I’ve recently started giving riding lessons to some local kids. I’m an experienced eventer up to the preliminary level, but I’m just teaching basics. I have a bright, sweet POA as my lesson pony for them. She’s almost exclusively ridden by the beginners and I’ve noticed she’s really starting to take advantage of them. She’s difficult to move off the leg and is getting feisty at the canter. I’ve had to pull the kids off of her and hop on for a few minutes to tune her up even mid lesson. She’s always difficult with me for the first minute or two before she transforms into the perfect, sweet push button pony that she always is with me. I’m concerned and worried for the kids safety. I think I probably need to put some more time in the saddle with her, but how do I keep her behaving for them and not just me? She’s a smart pony so I know that’s making things more challenging for sure, but I’m not buying that she’s just not cut out to be a lesson pony. I’m sure there has a to be a decent way to keep her a bit more forgiving of the beginner’s. Help me out. I need suggestions on what’s worked for you.
Sounds like she isn’t a candidate for beginner lessons. Some horses like to be teachers and some don’t. She sounds like she doesn’t. Sorry this isn’t helpful in the way you hoped.
I agree with this. At the very least, she isn’t a candidate for only beginner lessons/rides. Perhaps you could use her for beginners every other day with you riding in between.
It takes a very special horse to tolerate beginners bouncing around on their backs. To keep her sweet she will need schooling regularly by you and to he used in varied classes so she us not just being abused by total beginners.
Is her name Demi and is she a 14hh blue roan/varnish POA with a star and no white legs that came from North Texas? :lol: If so, let me know, because she’s an old horse of mine that was sold when a lesson barn changed ownership and I haven’t been able to track her down.
Some horses just aren’t meant to be lesson horses. It’s not what you want to hear, but it’s the same as - not every horse is going to be suitable for an amateur rider. We wish they were, but you may want to find a new pony if you don’t want a big liability if someone gets hurt.
Sometimes even the sweetest horse doesn’t have the tolerance for beginners, or they lose their tolerance for them.
Being ridden by beginners is awful for most horses 
so you do need to keep that in mind.
Hard to say. As others have said, though, it takes a one in a million horse to be a beginner’s lesson horse. They have to be okay with someone up there with zero clue what they’re doing, no balance, no strength in their legs, unsteady hands, and absolutely no idea how to give the right cues. Most horses get fed up with that real fast.
Without knowing how your lessons are structured, are you giving these kids lunge lessons to learn balance and coordination? Are they at the stage where they should be able to do walk/trot/canter around the arena? Do they know how to give the right cues yet? Are you working with the kids to correct the pony when she’s being naughty? Since I don’t know, I’m fishing for ways to make your pony a little happier. If you can identify WHY she’s being a pickle, you can take steps to correct it and hopefully she’ll be better.
But truthfully, she’s probably bored and frustrated. If you keep using her as a lesson pony, she’s bound to get very sour, very quickly.
Yep. All kids start on the lunge and we later return to the lunge for new skills, like posting, cantering, 2 point. She’s not bad, more like, wow, this kid doesn’t know squat, I think I’ll eat some grass, veer back to the barn, ignore their trot cues. It’s making them better riders for sure, but it reminds me of my old shetland that dumped me a zillion times as a kid just because she could. She’s not getting ridden into the ground and I keep our lessons very varied. She really is a wonderful pony and not difficult to ride at all, but for beginners even Bubbles can be a challenge. I’m not ready to throw in the towel with her so I will try tuning her up more frequently and may be forced to move the kids a bit slower than they would like so they are super solid in their base before we do more canter work. She’s just poky at the walk and trot so I think we can deal with that. Im still open to more suggestions.
I’d be equally concerned about your pony’s mind and the kid’s safety.
Ive done beginner lessons as part of my program for decades. I’ve learned a few things. Number one: DO NOT compromise…find yourself a saint who genuinely loves to teach beginners. They exist, I have two. They are my trusted co-teachers, and I could not begin to express the huge relief it is to utterly trust the horses intention and judgment. You can focus on the rider’s skills.
a beginner isn’t equipped to deal with a “challenge” that will make them a better rider. They need a confidence builder.
Once you’ve found your sainted horse, you GUARD that horse’s mind and soundness with your life. Focus on teaching seat and balance on the longe line before you turn the beginners loose. Make sure the students treat your lesson horse with great respect and love.
Here is my school pony, Orlando, teaching a kid to jump. He loves giving lessons and everyone treasures him.
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I taught a ton of beginners as an assistant trainer many years ago. I had a string of about 14 horses to choose from. Three were truly amazing beginner horses. The rest could do the job, but not without management of some kind. For a few, we had to carefully work their schedules so they got a tune-up from one of the trainers, or an intermediate/advanced lesson after every lesson or two with a real beginner. None had terrible faults - we had a few that would drift towards the middle, one that would slow down to a crawl as he passed the gate, and another that wouldn’t canter for riders that didn’t have a crop. Two had to wear anti-grazing reins or they’d pull little kids out of the saddle.
Does the pony ride good for the kids after you give a mid lesson tune up?
Some horses are just perfect lesson horse candidates and know their job and dutifully do it day after day without any tune up rides. Most do not.
The key to all this is safety…I have just a handful of horses I use for lessons (I’m primarily a training facility but do a few lessons here and there) and they all need tune ups once a week if there’s just lesson students on them. Not because they’re doing unsafe things. But because they get dull to aids…and it’s probably self preservation…because if they reacted every time they were inadvertently bumped in the mouth or sides, they would probably be crazy by now.
when the subject of Lesson Horses comes up it always reminds me of Pete. He was an older horse who had been used in beginner rider programs evidently forever. He had an internal clock. The lessons were 30 minutes and at the end of 30 minutes to nearly the second he would stop, park out wait. If the kid’s lesson was to be longer, they had to dismount and remount to reset his clock. The last I saw of Pete he was 28 and still working.
Tarlo was kind of like that; still giving lessons in his early 30’s, listening to my voice and doing as I asked. I can picture a three year old on him just BEAMING because she’d reversed direction. :lol::lol::lol:
Good beginner lesson horses are priceless. It sounds like your pony might be great, but not one of those good beginner lesson horses. You can’t make them be that.
To make this horse work you are going to have to do more of what you are doing now. Training rides. Often enough that you are not having to pull the kids off during their lesson time to fix the horse so they can continue.
and the kid’s parents if watching are amazed that their young offspring is such an accomplished rider … then when you show the beaming parent the photos taken of the horse a week earlier breathing fire as it cleared five foot jumps with ease… yes that’s the same horse they kind start to begin to understand there is little more to this than staying in the saddle (which you could see the horse sidestepping to reposition their charge back centered in the saddle)
I agree with the others. Vary her workload - maybe only one beginner a week, and rotate in the older, more experienced kids on the other days. Find another horse for your rotation with the newest riders. Also vary her workload so she gets out of the ring regularly, but be very, very careful of what she is allowed and encouraged to do out of the ring if you will be using her to teach kids to ride in the open!! My beginner-ambivalent horse was happiest if the kids were doing obstacle courses and that sort of thing for half the lesson and trotting on the longe for the rest of the time. Once they needed to learn to trot on their own, I rotated in another horse, and then they would return to him later when they were ready to ride outside in the open. It’s a rare horse that can take a new rider from stopping and steering through cantering and crossrails. Figure out what this pony does best, and then find a couple others to fill in the gaps.
No advice for you, only sympathy. My school horse has learned exactly who can and cannot ride him and it’s a real pain in the butt!
I hope you find a good solution.
back when I taught beginners, I found the less tolerant horses seemed to like it when we did obstacles. I think it kept the pony’s and the child’s attention better. Thinking pole courses, weave poles, barrel “racing” and other types of obstacles. I have also had a lot of success with going bitless for lesson horses.
What kind of suggestions do you think people will give you? Most horses are not suited to be beginner lesson horses.
The options you have are - get at least one more lesson horse so that this pony has fewer beginner rides, tune up your pony between beginner lesson rides, and give your pony more interesting work to do in addition to beginner rides. If that doesn’t help, then this pony should be retired from beginner rides and be used for your more advanced students.
I’m getting the impression you only have the one pony for lessons - that program is a bad one, regardless of how good the horse is. Because eventually your lesson students will leave because there is no place for advancement.
I bought another horse for my family because my horse would sink to the lowest common denominator - she could collect and bend and do lateral movement, but my kids never asked for that. So when I would get on, she would be annoyed to have to work that hard and throw little tantrums and evade. And that was only with 2.5 riders. She’s a great horse, but she’s not a great lesson horse. Or, she probably would be a great beginner horse whose only job was to trot on the rail.
