had a huge bill on their second homes.
Screw that.
I’ve since evicted the boarders to make repairs to the barn and property so that my already half million investment in the property pays off. The husband and I are considering downsizing completely if I can no longer ride, and though it’s possible that a delusional horsey family might buy the property, it will likely go for development because 5 acres here is worth a pretty penny for apartments.
A young person wanting to be a trainer couldn’t buy this place and most lesson programs now can’t make enough without an indoor. That used to be acceptable (we used to ride in the rain! My god! The horror!) but now not so much.
My barn will “die” when I leave. It’s not an uncommon story. There’s another property on the other side of the city with a very similar trajectory. The woman running it is in her 70s. It will go for development when she quits or dies.
There’s a barn about an hour from me currently struggling. People don’t want to fight traffic to get to it. I think there are more than 20 stalls but not by much. I boarded there for a bit before I bought my place. The owners have sank a ton of money into improvements. They only have two horses of their own, and both have outside jobs. They will likely sell when their daughter ages out and it will also go for development as that area is growing rapidly. In their case, the gal has some personality issues that aren’t helping (hence my purchase of my own facility) but even then, due to the location the people here with money don’t want to sit in traffic for an hour and a half to get their kid to a lesson. And the people in the suburbs around her aren’t moneyed enough to afford horses.
We have lost 3 other major barns in the last few years that I have lived here. And our equestrian center which was I think a boarding facility long ago was just recently purchased by the county - a purchase that I think only happened because the commissioner’s wife shows. Not sure if it will remain entirely equine though. Glad to see it, because the other option is turning it into more development.
There are some new barns opening up much much further out where the land prices haven’t been driven up yet. I’m not sure of their economics or longevity yet as I’ve only lived here in the area for 6 years. I boarded at 4 different barns in my first 3 years here and all of them were struggling.
Gee.Where were you a kid? Nothing like you describe ever existed any place I’ve ever lived.
As for the “go trail ride” advice, again, where do you suggest people go do that?
So, now that we’ve established this is truly an issue about lesson barns disappearing. What do we do about it? I propose we each buy a winning lotto ticket (like the 1billion dollar kind) and open our own lesson barns. No problem!
Not to be funny, but if most horse people did have unlimited funds and wanted the stress of operating a barn, the last thing they would want to open up was an intro-level up-and-downer barn, because they’d still have to deal with the flakiness and lack of commitment a number of the instructors in this thread have been rightfully complaining about.
This isn’t any shade against good instructors , but I have to echo @Angela_Freda that I took lessons at several barns she described–it wasn’t just that the lesson barns only had the instructors’ personal horses taking up space, but often the instructors (or their kids) had a habit of picking up unsuitable horses they swore they were going to get into lesson-worthy shape and the horses just ended up sitting around, or could only be ridden by the instructor’s own children and friends. Or just horses they liked that were in theory lesson horses but were too small/big/wild to be ridden by enough paying customers. The end result was that the horses who were from 14h-16h, could w/t/c and jump a course tended to get way overused, and even then, the ability of the barn was limited that very few of the string could be ridden by multiple riders taking lessons.
I’m going to pushback on the idea that somehow a student wanting an indoor for the cold months is a prima donna. FWIW, I run in literally ALL weathers, but when I rode at a barn without an indoor, I couldn’t handle the inconsistency. I’d get to the barn, and suddenly there would be a thunderstorm in summer, and, oh, could I reschedule (even though I’d already driven out). Then during winter, the ring would freeze solid, making riding at anything but a walk impossible.
I understand from a riding instructor’s perspective, the ideal beginner client is someone with an infinitely flexible schedule, has great health insurance and a liberal attitude to being dumped, who doesn’t mind paying $50-$75 for a lesson on the ground for several weeks running when the barn is snowed under, and also will do some free labor and come early and stay late to help out at the barn, and even accept when lessons get abruptly rescheduled and cancelled. I tried to be that client (except for the great health insurance and liberal attitude to getting dumped after a certain point), but even I got tired of that routine and it got less fun.
I honestly think the model of part-leasing a horse and having the leaser take private lessons and also partial responsibility for leasing that horse on lease days is the best model to learn and for me. But I’m an adult. For little kids, maybe it’s fun to do the walk-trot-canter in a circle and maybe if you learn something, great. But even a lot of kids get bored with that.
I definitely agree that the economics of running a lesson barn just doesn’t add up in many places–or if it’s made to add up the “product” (quality of lessons and horses used) doesn’t attract the right kind of client base to be a reliable source of income. Throw in the fact that quite a few people who try to run those barns aren’t great business people (see comments about unrideable horses), and fewer and fewer barns like these are surviving.
Absolutely. I don’t know why parents don’t think of it like they think of the kiddie soccer team but my guess is because instructors don’t “kick the kid off the team” if they skip lessons.
If that is in reference to my comment, I was really speaking about kids who really learn to deal with those inconveniences and not adults who don’t have to. I hate not having an indoor myself, but lump it because of the aforementioned challenges. And kids need the off horse time - learning nutrition, wrapping, during those lessons is why I am routinely the person who gets tapped to wrap other people’s horses because they don’t know how. We rode in the rain routinely (rubber boots!) and now parents cancel - it’s just a different world. I don’t teach any more but having people cancel for rain even with an indoor is an indication that a facility without one will never make it. And the sad part about that is that those are often the older facilities that are more accessible to people in town because they haven’t been pushed out yet.
Regarding the suitability of the horses (my phone is not letting me cut and paste, sorry) - horse prices make it dang near impossible to buy “suitable” lesson horses. The COVID price bump has affected horse prices in a wild way. I don’t have any lesson horses, but even just buying a safe horse sans quirks or medical issues has become pretty out of reach for most normal humans with budgets.
The lack of easy access to local riding clubs and facilities will be difficult for our sport. I don’t think this is the fault of local instructors whether they be good or bad, business savvy or not. I do think expectations of the riders have changed (whether good bad or indifferent), horse prices, and I also think that development eating up land has much to do with it.
One thing I am seeing in my area is that while the lesson prices are pretty consistent across the board - and all very expensive - the quality of the experience varies a LOT. One big, busy riding academy near me is $95 for a 30 min private, 45 min semi-private, or 60 min group lesson. The other program of a similar size charges by the month for 45 min lessons each week, going from $430 for semi-privates on the flat to $675 for privates over jumps.
It works because they are doing a huge volume of lessons, but it’s quantity over quality - I frequently meet riders who have spent a year or two at these barns and made very little progress. The sport is so inaccessible and I feel this is another way newer riders or re-riders are almost… punished? If you’re paying out the nose for a lesson, it should at least be GOOD, and many aren’t.
On the flipside, there’s lots of great trainers in the area who focus on full-training clients but have one or two lesson horses, and who charge $100 - $120 per lesson. They’re harder to find if you’re new to the sport, but you’re going to get a better education and a more personalized experience on much nicer horses.
My trainer now is pretty under the radar and charges $80 if you ride your own horse and $110 if you ride one of hers, and is happy to teach competent clients on her very nice personal horses. It’s crazy to me to think of spending $140 for a lesson over 2’3 jumps with a checked-out instructor when I could have a great classical dressage lesson on a PRE schoolmaster and play with upper-level movements for $30 less.
I’m in SoCal, so we have plenty of high-income folks who don’t blink at a $100 or $120 lesson for themselves or their kid, but I think a lot of them end up in poor-quality programs and lose interest unless they have a friend in the sport who can steer them in a better direction. If someone could scale a really top-quality lesson program here, there would be a lot of demand, but I still don’t know if the financials would work out. I think the market could support $150 per lesson, but that would still leave you with very tight margins if that’s your only stream of income and you’re caring for the horses properly. Not having to buy horses would be a big help - I think the person to do it would have to be a very well-networked, well-trusted pro who could take in horses of friends/connections who are ready to step down but not ready to retire, use them in lessons for a few years, and then return them to the owners for retirement.
All this–this is why I said I don’t really felt I learned anything as a rider until I started half-leasing a horse and getting private lessons. And my first great instructor was totally under the radar (and not that expensive)–her husband was in the military, so she moved around a lot and didn’t have much of a following, but she was amazing, one of the best teachers I’ve ever had full stop, not just in riding.
In my area several barns are now run by second generation owners or managers who grew up in that or other barns, parents bought them a place after they did maybe a college degree in an equine program or a month as a WS and not much more.
These trainers/instructors/managers haven’t got very deep resumes.
They’re not necessarily bad people, but they really are just big fish from little ponds now ruling the same little pond.
A good equine pro, in my book, is someone who’s been out in the bigger ponds, worked for bigger names/fish in those bigger ponds, and know what it means to actually work hard and demonstrate that by being willing to show up early, pick up a muck fork when needed, and leave late.
The half dozen I can think of have not and do not.
In my mind, that’s part of the disease killing the industry.
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This seems like setting the bar unreasonably high. First of all, small, local lesson barns can produce life long horse lovers who have zero interest in ever going to the big pond. They certainly don’t need to prove themselves at the highest end of competition to competently teach kids and happy hackers how to safely enjoy horses.
This is like saying unless you can get your kid into golf lessons with Tiger Woods or a little league team run by Don Mattingly just pack up and go home because you’re not serious enough to be on the path to the big leagues.
Expecting a local lesson barn with a mix of program- and individual-owned horses that throws an annual summer fun show to be led by and producing riders competing at the FEI level seems very out of touch. And it seems like a low blow to look down on them as being “lesser than” in their “little ponds.” I would much rather ride with a personable, patient instructor with happy horses to teach mer to be a more sympathetic rider than someone with a “deep resume” pressuring me to ascend to the ranks of rated shows as quickly as possible.
I’m not saying that at all.
I’m saying to have a good, solid, broad foundation one needs to learn from more than their lil corner of the horse world.
It’s interesting that this is the extreme you think a bigger pond has to be.
These are also not the only options or mutually exclusive.
A combo can exist.
I personally want to learn from people who know a whole lot more than I do. Always. Which means the more I learn, the more I seek what I don’t know and people who know even more.
But pretty much anyone knows more than you when you start out. Which is kind of what we are talking about here - MOST people who are on lesson horses are in some way beginners. Just starting out, switching disciplines, knocking the rust off and needing to start over for a bit.
That’s where these lesson barns come in - you may not learn 4th level or Modified or how to get around the Maclay, but you (should) be learning basics and horse care and safety. That doesn’t take someone who was a WS for Phillip Dutton for 3 years to teach. That takes someone who is good at teaching PEOPLE, has good basics themselves, and isn’t busy running higher level things! If that “small pond” program is consistently producing safe riders and happy horses, that’s exactly what the horse world needs!
How many adults are interested in taking lessons at one of these “little pond” (not my own words) barns just to really ride good horses on a regular basis and learn more each time? Because as we all know, each time you ride a horse you are learning.
When I was a younger adult I preferred paying for lessons rather than “just go trail riding” because the horses were better, I got to know them, and I loved learning.
Now I would love to live near such a barn where I could take affordable lessons.
I never had Olympic dreams, or Fourth Level or A-show dreams, I just love horses and riding and learning and being with other horse people.
But sadly all there is anywhere near me are trail ride barns and a lot of people who want to do nose-to-tail trail rides don’t see any value in taking lessons. Despite the fact that they’d enjoy riding even more if they could learn how to do it correctly.
Replying to myself here but without access to horses at the very base level, aka lesson barns, who exactly is riding? The ultra-wealthy, those who grew up riding and already have experience, and those who have parents or close family that ride.
Sure, horses are expensive. But we all make sacrifices because we love the animal and the sport - but if you never get a taste, you’ll spend your time and money elsewhere.
If a horse didn’t work out, it was sent down the road pretty quickly after us young crash test dummies rode them.
