What advice would you give to your younger self?

[trakehners]

As the title says - been thinking about this a lot lately in the context of both rediscovering my own love for riding since moving to my trainer’s barn and the advice that I’ve given to younger riders who are in the shoes I was in at their age.

My own list is pretty long, but top ones are:

• Just because you can trust one trainer doesn’t mean that you can trust another one. If it feels wrong, listen to your gut and leave.

• You have to go slow to go fast. Other people may be jumping higher than you now, but if you put the time in to develop proper basics, you’ll be out-riding them in a couple of years and will progress a lot faster in the future (and will also probably fall off less often).

• Money absolutely makes things easier and buys access, but it doesn’t buy actually being able to ride whatever is put in front of you. You won’t get everything you want just by keeping your head down and working hard, but you will develop skills that you can’t get without putting in the time and effort, regardless of how much money you have (and with those skills you can then make yourself a very nice horse on a budget if you want to instead of having to pay the premium to buy one that’s already trained).

• You deserve to be in a training environment that makes you feel empowered even as it challenges you. An environment that treats everything as a competition, makes you doubt yourself, makes you feel inferior, and causes you to cry regularly on the way home is not normal or acceptable and you deserve so much better than that.

• Some people are going to be mean about the horse thing for reasons that you will not be able to understand. Pity them for being unable to appreciate the fact that you have something that brings you unfettered joy, and know that you’ll laugh at them when you’re still riding multiple decades later, because their words don’t mean as much as you feel they do in the moment.

What would you share to make it easier for your younger self, or to help foster a current community of younger riders who are more supportive and less judgmental of each other? I’d love to hear, since there are so many different experiences and perspectives on COTH. Mine are (unsurprisingly) shaped by not being able to afford much other than lessons as a junior, and by a particularly toxic trainer experience in my late teens/early twenties, but there’s so much else out there.

[Edre]

OP, I’m glad that you’re in a place where it sounds like your words of wisdom come from experiences in the past…but my heart breaks that they were lessons you had to learn like it sounds like you did. Wishing you many happy hours in the saddle in your years to come.

Some of the biggest ones for me…

• Every horse has something to teach you. You are never “too good” for any ride. Stay humble enough to listen to the lessons that your rides will teach you. It may be that you’re on a more educated horse who teaches you things. It may be a green or less experienced horse that you learn how to teach or bring a horse along on. Or it may be a middle aged, some stiffness, some miles, some creaky bones that has physical limitations that you have to learn how to ride gracefully to accommodate, support, and help them into a better place. Fancy private horse, been there done that schoolmaster, or common schoolie - they all have lessons to teach us. Don’t be too proud to learn them.

• Comparison is the thief of joy. There will always be a fancier horse, a nicer rider, a more impressive program, a more expensive saddle. Learn to find satisfaction and happiness in your journey, your goals, and your company - don’t compare yourself to other people’s.

• Money might buy fancy horses, fancy saddles, fancy property - but it cannot buy class. Be the horseman that you want to keep company with. Which is to say: treat your horse well. Treat your team well. Chip in and do the work (even if it’s not strictly “your” work - you’re never too good to scrub buckets or clean tack or muck a stall). Don’t speak of others in ways that, should someone speak of you in the same, would make you sad or uncomfortable.

• Recognizing a bad situation or a poor fit - a program’s not for you, the horse isn’t right for you - isn’t quitting. Plants all have highly individual requirements in order to thrive. Some need more acidic soil, others less. Some demand full sun, others will wilt in it, and still more may never grow in shade. In the same way: people are highly variable. A trainer that works for one person may not for another. A horse that one person did well with may not be a good long-term fit for another. You can try to hack it all you’d like but at the end of the day, an ill fitting shoe is still just a bad fit you’ve wedged bandaids in to try to compensate. It’s not “giving up” to go buy a shoe that actually fits - in the same way, there’s no shame finding a new trainer, or admitting to yourself “this isn’t the horse for me.”

• You learn as much, or more, from the hard days as you do the good ones. But you have to be open to those lessons. There will be plateaus, there will be days where things just don’t work. Persevere. Show up. Forgive yourself. Forgive your horse. Each day is a new opportunity to try again, don’t squander it with thoughts of what didn’t work or didn’t happen the day before. Identify the problems, plan to improve them, and move forward. Try not to let the days where things are difficult be “bad days”, rather, let them be challenging days that serve as a springboard for growth.

This is harder to boil down to a point, but tne thing that really stands out to me about my experience with my trainer is how she has fostered a community expectation of supporting each other. She has a private group where her clients will talk amongst themselves and offer help to others (“I’m going out at X, does anyone need a blanket change?” “want me to do Y med or Z feed?”) She set the tone: safe, educational, supportive, and helpful - and her clients follow suit. We do not need to be best friends, we do not need to show together, or even ride together, but we are a resource for each other and serve as a safety net, both for others as riders, but as owners as well.

[sascha]

Ditch the toxic family at 16, not at 40-something, go to Europe, do horses properly. Without all the negativity, it may be possible to enjoy a full-time horse career instead of constantly battling demons and imposter syndrome in just a very small, part-time role.

[trakehners]

@Edre

This is harder to boil down to a point, but tne thing that really stands out to me about my experience with my trainer is how she has fostered a community expectation of supporting each other. She has a private group where her clients will talk amongst themselves and offer help to others (“I’m going out at X, does anyone need a blanket change?” “want me to do Y med or Z feed?”) She set the tone: safe, educational, supportive, and helpful - and her clients follow suit. We do not need to be best friends, we do not need to show together, or even ride together, but we are a resource for each other and serve as a safety net, both for others as riders, but as owners as well.

I understand this completely! The intervening years had their challenges, but I’m actually back with my childhood trainer, and there’s only three rules that we all have to follow: clean up after yourself, try to keep visits to a (mostly) reasonable hour (the barn doesn’t have set hours of operation), and don’t start drama. The expectation is that if there are interpersonal issues, we’ll either talk about it like the adults we are or someone leaves. The result is a mixed-discipline barn full of people who are very supportive and willing to help each other whether my trainer is involved or not.

As much as I had to learn certain lessons the hard way, growing up with my trainer before having the bad experience also meant that I was able to walk away. I wish I’d done it sooner (hence the points I listed about what we deserve), but I know so many people who have stayed in those environments because they don’t have another experience to know that there are other options, and that breaks my heart. I had an example of what a good environment should be. So many people don’t, and I’d argue that means we don’t hold professionals to a high enough standard in many cases. Maybe this question is also about how we foster an environment where professionals behave in ways such that they actually deserve the label, lol.

[exvet]

There are so many things I took for granted even though I worked and paid for much of my horse career on my own. As a result I’m not sure where to start or where to stop. I will say that one of the greatest lessons I learned and it helped me develop patience I wasn’t born with was to not waste time or energy on regrets or envy. Once I accepted that I had to make the best of what I had and that there really are many paths to Rome I became much happier and was able to really have vision to what could be if I just used my imagination and grit. Instead of wishing I had a different horse, a better horse, an ‘appropriate’ saddle, etc I started focusing on ways to get there which often meant working on improving me, as a rider and horseperson, first. The rest as they say just fell into place.

[2DogsFarm]

So much good sense here already
Let me just add:
Trust Your Gut.
That Still Small Voice should never be ignored.

[Eclectic_Horseman]

1. Do not allow yourself to be taken advantage of. Use the same practical smarts at the barn that you use outside of it. It is rare that people who are taking your money have your best interests in heart. They usually act in their own, often very short term, interests.

2. When you see crazy coming toward you on the sidewalk, move to the other side of the street.

3. Know that there are many ways to achieve the same goals. There is no “best” way, and certainly no perfect way. The best riders and trainers may be poor educators. Read and get exposure to other ideas so that you get a better understanding of what you are trying to accomplish, then find someone who has a lot of tools in their toolbox to help you.

4. Ride as many horses as you can as often as you can. If you only ride one horse, you only learn to ride that horse. It helps sometimes to ride in different disciplines as well. “Feel” only comes from time in the saddle. There is no substitute.

5. Improve your physical fitness and core strength. Riding well is hard physical work.

[pony_grandma]

Advice:

Learn to open your own doors, opportunities. Not all the time is it about money, more can be done with contacts and connections. And wisely don’t dismiss everyone. You never know where a connection can surprisingly come from ( I will agree ‘some’ but not all can be left).

Go straight to the top. If it’s a tank of gas and a day trip attend clinics that can be audited. You can learn good and bad, develop a very good eye. Listen to the instruction and see the change happen.

Volunteer. Learn the system, the people, develop an eye (Scribe for judges)

Buying a horse. I look at the eye and the feet first. Then overall impression. I look for athleticism. You can’t teach a horse to bend who cannot bend. I’m no ballerina myself.

Finally be more in the moment every day. I miss some of those days so much.

ETA I agree w @Eclectic_Horseman ride different disciplines. Western taught my kids to follow with their seats and precision. Reining taught me timing for clean lead changes.

[Against_All_Odds2]

Keep dreaming…

[be-here-now]

It’s been repeated here in a few different ways, but I’ll absolutely second comparison being the thief of joy. When I was younger I was so focused on what other riders my age (or younger) were doing and how I wasn’t in the same place - whether due to money, access, lack of connections, etc. It made me miserable. I was deeply depressed and alone due to other reasons (disability, an abusive home life), and although riding made me happier than anything, my general lack of self-esteem also came out most acutely when I felt like I wasn’t “good enough” at it. I regret not finding a way, or being supported to find a way, to find more happiness in it as a teenager.

I guess I’d add that there are many ways to stay connected to horses and learn. Folks will know from my other posts that these days I’ve had to pause (I won’t say “stop”) riding for several months now, first due to COVID surges (I’m immunocompromised) and now due to a severe chronic illness flare. I don’t know when I’ll ride again. It’s been deeply hard, emotionally, like losing part of myself and losing a connection to something bigger than me. It echoes my younger self, whose only outlet and escape from the daily exhaustion of life (however imperfect) was riding.

But I’m not disconnected from horses today. I know more now about equine nutrition than I did several months ago. I know more about managing horses through extreme weather changes than I did several months ago. There is always more to learn. It’s not the gold standard of hands-on management, but I’m still able to grow as a student of the horse, still able to expose myself to different views and ways of doing things. I’ve started doing daily visualizations of my riding too, trying to remind those neurons how to fire. It’s not perfect, but it’s still part of me.

I think that leads into one last thing, which is some advice a late former trainer of mine gave - when you want to see how far you’ve come, don’t look back a week, or a month. Riding and being a good horseperson takes TIME - look back a year, look back two! You’ll be surprised at how much you’ve absorbed and grown.

[candyappy]

The abuse you heap on your body when young WILL come back to haunt you when older.

Having and riding horses means some of us are subject to falls, injuries, very hard work and the list goes on. Even though you may not feel it at 20, 30 or even 40 , just wait.

Be good to yourself.

[Scribbler]

I was a very self sufficient teen and didn’t compare myself to others. But the missing part for me was I didn’t know how to find adult mentors. Well, there were none around as a teen. My high school teachers honestly were a bit stupid, and some of them were actually sexually involved with students. The horse big barn owner adults were really scary. One alcoholic, and after I’d left the suburb for university, the other one ended up in prison for extorting sex out of 13 year old girls, threatening their horses. I kept to myself and didn’t seek adult input.

When I went to college I had no idea how to find mentors or connect even with appropriate professors. And I had no idea there was a level of horses that didn’t involve dealing with really sketchy people so I drifted away. When I went back to grad school in my 30s and riding in my 40s I was much better able to negotiate mentorship.

But it would be a hard thing to tell my younger self because I had no context except just trying to stay away from adult expectations and attention. If I had moved up to the one actual show barn in my suburb, that would have been the one run by long term serial child sex abuser and even if I wasn’t a target, I’m so glad I wasn’t in that environment.

I think it’s unusual these days for a teen from a two parent middle class family to grow up that feral, but it was definitely a survival skill back in the 1970s. I was really interested in cute guys my own age but had zero tolerance for creepy older dudes hitting on me, I was completely freaked out, including middle aged men wanting to hug and grope “innocently” and calling me uptight. I would tell my young self “keep up the good work there you are entirely right.”

[pony_baloney]

Get a job/career that makes good money so you can afford to do whatever you want with your horse.

[Eclectic_Horseman]

@pony_baloney

Get a job/career that makes good money so you can afford to do whatever you want with your horse.

But still allows you the time to do it.

[NoSuchPerson]

@Scribbler

But it would be a hard thing to tell my younger self because I had no context

My early experiences were very different from Scribbler’s, but this comment rings very true for me, as well. I’ve been mulling the OP’s question over since yesterday and I’m having a hard time coming up with an answer because young me had no context for…well, for life. For pretty much all aspects of adult life. I didn’t really grasp how things worked and learned so many lessons the hard way.

But how do you go back and convey these important things to someone who doesn’t have the context to understand them?

I would literally need to go back to when I was a kid and become my own mother.

[pony_grandma]

Me too I didn’t have context growing up. Parents divorced back then. Had a single mom who worked 2 jobs with 4 kids. Me the oldest so I had to raise 3 younger brothers. I had no clue about anything outside that reality. Wish I could do it all over again with what I know now. I tried hard to raise my own children. To be there for them. They did get the values and hard work messages. Raising their own kids the same.

All I can say now is thankfully it was easier to flop around back then than in our world today.

[trakehners]

On the one hand, I understand the lack of context when there’s less life experience, but on the other hand… at my last barn (where there were actual lesson children and I am still very close with the owner) there was one kid in particular who reminds me a lot of myself at her age—in love with the sport, willing to do anything to be around horses, but from a family that doesn’t have the money for All The Things and who had to experience (at a different barn, actually with the same toxic trainer who did a number on me) being passed over for the kids whose families could afford everything.

I gave her a lot of pep talks over the couple of years that we overlapped because I knew exactly how she felt and I was able to tell her stories about what I went through growing up and the lessons that I learned from it, and she was able to look at me and see a physical manifestation of the fact that if you want it badly enough you can find a way to make it happen in the future (even if it’s not exactly what you envisioned as a kid). Obviously she doesn’t completely understand the things that she hasn’t lived through yet (and hopefully never has to live through), but I’d like to think I helped her by giving her a sounding board and honesty about how I ended up where I am now rather than useless platitudes.

[quietann]

I could go on and on. I was never a competitive horse person when young, just a girl taking lessons and trail riding. I had no grand goals. Horses saved me when nothing else would have.

Then I took a 25 year break. And what I’d tell my younger self now is - keep riding, whatever it takes. It will be expensive, and you’ll have to “make do” more than you are. Your grandmother may help with expenses, as she was one of those girls with a beloved pony in the early 20th century, who gave up the horse world. Even if she can’t or won’t, there is a way.

[kaya842]

What I would tell my younger self - lease your horse in college (even a part lease in college town would be good). You have plenty of horses to ride at school and could use the $$. In the same vein - don’t buy any other horses (until you’re legitimately financially stable). Focus instead on paying down education debts and saving for or making the big life purchases one does in their early 20s (first car that isn’t a beater, house, emergency fund, wedding, student loans). I prioritized horses and showing and while I don’t necessarily regret it I wish that I wasn’t working on that aforementioned list NOW and could spend less time working as now I have the nice horses to ride and the nice trailer and such but am spending so much time working to get towards other life goals (wedding and house are the ones currently in sight) that there is nearly no time for horses (and even less with them being at home and needing to do all their care).

[showy]

• Don’t be afraid to move on from trainers. I spent too much time being controlled and had stagnant progress in my riding.

• Similar to the “comparison is the thief of joy” advice above, don’t feel like you HAVE to do medal finals, or the year end horse show or whatever just because that’s what everyone else does/aims to do. Want to go fox hunting that weekend instead? Beach trip with your friends? Sit at home because your horse doesn’t like that ring and it’s a waste of $? Go for it. I am so much better as adult picking what I actually want to do with my riding and I am so much happier!