You are killing it! I had a chance to buy the most adorable mini mare… kind of wish I had, because I would love to do this!
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I think what these comments are trying to convey (however unrealistically, depending on OP’s geographic location and lifestyle) is that there is a whole world of horses that is absent from this discourse, and it’s a shame because it’s the side that is, first of all, more affordable, and second of all, something you can hold onto your whole life.
The sad part about the highly structured riding school- to lease- to horseshow “pipeline” is that it makes it very hard to engage with horses as anything other than a sport. I mean, even the idea of an 11-year-old girl seeing the NCAA or Olympics as end game kind of suggests that that is her whole orientation toward horses and riding. It’s unfortunate because it’s a time-limited and resource-intensive goal to have, and if that’s what you’re riding for, where do you go if/when you realize you don’t have the money or the horses to get there?
I don’t think the people making these comments are suggesting OP should pursue horse ownership to better reach these goals (because reaIIy it would just divert resources from advancing up the levels and showing). It’s more that it would give OP’s daughter the chance to enjoy a horse for its own sake. Just imagine someone who showed up twice a week to a dog kennel for an agility class, and their trainer was talking them into leasing a border collie for the season. Maybe you’d say, hey, as a first-time dog owner why not get a pug or something? Just a sweet, chill dog you can love and enjoy at home? Wouldn’t you kind of side eye the person for saying no to all that, and for thinking that competing and being successful in competition is the only way to enjoy dogs? I mean, obviously no one does that with dogs. But for people who have owned and truly loved their own horses, it does sometimes feel like this when you’re talking to people whose only frame of reference for horses is competition.
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Never said they needed to buy a horse, my point was they should not allow themselves to be ripped off while trying to let the kid ride.
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This may sound like a Debbie downer comment but here goes
The NCAA schools recruit (for jumping) juniors who successfully compete in the Big Eq aka Medal /Maclay 3’6 equitation. Successful as in qualify and attend finals, ribbon at finals or win finals. I know one girl who is riding in an NCAA team. I don’t think she ribboned at finals but she attended a few times. She only competes ON THE FLAT. The shows have flat and jumping and not everyone jumps. The ones that get to jump have ribboned in the top or won finals. The people who ribbon or win finals often lease a horse for $200,000 or so for a year or own a multiple six figure horse. Usually they own several multiple six figure horses, and they show about 20 times per year on multiple mounts.OR it’s a trainer’s kid, and they have ridden and breathed horses since a very young age and get help getting good finals horses (or make one up themselves because they have strong skills).
A week at an A show easily costs $3k per week including hotels, trainer fees, groom, entries, stall fees. I’m not even including transport if you don’t ship your own.
My point is that if she wants to compete at that level get used to making sacrifices.
And I would lease her a horse, and get her riding more. Doing short stirrup at 11 is a little behind imho for the trajectory she wants to take. Not having a horse is holding her back.
If she is a truly gifted rider, she may get so lucky that people will want to give her more riding opportunities. But honestly, I think that would require exposure to one of the bigger programs at places that take working students and churn out finals winners year after year: Heritage, Beacon Hill, North Run, Ashland Farms and Don Stewart Show Stables are those programs. Maybe you can get lucky at a smaller place but the horse flesh has to be available. Many working students get to ride sales horses. They help bring them along and get to show in exchange.
Sorry if this seems negative. I’m just trying to be realistic.
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I was just going to suggest this. Intercollegiate Horse Shows are more like a club sport and much more accessible for an average rider than NCAA.
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The leasing a dog comparison also occurred to me 
Most sports kids do don’t make any sense outside a competition structure ( like team sports) or a supervised lesson structure (like dance or gymnastics)
Riding is different. Riding is more like skiing, sailing, and cycling. Speed outdoors that gives joy. You can compete in skiing, sailing, and cycling but most people do these activities for the pure joy, and often rack up their biggest accomplishments in moments that happen alone or outside of competition.
Add that to owning and training a dog. There is so much intrinsic joy to being with horses, training horses, hanging out with horses, riding on your own, trail riding. Competition is something you can do, but for most people it isn’t the only goal. The top pro riders are also coaches and trainers and spend a lot of time bringing along prospects. They don’t get very far if they are only passengers on made horses.
So while there’s nothing wrong about juniors competing it’s important the child not fall into a mindset that competition is the only worthwhile thing to do with horses.
I wanted to be a cowboy when I was ten . This summer for the first time ever, I set foot on a combined guest and cattle ranch. I took my own horse, rented a horse there for my sister, and we went off for all day rides up the range on the mountain with another long-term guest as guide. It was glorious. Anyhow a vacation like that would probably be totally thrilling and show a whole other way of being with horses.
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@EmilyM: very realistic picture. Chad Oldfield’s book lays out the statistics of the medal finalists super clearly. He used USEF show data to identify how many shows, how many classes, etc for the top 20. Your summary about the programs also reflects what he discovered: winners come from those programs.
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To be sure OP is clear. Those 20 shows per year are each one week long on average.
I concur with other posters that have encouraged the OP to get more details regarding the lease opportunities at their barn. Leases vary wildly between barns so it’s hard to know if this is a good deal for OP without the lease specifics.
It’s pretty common for lesson students to need to progress to leasing and/or ownership in order to advance.
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I will add that riding unsupervised means without being in a lesson. YOU still need to be there in case DD falls off or if DD loses her temper with the horse. In both cases you need to step in.
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Very good point. It doesn’t mean totally alone at this age. But she needs to be able to structure a productive schooling session without being talked through it by the coach.
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COTH Enabler speaking:
I didn’t start Driving until I was near 60.
Took a dozen or so lessons, then a couple years w/o (still riding) until I met a neighbor who lent me her pony to drive at County Fair.
The next year I bought the - then 2yo - mini, sent him to Amish Bootcamp & got back a broke to death 3yo. I was 66 that year 
That was 6yrs ago.
My Motto: Never Too Late
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Mom admits to zero horse knowledge, so “stepping in” is unlikely.
Also no US stable - in our litigious society - is going to allow an 11yo to ride unsupervised. She may be able to ride outside of a lesson, but never unsupervised.
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@HeelsDown123 I just want to throw in a “welcome to COTH - where you can ask two horse people and get three opinions”. Tons of good advice - and sometimes threads like these can take on their own life. It’s such an interesting and worthwhile discussion you’ve posited.
I believe you nailed the key takeaways earlier in the thread. Count me in the camp of “don’t buy - yet - lease and ask a gazillion questions and get everything in writing!”
Good luck. You’re on the right track and moving wisely.
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Strong recommendation to read A Man Walks into a Barn by Chad Oldfather. It’s a really clear eyed account of a father without prior horse experience doing his best to support his daughter’s hunter dreams on a limited (but not tiny) budget. The family does a lot to make it work and has some real success, but sometimes the $ just makes it impossible to compete on a level playing field. Also good discussion of he different types of lesson barns, and how his daughters moved between them as their skills developed. I think it would be tremendously helpful for you.
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And long tangents about how much better it was “back in the day.”
I admit to a completely voyeuristic curiosity about what the exact terms of the offered lease agreement were, regardiing ride days and terms, once the OP clarifies them.
But I think the big take-home is that while for some sports, if an upper-middle-class person makes a major investment in their talented child, they can play at the highest levels…with horses, that same amount can barely get you the chance to even get your feet wet showing-wise, forget a “career.”
Even the kids who don’t come from big money who “make it” in some ways usually have very horsey connections so they can ride enough to gain marketable skills.
I get what the OP is experiencing, despite never having two dimes to rub together horse-wise, relative to most of the other people at some barns I rode at. Hunters are not my jam, but I did ride at a nice, small hunter barn that had a few offbreed or odd horses for half-lease. There were kids who showed almost every weekend. The barn did go to clinics, trail rides had Halloween parties, girls did ride their ponies bareback in the summer after bathing them (helmets on, supervised by parents) and also went to rated and unrated shows, home and away. So it did offer lots of the experiences some people in this thread assume kids showing the hunters weren’t getting. But I will also say in private, talking with many parents, that they felt ill about how much they felt pressured to spend on showing.
Showing was expected on some level, to keep the barn economically afloat (one of the many reasons I left, even if jumping was my jam, which it isn’t, I couldn’t afford this). Not for nefarious reasons, but because that was just what the barn was, and it is a business. But these parents weren’t even showing at rated levels, often they’d do “opportunity” classes with their kids. Between lease fees, or boarding a pony they owned, coaching fees, lessons…it was a lot. And these were very affluent families, with kids who just wanted to show and have fun on ponies. Many of them have left and have kids doing soccer, track, and other sports–again, at top-rated levels, versus horses, and a fraction of the cost.
Before everyone screams, why not go to a lower-key barn–they exist in my county, but I have to say, a lot of them are really sketchy safety-wise and horse-wise. I live in an expensive area, and yes, there are still some barns hanging on here and here, but the instruction and the facillities can be substandard. Or, in the barns which do offer quality instruction and offer leases and lessons to people not playing “in the big leagues” they can be as much as an hour and a half away, which isn’t a practical commute for most people (including myself, much less a family with kids).
So the question might boil down to–assume that going to the Olympics or making a career or even riding NCAA isn’t going to be possible–are you still willing to invest that much in horses? And how much? Set a budget, and assume even then it will be hard to stick to, especially if you’re in a lease with responsibility for vet and farrier costs. And even the cheapest horse you buy will still need those.
There are obviously many gifts horses give that can’t be bought or priced, but as things grow more expensive, I think all of us are becoming more and more aware of this, even more than in decades past.
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Welcome to COTH!
You’ve gotten some really great advice already, so I’ll just contribute a humorous anecdote about myself and my riding aspirations when I was about 10 and just slightly younger than your daughter.
I was sort of a hybrid feral-pony kid—we boarded my ponies at a local hunter show barn (B & C shows, not As) but being in a “program” back then was almost non-existent and so I was free to race my friends on the trails riding bareback with only a halter and leadrope, etc.
My stated goal at this age was also to go to the Olympics (either show jumping or eventing—I wasn’t clear on the disciplines, just “Olympics”. 
)
This Olympic goal lasted exactly until the summer I turned 11, where my mom took me on a girls’ road trip to Lexington, KY. The two main highlights were petting Secretariat at Claiborne Farm and visiting the KY Horse Park, which was still in its infancy. While we were at the horse park, my mom signed us up for the trail ride that rode through the Eventing World Championship (1978? I think?) cross country course. The first ginormous fence we walked up to, which loomed over my head while ON my horse, convinced me then and there that perhaps the large pony hunter ring was a more suitable outlet for my talents and bravery.
I would suggest that it takes a lot to scare a fearless semi-feral pony kid who’d been jumping for years already, but those fences did it. 
I guess I’m not sure if I’m recommending you let you daughter visit a grand prix show jumping event and possibly stand next to a few fences, or recommend keeping her away from this reality as long as possible, but it was certainly eye-opening for me at that age!
Good luck, whichever way you decide!
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Reminds me of my Holy €¥%# experience. With a couple of years of novice level eventing around the south under my belt and some hope to go higher, I walked around the cross country course at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
My horses and I had a serious come-to-equus talk and we decided that fox hunting was our future.
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OP, this is an excellent idea and you probably don’t need to travel far. Go to an A show and see what the sport looks like at that level. Right now you and your DD are aiming at DDs goal blindfolded.
At least go see an actual competition, preferably with a Grand Prix but at least watch something above the speed bump beginner levels. You don’t know what you don’t know about what it looks and sounds like, what you will need to compete -tall boots, show clothes, helmet, her own saddle, pads, bridles, leg boots for horse etc. etc, etc.
You and DD also need to understand what mistakes look and sound like. Riders who jump fall off more often. They fall harder too, the bigger the jump the more dramatic the fall and those show rails are big, heavy and loud. Proper instruction, proper protective gear, properly trained horse and many hours of practice lessen the chance of serious injury, but she’s still going to come off. Like all the rest of us.
Sharing this because have seen many spend time and money getting a kid to higher levels only to have said kid get scared or realize they want to ride but jumping big, or at all is not what they want. Other times its the parents goal for the kid to move to upper levels.
Better go watch carefully, walk the barn aisles and visit the vendor tents before deciding aiming at higher levels its for you and DD. My long time trainer always recommended new clients go to an A show and watch…resulting in about half of them realizing they could not compete financially on that level or it scared the kid (and/ or parent) out any desire to jump the big sticks. Better sooner then later, trainer recommended barns in other disciplines and most kids continued to ride.
As mentioned before, there are other options then HJ, none are cheap but HJ out prices them all. Those other options can also lead to help with scholarships.
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With your background of other competitive sports, I think you are both looking at this from a competitive, horse-showing point of view. My question is; what brings her joy in riding?
For some, they love the learning and the connection with the horse. They could hang around the barn for hours if allowed and want to know all things “horsey”.
For others, the competitive aspect is what they enjoy. They really see no point in “just riding” and want the excitement of shows and ribbons.
And, of course, some are somewhere in the middle…
For the first type, having your own horse is wonderful with all the learning that goes with it, even if it restricts competitive goals. OTOH, continuing on with lessons on different horses has a lot of value in developing a rider and helping decide what kind of horse to eventually buy/lease.
For the kid who wants to show, I still think lessons and showing with different horses is best if possible. But I think the family needs to look at the level of involvement and finances and set short term goals appropriately. If this barn has kids with lots of resources showing fancy horses at A shows, she may be frustrated at the level of involvement open for her. Leasing may get her more ribbons (depending on the horse) and more showing opportunities (if you can afford it)
Some show-based programs turn out good horsepeople as well as good riders. Others dont. (You can hear the coach telling the rider to just sit pretty and not mess up the horse the coach warmed up)
For the next several years, I believe your daughter needs more saddle time and instructions - preferably from a couple of different sources. The showing may be fun and motivating, but the consistent riding is what will help her improve.
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Thanks, this really sets expectations. And I need to do some homework on these more national-level barns for sure.
