He has guts. No 9 year old child has critical thinking skills which is why we don’t let them drink, drive cars, or operate heavy machinery.
Children aren’t miniature adults. At 9 years old you are still developing many mental skills that you need to be able to safely participate in dangerous activities. It’s why kids ride 100cc dirtbikes and not miniature 450 class bikes.
And that little show jumper? Those jumps fall down if you make a mistake.
And he is 12 not 9. There are many young pony riders in British showjumping, it is where most have their start. There is an age limit for British Eventing, it is 12, for good reason. I started with hunter trials, similar to hunter paces over here.
I know a 10yo who is competing Novice recognized and just moved up to Training at schooling shows under the watchful eye of world class instructors and experienced horse parents on top of a priceless horse. Still doesn’t mean I’m not horrified by some of the other things said in this thread.
World class instructors and “priceless” horses don’t somehow make your brain and fine motor skills develop faster.
That EN blog was written by a proud mother that doesn’t know enough to understand there about 99 things wrong with what her daughter is being taught and is doing on a daily basis.
Aside from all of the safety & training issues let’s talk about the concept of churning through horses and always needing the next horse to move up. Is the 9 year old being taught to be responsible for the ponies left in her wake?
And to to be clear, a 9 y.o. kid ‘training’ a 4 y.o. horse is a recipe for disaster. That horse will be ruined.
This x100. Holy hell, that article made my skin crawl, as did all the “That’s amazing!” comments below it. Ugh.
If my trainer took my horse to a show and let people ride him without my permission, I would be out of that barn in a day, no matter what contracts or money I had already paid in advance.
If my trainer left my horse in a pasture with no shelter during a hail storm and it resulted in a career ending injury, I would be out of the barn, try to sue her or something to get justice for myself and my poor horse.
If my trainer put my horse at risk of drowning, and he did indeed drown, I would be devistated and figure out what I could do to at the very least make sure that no other horse ever steps a hoof into that paddock.
etc. etc.
This lady sounds like a terrible person, and I am sorry that people are blaming you, but, that being said, you should have left wayyy sooner.
If this is about the fact that the trainer let her 8 yr old daughter go in horse stalls alone…if all of what the OP said was true, I hate that trainer, BUT I don’t think that her choice of allowing her daughter to go in with horses alone was that bad. If the girl has been with horses her entire life and is only allowed in with safe horses, how is that any different than a 15 year old who has been around horses for a month? If the 8 yr old knows what she’s doing, I don’t have a problem with it.
This thread is 30+ pages now and it seems like you’re responding to commentary from the early pages. You might want to read through the whole thread (or at least the end) before responding. Soloud was referring to an 8 year old “training” and eventing a 4 year old OTTB. Not referring to an 8 year old picking stalls. The discussion has morphed and changed as this thread grew.
Okay, thanks
Never said it did. Just commenting that it is entirely possible to be done safely with the right combination of trainer, parent, and an appropriate horse. Similar age and competition level, entirely different way of getting there done right.
Point missed. If anything your post is evidence that all parents will let their kid do stupid things on the advice of others even if they know better.
It’s not safe because a 9yo doesn’t have the skills to make the kind of decisions required to safely ride training level. Even a seeing eye horse will make a mistake sometime and the child doesn’t have the skills to save it. They can’t, because their brain is not that developed yet. It can end with a dead child or a dead horse. The quality of your instruction doesn’t change that. There is a reason British Eventing has a lower age limit at ANY level of 12 years old.
Am I crazy or is there a minimum age in place for going Training? For some reason I thought it was 12 in the US. Or is it just Prelim?
It’s 14 for prelim, but none for training.
While I basically agree with your main point, there isn’t much of a point about the BE age limit. Every year Horse and Hound magazine publishes pictures of “young thrusters” - young and very brave riders out hunting over giant fences. Example 1 Those British kids are then running European championship CCI* on their ponies at 14 years old. It’s not as if they aren’t learning to ride XC before the age of 12.
I do think the British horse community, on the whole, is very accepting of the risk associated with riding and the consequences of that risk.
If they’re so accepting of that risk, and yet they STILL won’t allow children to compete in eventing, doesn’t that tell you something?
The kids under 12 can’t compete in affiliated eventing. In the UK there are entire circuits of well-run events known as unaffiliated. They also have riding club and pony club events. Don’t believe that their kids under 12 aren’t eventing. How do you think they are running championship one-star events at 14 if they never evented before 12?
ETA: I found the British Eventing Youth guide. Turn to page 16-19: Riders aged 12 up are eligible for the British Eventing Pony Trials and Under 18 Open Novice classes - their Novice is our Prelim.
These young kids, are riding 60-80 thousand pound horses. These are not 4 year old horses a 9 year old has trained. It always kills me how everyone says “but in the UK the kids do this and that”…but what they don’t realize is those ponies are all 50 thousand dollar ponies!
Speaking as someone who worked for someone in Scotland whose daughter rode on the CCIJR team, and in Ireland whose two daughters rode on the CCIJR and CCI**YR teams. They are professionally trained, and bought with this sole purpose, and sold afterward, to give another rider a shot. These are not ponies trained by kids, and brought up the levels.
Some of them are. I lived in the UK and worked at professional stables too. I subscribed to Horse and Hound magazine for 2 years and read all about it; some of those ponies were made by their riders. Not a lot, because the championship teams are extremely competitive, and buying a made pony helps. But there were definitely riders who made up their own ponies - and wouldn’t any of us think that is a normal thing for a competent teenager to do?
The article in question on EN gave me the heebie jeebies too. I witnessed a similar trajectory once with a narcissist 4* trainer and my heart was in my throat when a 10 or 11 year old rider was sent galloping down to a tough 1* water jump complex. She jumped it well - but I thought, “what if the pony hadn’t gone through that perfectly?”
and its not to say the kids can’t ride - they can! I’ll never forget my first time XC schooling with my bosses 13 year old daughter on her 14h Connemara. Galloping down a hollow to an Intermediate table and it was the most perfect jump I had ever seen.
Definitely a “were not in kansas anymore” moment lol
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