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What do you pay for school horse lessons?

Around here most trainers only offer full training. That is $40-$60/day for 5 days/week. Single lessons are $75-$150/45 minutes.

$75/lesson. Here the $ amount doesn’t change, but the amount of time does.

Most group lessons are 3-4 people max, and can be 1 to 1.5 hours long (counting rests in between jumping rounds). Private lessons are the same cost, but only 20-30 minutes long.

Our barn used to have a small discount for paying for a lesson bundle in advance, but no longer. Covid really hit them in the pocket book, so lessons went up and the discount disappeared. They have very nice horses where I ride and hold interscholastic competitions.

The other barn where I lease for trail or arena work, it’s $40 per “day”. As I’m that horse’s only rider on that day, I can ride for 30 minutes or 3 hours. Up to me (though I’m sure they’d curb my enthusiasm if I was overtaxing the horses.)

When I was growing up, my lessons went from $55 to $70. Now, my lessons are about $80-90 per private (tho I am currently a working student, so they are free-yay!. At a previous barn, they were $70-80 for 45 min group lesson, depending on how many times you ride a week. These last two are both dressage focused–so far I’ve found hunter/jumper barns to be more like $100 a lesson for a limited period of time before a student signs up for a $1500/month lease. I’d love to be doing some jumping, but with those prices it’s not for me.

This is, of course, all subject to SF Bay Area inflation, and I am very much looking forward to living somewhere else where things don’t cost nearly as much.

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I board at a big barn (like 85 horses) with a very active lesson program. It’s mainly walk/trot kids but then there is me, 63, doing dressage. Half hour private is $40, on a schoolie or your own. Group lessons as 45 minutes, $45. We are one of the few barns with a lesson program/schoolies. West of Chicago.

When I stopped riding 9 years ago I was paying $65 for a half-hour private, either on a school horse or a horse I was leasing. Cost was the same but there were very few school horses available so I always leased. I am in New York. And no such thing as group lessons anymore unfortunately.

There are two lesson mills in my area, and these are their prices:

A. Lessons are $45 for 1-hour group lessons and half-hour private lessons, $65 for 1-hour semi-private lessons, and $80 for 1-hour private lessons.

B. Group Lesson: $285 – 8 week session
Group Lesson, pay as you go: $40/lesson
Private Lesson: $440 – 8 week session
This barn doesn’t specify how long the lessons are on their website, but I think they’re an hour for the group lessons.

$95 in WA state…70.00 for lesson & 25.00 for horse rental… grand Prix trainer with decades experience… private lesson…tons of notes & progress… I have it videoed by family member

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Well, this isn’t going to be perfectly current, more like 2015-16 and keep in mind this was a smaller, private boarding facility in the Midwest owned by an ammie eventer, lessons were beginner level lessons on a retired lower-level eventing horse, but when I was taking lessons it was about $30 for a 30-minute-ish lesson. Focus was usually lower level dressage, ground pole jumps, beginner stuff.

$75 for a group lesson on a school horse at a h/j show barn in Texas. $65 on your own horse.

I paid $120/hr for a private lesson in NYC in 2017 and rode typical schoolies: a little bit lame, a little bit back sore, a little bit hard mouthed. A few months later, I was paying $65 in upstate New York 2017-2018 and the quality of the horses was improved. They weren’t really school horses, but were owned by the barn and mainly offered for lease. I gladly paid $125/45 min down in Welly world for lessons on the trainer’s horses (FEI level schoolmasters), but she does not advertise that service to the public, and it was an arrangement we made.

When I was a kid, it was $35/half hour, $60 for an hour, regardless of whether the horse was yours or a lesson horse.

Here it looks like $55 for a private lesson and $50 for a group.

My first riding lessons at a local riding academy were $3 an hour! :slight_smile: And there were two of us since my sister rode too so it was double that.

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