Hard agree. I offered to hold a friend’s horse (that I didn’t know well) while she did something or other at a clinic. While letting her graze the mare transformed into a kite and I was distinctly uncomfortable with her whopping 6’ lead…I prefer a slightly longer kite string, and I’m not easily intimidated. It’s not always simple and safe.
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And this is why we have a bunch of juniors (that grow up to be adults) in America that can’t ride and don’t know how to handle anything other than a perfectly prepped lesson horse.
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I totally agree. A lot of horsemanship is being lost due to the disappearance of barn rat culture. Young people who know how to start young horses or ride actual green horses (not handpicked nice youngsters who already know how to WTC) are few and far between.
As a young barn rat and catch rider, I was lucky, I had a few bad injuries, but was mostly unscathed. I had teenage friends that suffered much more severe consequences. Multiple head injuries/concussions, severe fractures, ruptured internal organs and so on. I think what happened back then, if it were to happen IRL now would result in a LOT of issues for a trainer. There would be furious parents, lawsuits, reputation issues, and furious owners.
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I would hope that we can have a system of training horsemen and horsewomen that does not treat head injuries, severe fractures, and ruptured internal organs as a matter of course.
(And I grew up riding and showing any horse my trainers would let me, first just as a kid hanging around the barn and then more formally, as a working student. While I rode plenty of green horses, hot horses, and horses with histories of various misbehavior, my trainers provided enough structure and supervision to help me develop the skills to ride these horses safely and successfully, and they tried to keep me away from anything truly outside my skill set. We didn’t always get it right; horses can be unpredictable and riders can make mistakes. I had some injuries, but severe injuries like the ones you’re describing would have been considered a sign of something being seriously a mess with the program, not routine events.
Edited to add: I did not get paid to ride. I did receive free training in return for my working student responsibilities, which included riding and many other aspects of horse care. Extra riding was a privilege and an opportunity, not something for which I expected extra compensation. Of course, my trainer keeping a loose eye on things was part of what made the extra saddle time so valuable to me. Even now, as an adult with my own nice horse and more-than-full-time job, I still embrace every chance I have to ride an extra horse. As an amateur, I couldn’t accept payment for riding, but I also don’t need it to want to ride extra horses when scheduling permits! I was not taken advantage of as a junior and am not now.)
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But saying “I wouldn’t let a junior work with a horse on my property for money” is part of the problem. Barn owners/managers/trainers need to be cognizant of the horses that juniors (really anyone) are handling/riding, but not allowing people to experience dealing with a difficult horse (meaning fresh, pushy on the ground, etc, not a horse that’s dangerous) won’t make this problem any better.
I rode some sketch horses back in the day but I never had a serious injury (broken bone, concussion, stitches). The people asking me to ride were responsible and didn’t put me on dangerous horses. Unfortunately it sounds like you didn’t have that experience.
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So in the interest of safety, barn owners/trainers need to be supervising said juniors–teaching them how to ride and handle horses, not overmounting them–all of which takes time and effort away from paying clients–nd yet they are also supposed to pay the juniors to do so?
At the same time assuming the risk that they will be sued and lose their business/property if said junior gets hurt?
No thank you.
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I grew up being a barn rat at anyplace they’d let me–from a Saddleberd breeder to a TB farm, but it was a different time.
People didn’t sue at the drop of a hat.
.
I had a local kid who’d been to 4-H camp ask me if she could swap work with my horses for riding, and, recalling my experiences, I thought about paying it forward.
So I called her mother and stated that I was happy to have the kid do stuff around my place, but that I was concerned that if she got hurt, I’d be sued.
Mom didn’t hesitate to say, “well, of course.”
I did offer to have the kid do non-horsey contact jobs around the place, like picking rocks and scrubbing buckets and tubs, etc. and in return I’d pay for her riding lessons at a local barn run by a friend who was excellent at turning out kids with excellent horsemanship skills, but I never heard back.
.
I’m curious–how many barn rats do you currently have?
How do your boarders feel about having them work with their animals?
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Where I self-board, everyone carries liability insurance attached to our Horse Council membership. We have general waivers for the facility but people don’t usually sign waivers or half lease contracts between individuals. Perhaps we should. However, everyone also has provincial health insurance, so a kid breaking a wrist won’t bankrupt a family either.
We have a good population of juniors, including those who own their horses and those who part lease horses (other junior’s horses or adult’s horses). But we don’t have barn rats (ugly word I always thought) per se because there isn’t a structure to work for a barn manager or trainer.
We do hire teens already riding at the barn to do barn chores for our horses as needed, and we do lease to teens, either for cash and chores or just chores. But most owners are pretty picky about who gets to ride their personal horse, and we don’t have the backlog of green horses, project horses, sour schoolies, etc that you might find at a lesson and training barn. I’d say almost all owners are conservative and cautious about matching horse and leaser, and nobody is putting kids on risky horses
Our juniors are mostly all in Pony Club, and their parents and coaches are keeping an eye on them.
I have a teen currently riding my quirky mare on our park trails, they are getting along fine.
Honestly I think I have better luck with junior riders than adults, because they tend to have light seats and quiet hands, balance and courage. The adult beginners or returning riders tend to have heavier seats, be more handsy, and some get bounced off more easily at the canter. And they get spooked more easily
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What could you do easily to earn another $20k/year? Because at 14 there’s nothing a child is going to be able to do that will come close to matching an adult’s earning capacity. Certain she can do dog sitting and babysitting here and there to make money on the margins, but being realistic the real way to get another $20k is for one of the adults in the picture to earn it. Not an easy task even for an adult! Close to impossible for a child.
Maybe do a search; there was a teenager who asked the same question in a similar way a couple months ago and she got loads of (mostly tough love) advice.
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I don’t believe the OP is expecting her teenager to make 20K. Teenager just wants to help with expenses.
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I have one (and have had a second) barn rat and all of my clients are happy to have her around both handling the horses, and in many cases riding the horses. I don’t have her ride or handle horses that are outside of her capabilities, I am always immediately present when she’s handling a horse new to her and always on property when she’s handling any horse at all.
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Is he/she 14?
I understand that you only attend schooling shows, but at an A show barn such as the OP rides at, people would not be happy with a 14yr old riding their clients expensive horses unless they were an Iwasaki or a Colvin type prodigy.
It’s great that the OP’s kiddo gets the chance for extra rides tuning up ponies at the barn, but charging for it? No.
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Thorough tack cleaning and barn chores, grooming etc… are a good way for a 14 year old to make money at a barn that attends rated shows.
Extra saddle time is something for a 14 year old to be grateful for.
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Lol and to your point…we just had a young lady come to our barn from another top, TOP program (in the area and going back east), and in my lesson with her she stated that if anything went wrong at her old barn, the trainer would immediately say to get off and have a groom lunge the horse. I digress.
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I was that groom at one of the “best” training centers in my area.
Not to mention the COUNTLESS people I know that ride at those barns that can’t:
- groom a horse
- tack a horse
- longe a horse
- ride anything if it so much as tosses it’s head
- catch a horse in turnout (if it’s lucky enough to get “turned out”)
It’s a gd pandemic
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Truly is. You’re preaching to the choir! I proudly groom my own horse at shows (well, 90% of the time) and she is turned out so nicely…if I do say so myself 
! Not too bad for a horse who lives in our backyard.
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Never thought of this, great idea
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“braiding mafia”
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She actually has been riding other boarders horses at her barn, at the request of her trainer and the owners of those horses. They know she is a good rider who takes it seriously, works hard and that they can rely on her to be there when she says she will and properly take care of the horse and tack. The owners are extremely appreciative that she will do this for them. Some even give her gift cards in return but that’s not why she does it. She likes to feel that she is helping them and it also gets her more experience riding different horses. The trainer and the barn owner have extensive connections so I believe, unbeknownst to her, she is actually slowly building her “resume” and eventually she may get outside opportunities when she is a bit older. But currently it is definitely not something she actively seeks out in order to make money.
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And that all makes sense. It takes many horses and many experiences to build one’s skillset.
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Interesting that the dressage riders do their own care. That does seem to be a good opportunity especially with helping the older riders. I have a friend who is a dressage rider I’ll have to ask her about how things go at the shows she attends.
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