Lessons getting cut short

[centaursam]

I’ve been at the barn I’ve been riding at for nearly 1.5 years and over the past several months, I’ve noticed that my trainer has a bad habit of cutting lessons short.

Lessons are indicated as 45 minutes and while I know that sometimes you can’t stick to a hard and fast time frame when you’re dealing with a living animal, my lessons have been cut short terribly too many times.

This past weekend I had a Saturday lesson for 20 mins, my Sunday lesson was 15 mins. I’m not the only one dealing with this and on Saturday the individual before me had their lesson cut short and started to argue with the trainer and she brushed it off.

Not sure how to approach this since others have already brought it up and it seems like nothing is changing on the trainers end.

[Lusoluv]

If other riders asking about shortened lessons have already been dismissed, the same will happen to you. You can either leave the program (and state the reason why) or you can tell the trainer you’ll be prorating the lesson fee. If your lesson is half as long as it should be, I’d say I’m only paying half the normal fee. See what happens…

[2DogsFarm]

Who do you pay for a lesson?
BO or trainer?

In either case, I’d deduct the missing time from my payment & tell whoever why.

If you pay for a block of lessons/pay in advance, I’d insist on making up time missed in a NC lesson.
Ex: 2 45min lessons cut to 20min = 1 “free” lesson

If nothing changes, look for a different trainer ASAP.

Long time ago, when my Dressage trainer would interrupt my private lesson by chatting with/other - mounted or not - clients, I’d ride over & stand there on my horse until he resumed teaching. And expect (& got) the balance of a full hour from where he left off.

[ThreeWishes]

Not cool at all. My trainer sets a 45 minute timer on his phone. If anything sometimes we go past the alarm because I need one more school over a course.

[Scribbler]

@centaursam

I’ve been at the barn I’ve been riding at for nearly 1.5 years and over the past several months, I’ve noticed that my trainer has a bad habit of cutting lessons short.

Lessons are indicated as 45 minutes and while I know that sometimes you can’t stick to a hard and fast time frame when you’re dealing with a living animal, my lessons have been cut short terribly too many times.

This past weekend I had a Saturday lesson for 20 mins, my Sunday lesson was 15 mins. I’m not the only one dealing with this and on Saturday the individual before me had their lesson cut short and started to argue with the trainer and she brushed it off.

Not sure how to approach this since others have already brought it up and it seems like nothing is changing on the trainers end.

This is unusual. Any idea what’s the reason? I’m assuming this is in private lessons?

Is the trainer overscheduling or are they having life crisis? I’d usually look at that for an abrupt change. Are they arriving late because they are depressed, hung over, or having Long Covid or TBI or working another job and then compressing everything?

From my long observation of people behaving badly in all walks of life this is quite possibly going to end with the trainer just quitting because they can’t keep it together in the face of whatever the underlying issue is.

I would talk to anyone who is in charge of the trainer if there is one, like the barn manager. Express concern about the trainer. I would honestly also start looking for a new program. It’s a very bad sign.

A coach fully functioning that had a single incident like car failure or family emergency would contact everyone and cancel, refund, reschedule. The fact that coach is doing this week after week with no explanation is a very bad sign.

Coaches absolutely have meltdowns related to mental and physical health.

[centaursam]

I appreciate all the replies, thank you!

To answer some questions, I pay the trainer directly, usually a lesson package which is 3 lessons per week x 4 weeks (when I was leasing it also included the lease payment). This is private lessons and it’s just me riding.

She has been through some rough patches over the past year (who hasn’t), but I’m not sure that warrants short-changing your students on lessons frequently. There has never been any discussion about making up lesson time with anyone but you all are correct, I definitely should demand to get my minutes back, whether it’s taking one extra time on the next lesson or giving me back whatever I paid in proportion to how short the lesson is.

To be honest, things have been trending downwards with respect to overall professionalism. I’m very regimented so perhaps I’m just being extreme but beyond the lessons getting cut short, said trainer also texts and answers phone calls during lessons, talks to other students, deducts a lesson if you go on a trail ride with her in place of the arena (none of us were informed of this). I was also doing most of my grooming for many months when a new groom was hired and it wasn’t until we all spoke up about how bad he is until she spoke with him. He’s gotten better but I still don’t think he’s a good groom. There is also the monthly reminder to pay her every time my next lesson package/lease payment is due which is annoying. I also don’t think her method of teaching corresponds with how I learn.

Clearly I’m having issues but I’m not sure if I have other options within my area. I’m on my fifth trainer in my nearly seven years of riding and this particular one came highly regarded by many

[Scribbler]

@centaursam

I appreciate all the replies, thank you!

To answer some questions, I pay the trainer directly, usually a lesson package which is 3 lessons per week x 4 weeks (when I was leasing it also included the lease payment). This is private lessons and it’s just me riding.

She has been through some rough patches over the past year (who hasn’t), but I’m not sure that warrants short-changing your students on lessons frequently. There has never been any discussion about making up lesson time with anyone but you all are correct, I definitely should demand to get my minutes back, whether it’s taking one extra time on the next lesson or giving me back whatever I paid in proportion to how short the lesson is.

To be honest, things have been trending downwards with respect to overall professionalism. I’m very regimented so perhaps I’m just being extreme but beyond the lessons getting cut short, said trainer also texts and answers phone calls during lessons, talks to other students, deducts a lesson if you go on a trail ride with her in place of the arena (none of us were informed of this). I was also doing most of my grooming for many months when a new groom was hired and it wasn’t until we all spoke up about how bad he is until she spoke with him. He’s gotten better but I still don’t think he’s a good groom. There is also the monthly reminder to pay her every time my next lesson package/lease payment is due which is annoying. I also don’t think her method of teaching corresponds with how I learn.

Clearly I’m having issues but I’m not sure if I have other options within my area. I’m on my fifth trainer in my nearly seven years of riding and this particular one came highly regarded by many

That’s enough red flags that the trainer is having a slow motion meltdown. If you don’t love the actual lessons either time to move on.

[centaursam]

I suppose you are right. Thought I had finally found a great place with a great trainer but alas, that does not appear to be the case. I’m running out of options.

[SummerRose]

I agree that it sounds like you need to find a new instructor.

But just out of curiosity, how is the instructor ending the lessons? Does she pick a time when you’re ending on a high note? Or does she just suddenly - apparently out of the blue - say, “That’s it. Put the horse away.”? Or something else? Does she have other lessons after yours or does she only line up one lesson at a time?

I’ve seen some instructors who aren’t great for various reasons, but frequently ending lessons very early is not a problem I’ve seen before.

[centaursam]

Sometimes she ends the lesson on a high note which I can partially understand. Other times she just ends it with “lets stop there” and it’s over after a few laps of walk, trot, canter in both directions which was the case this past weekend.

At times there are lessons after me, other times I’m the last student for the day. I think one issue is that she’s always running late so in an effort to accommodate everyone at the specific time they are scheduled for, she’ll cut minutes from some students to keep the schedule that day more/less in track which isn’t right. Another student and I were the ones getting shortchanged this weekend whilst the others got there full ride time.

[Scribbler]

Ok time management issues likely connected to other problems in her life. I think this will implode.

[furlong47]

It sounds like you aren’t super happy with the trainer or content of the lessons anyway, so it’s probably time to move on.

It’s one thing to end on a good note like 5-10 minutes early, or for a group lesson to run slightly shorter or longer depending on how many riders are present. Something like this happening once due to an emergency or something, I can see. Most instructors I know would probably prorate or give a makeup lesson in that case. It’s another thing entirely for your private lessons to be ending as much as 30 minutes early on a regular basis. You’re only getting 1/3 of what you paid for, and it sounds like trainer is distracted during that time too.

[4Frogs_aLilypad]

If it were me I’d be looking for another place to ride. Considering it takes me a minimum of 45 minutes just to get to the barn in the first place, I’d be annoyed at having a lesson that lasted not even half that time. It sounds like this trainer is burnt out.

[clanter]

the barn I worked at while in college had an older Morgan gelding (Pete) who would just stop at 30 minutes…if the lesson was to be an hour the rider had to dismount then remount

[ThreeWishes]

Walk trot canter in both directions with a flying change across the ring is called warm up. And it’s what I do before my trainer sets his clock.

[173north]

I think you’re on a sinking ship, unfortunately. The groom situation would be a big red flag for me too… that’s a key person in your horse’s life, it’s important that you trust them. If trainer is struggling or checked out or overwhelmed and key staff members are not competent and/or not being managed well, are you really getting what you’re paying for?

[Lusoluv]

I teach lessons. The earliest I’ve ever stopped was 10 min of a 45 min lesson. This was because the horse and rider pair did everything that was asked of them and the early stop was a reward for a great effort. We still talked about “homework”, and next steps, etc. but the physical activity was stopped early. This is the exception…usually I end on time or we go a few minutes longer for Q & A.

[findeight]

The big issue here seems to be the last lesson(s) of the day repeatedly getting cut short, right? Are you sure its not happening earlier in the day? Anybody that lessons earlier you can ask?

Sounds like she just has to be out of there at a certain time for some reason (another job?) and cant manage her days work schedule to wrap in time. And you get to pay for the work not done.

This is not your problem and you need to stop enabling it to continue. You need to have a face to face talk with her to give her the opportunity to make it right with you. If that fails, you have to choose between leaving her program or keep paying for her problems.

Offhand, guessing shes just not going to show up at all PDQ here. Likely after collecting fir the next months lessons shes going to go poof.

[Impractical_Horsewoman]

Those of you this has never happened to are lucky! I agree with having a discussion with the instructor, but it sounds like it’s symptomatic of bigger issues, not simply poor time management, but also poor planning of the lessons.

It’s easy to make what can be a reasonable thing once or twice (ending 10 minutes early because the horse is getting everything unexpectedly quickly) turn into an excuse to shortchange on training. If that keeps happening, then the lessons need to be more challenging or the instructor needs to have a second, less physically taxing exercise to wind down but not end.

I’ve had this happen in group lessons, but at the opposite end. The instructor would take 15-20 minutes getting late-coming students “ready” (checking the fit of their saddle and saddle pad, stirrup length, finding them their favorite crop) and take an excessive amount of time to warm up, so there would only be a half hour of an hour lesson of real work, factoring in cool-down time. And yes, you could tell she was winging it with the exercises she suggested, trying to fill time.

It’s unlikely the instructor will change. Even if other students are unhappy, if she’s sloppy and can retain enough students to keep the barn going, she’ll function at “coasting” speed rather than train.

[CHT]

Another way to approach it (if you want to fix the relationship) is to approach from an angle of compassion. “Are you doing ok? I have noticed our lessons are getting shorter and shorter, and it certainly isn’t because I am suddenly a perfect rider, so I was wondering if there was something else going on you wanted to discuss?” or something along those lines - adding some levity to it with the self depreciation.