Newbie Advice Needed - Daughter wants to do more in Hunter/Jumper

[NoSuchPerson]

@fledermaus

Or maybe I’m being hopelessly unrealistic.

I think you are.

People keep disagreeing with me, except they aren’t really. You all are right - it’s the time. Time spent riding, hanging around with your horse, hanging around at the barn. No one, including me, has said that “time without pressure” isn’t valuable.

But what some of you all seem not to be getting is that today, “time without pressure” just is not an option for a lot of people. The reasons it isn’t have been discussed on this forum ad nauseam in multiple discussions.

Go back and look at how many people “liked” the post in which I first expressed this opinion. Right now it’s 32. That certainly suggests that I’m not the only one who thinks you’re being unrealistic.

[pony_grandma]

@fledermaus yep that’s how my girls grew up. Rehabbing OTTBs we bought cheap. Bareback w halters and lead ropes up and down hills and hollers. It worked for both of them - horse and the kid!
How many times have I heard a parent tell ‘Olympic aspirations’ and they buy that one horse and ride it down, or the kid chucks it at 18. C’est la vie. What a suck vortex that show world is. Real life lessons are a much bigger deal

[fledermaus]

Well, all I can say is, that’s as sad as can be. When I was a kid, we had little money but all the time and freedom. Now all there is, is money. No freedom. No time. What a fucked up world.

[fledermaus]

@clanter

@LCDR

Q: How do you become a millionaire owning horses?

well there are some ways

Start with $20 million.

[clanter]

buy land for your horses, then let the city surround you

There is no question the horse hobby is expensive but in the long run there can be offsets that recover the expenditures.

My father in law bought land to keep their horses on, it was way out in the country of north Dallas. City expanded overrunning his particle of land which was bought by the acre then sold by the square foot for a few million dollars to apartment developers. (land is just north of LBJ near the TI complex.)

Our land I really have no idea as to its value but it is the center particle of fifteen multiple acre tracks. We have our horses here, they are well taken care of but they are expensive to keep.

Weekly there is interest in acquiring our land, people asking if we want to sell. We bought this place in an then overlooked part of the city nearly forty years ago. Today it is a desired location as being between Dallas and Fort Worth it is an easy commute to nearly any place in the metroplex (plus there is a commuter rail station half a mile away)

Currently two lots that recently were sold are being developed into zero lot line townhouses, one has 46 units the other is 70, each development is in the $30 to $35 million range.

The DFW metroplex is now at 8 million people with growth of just under 200,000 per year, Projections of growth by the US Census Bureau claim this area will be the largest “city” in the US within fifty years nearing 30 million people. I can see that as there are no natural land barriers to expansion.

When this place is sold it will be by the square inch

[Impractical_Horsewoman]

Also, maybe I experienced a less-than-ideal childhood, but honestly, a lot of bad stuff happened sometimes…and I was a pretty overprotected kid. I think it’s important not to look back with rose-colored glasses, or think the kids today are “not alright” just because their childhood isn’t the dreamy childhood some people remember.

It does suck that horses aren’t more affordable and kids don’t seem to have as much freedom just to hang out, but on the upside I think lesson horses do get better care than they used to and some of the childhood cruelty I experienced growing up is less tolerated.

[Rackonteur]

Yep.

[fledermaus]

@Impractical_Horsewoman

Also, maybe I experienced a less-than-ideal childhood, but honestly, a lot of bad stuff happened sometimes…and I was a pretty overprotected kid. I think it’s important not to look back with rose-colored glasses, or think the kids today are “not alright” just because their childhood isn’t the dreamy childhood some people remember.

It does suck that horses aren’t more affordable and kids don’t seem to have as much freedom just to hang out, but on the upside I think lesson horses do get better care than they used to and some of the childhood cruelty I experienced growing up is less tolerated.

My childhood was not in any way ideal or idyllic. Horse care and training was really primitive compared to now – this is 1970’s California. I have lots of bad stories. Old horses often essentially starved to death because their teeth were so bad, for example, and no one thought twice about it. But we had what children now do not, and I am very grateful for that.

[NoSuchPerson]

@Impractical_Horsewoman

Also, maybe I experienced a less-than-ideal childhood, but honestly, a lot of bad stuff happened sometimes…and I was a pretty overprotected kid. I think it’s important not to look back with rose-colored glasses, or think the kids today are “not alright” just because their childhood isn’t the dreamy childhood some people remember.

Amen. My younger sister owns multiple pairs of extra-strength rose colored glasses. When she talks about our wonderful childhood with horses, I wonder just where the heck I was when all this magical shit was happening.

I mean, we had one pony that was a mean little shit who never missed an opportunity to catch you off balance and buck you off. My sister, now in her 60s, sincerely believes that he bucked her off maybe once or twice but was otherwise a perfect pony.

She also believes that she got kicked in the face by a pony in a completely random event. She was just standing there. HA! Yes, that’s the story we told Mom and Dad, but that isn’t the truth, yet somehow over the years it has become her truth.

Children benefit from a lot more adult supervision for, and structure around, their horse experiences than I had when I was a kid. Yes, it is too bad that most kids today don’t have the opportunity for that nearly daily horse time that some of us had when we were kids, but that doesn’t mean kids can’t still become excellent horse people, as well as good riders.

[Impractical_Horsewoman]

It’s so true–I remember so many kids coming in with broken bones when I was in elementary and middle school. I know it happens a lot now, still, but there was ALWAYS a cast to be signed.

The fact there were no cellphones and we never told our parents anything also helps with selective memory.

[LCDR]

Bone plates and rods and pins and screws have supplanted the casts of our youth.

A few bucks worth of gauze and plaster of paris and six weeks of no bathing and constantly itching versus a $20,000 surgery. But thinking back about my 9 year old self in a long leg cast suspended from pulleys, I can also appreciate the advances in orthopedic surgery.

[SuzieQNutter]

We had horses on land when my dad died. My horse was sold at auction with me crying on his back to try and up bids.

We moved. We lived in a caravan in a caravan park.

I was not allowed to get a horse until we had our own property.

We went from a caravan, to a rented house to our own house to an Agistment property.

I delivered junk mail to buy my own horse sight unseen. I was 15 yo. Pepper was rising 6. He lived with me until he was over 30 years old. I married late in life and he taught my non horsey hubby to ride, after we had been married for a few years, as it took him time to take interest.

[Scribbler]

@Amberley

@HeelsDown123

So, I guess my question is this. How have you seen gifted, passionate young riders be able to ride and compete without their families being able to spend upper 5-figures or even lower 6-figures each year to support their sport?

Yes absolutely but not at that kind of barn. Their business model is to make money showing at fairly easy levels on horses they own and not to produce top young riders who have the change to turn pro. The NCAA show teams honestly are about the same: very low to mid level of competition.

I don’t have up close experience with the more expensive tiers of junior hunters but I suspect this is true. You pay those very high sums to propel a child into competing at the most expensive level, which means generally that the child needs a horse that is really “too much horse” for the child if they were on their own. The horse therefore needs to be in a program, meaning it is being trained, schooled, maintained and managed by the trainer and their employees. At shows the trainer will “warm up” or longe the horse to get the wiggles out and the child gets on when the horse is deemed ready.

What would the child be capable of dealing with pretty much on their own? Maybe a nice sturdy native British pony like in the pony books I read as a kid or a smaller mellower quarter horse. But those aren’t going to A level rated hunters. The horses that can do respectably well at the rated shows are almost all going to need a great deal of adult micromanagement before an advanced beginner 11 year old can have a productive ride.

To me one of the drawbacks of making an endeavor competitive from the start is that there isn’t time to learn the sport properly before you are being managed into competition.

PBOTD 13th April: Joanna Cannan - They Bought Her A Pony

I think this book might have been formative to me at a very young pre horse owning age. I still have the Three Great Pony Stories anthology and as an adult I appreciate Joanna Canaans social satire. Anyhow it’s an ode to the DIY pony kids who teach themselves how to be excellent horse people and win the jump off at the County Fair at 4 feet, and humble the rich girl with the “fancy” pony.

Yes, it’s nostalgia for a past that maybe never existed (it’s published in 1944), but it is a nice fable about how the DIY rider on the hairy pony also becomes the best rider. I don’t think there’s a pdf online but ought to be around in one edition or another.

[fledermaus]

@Scribbler

Yes, it’s nostalgia for a past that maybe never existed (it’s published in 1944), but it is a nice fable about how the DIY rider on the hairy pony also becomes the best rider. I don’t think there’s a pdf online but ought to be around in one edition or another.

In the 1970’s my sister was showing her fat, coarse, mostly-white pinto pony in Region 6 shows in California. She was 10 when she won high point junior (flat classes only) over a couple dozen kids on fancy hunters. We worked extremely hard to get Gus to his classes without stain. There’s a photo somewhere of me scrubbing his hocks with a toothbrush. We definitely gloated over the angry sneer of the picture-perfect second place winner, who had been previously overheard making contemptuous remarks about our patched-together assemblage two trailers over.

Those kinds of victories are the sweetest.

[2DogsFarm]

@fledermaus

Those kinds of victories are the sweetest.

Yes, they are

& At the risk of boring those here that have heard this from me before:
Back in the mid-90s, when I was showing Hunter’s (Amateur divisions) there were classes unofficially Trainers Only - generally for the Pros to warm up clients’ horses.
&, of course, charge for the ride
I don’t know if these still exist.
Low Hunter < that we referred to as “Pro Hunter”
Pre-Green & 2nd Year Green
My trainer at the time was also a friend.
So when I told him I was going to ride in 2nd Year Green (we’d ribboned out of Pre-Green), not a problem.
We placed 2nd in a class of nobody besides Pros.
Who all came hustling over to my friend to ask why SHE rode in the class
His reply - and the reason we’re still friends 30yrs later:
Because it’s her horse.

[Arlomine]

It is beyond me, how a parent can put their child over on 1000lb Flight animal AND JUMP THEM with only two hours a week in the Tack.

Yes I’m fully aware that that is the program that the Trainer is promoting. It’s wrong. What’s wrong with it is the other five hours a week that the kids could be in the Tack and is not. What this program will produce is a little robot with no real riding skills but she won’t even know it.

She needs to ride. Not just jump every lesson. She needs to ride bareback, she needs flat lessons. She needs lessons without stirrups. She needs to hang around the barn and try to learn about Tack. She needs to jump without stirrups. She needs to clean stalls. She needs to learn everything with a hands-on approach. She needs to offer to walk horses who are on R&R if they won’t hurt her. She needs to FALL OFF at all speeds and get back on. She needs to get on other peoples horses and try to figure them out even if she can’t. What is happening today is so formulaic, and absolutely not how you produce a real rider.

She is not learning anything about Horses. She is learning how to be a very specific, Limited poser in a small niche of the world of horsemanship. And her parents will pay a big price for that.

Expecting a kid to learn to ride a horse and to jump it and have the body control to do it knowledgeably enough to get around of course on two hours a week of practice is like expecting them to go to a piano recital and play a piece with only two hours a week of practice under guidance. Nobody does that. There’s a reason.

This sort of program is all about keeping the money machine going for the trainer and operator of the barn. It’s not about producing people who have an athletic feel of a horse. These kids have absolutely no idea what to do with their bodies when they get in trouble and that’s why they are so prone to making mistakes and getting injured. The horses are superbly trained little robots, and the kids are just learning to pilot them.

I am a trainer. I started out riding hunters in a once a week program and at some point was of course toodling along jumping courses. I know how this works. I had a very insufficient education. When I was 16 I switched to dressage because I was a weirdo, and my real education and Horses began because my trainer expected me to Study horse care, feeding, everything. And I was a sponge that’s exactly what I wanted and wasn’t getting elsewhere.

Now, I am often getting adult riders who went through very expensive programs that their parents spent tons of money on the horses and keeping the horses trained. These adults know nothing. They don’t know how to sit. They know nothing other than the most basic ads that work on robotics stiff horses. I am not impressed with what the upper level/big money programs from the 80s and 90s have put out. Most of these adults only rode in Lessons, they were over supervised, nobody ever talk to them once about bending or leg yielding or even a damn turn on the forehand. I mean seriously. Their parents probably shelled out over $100,000 a year and not including shows. From a horsemanship standpoint these people got rooked.

Go find a pony club

[Dr_Doolittle]

A rather harsh post, but a lot of it rings true.

[findeight]

Unfortunately, Pony Club is not in option in many areas.

[Arlomine]

Then search high and low for a lower level Barn that actually teaches kids. Let them ride horses around bareback, go on trail rides, jump logs in the field, and generally become riders. If you luck out you’ll find someone with a horsemanship program. You have to look. You have to become an educated consumer. You can’t just walk into a fancy barn and assume that it’s a good program

[fledermaus]

Here’s a map of Pony Club locations in the US: