All the above, and … before I look at the above, I assess the other boarders and students, and how the facilities and the daily routine are managed. If the boarders/students are the kind of people and riders I’ll enjoy being around, then I’m ready to go the next step and find out more about the trainer personally.
The boarders/students are selected by the trainer, and will be a reflection of the trainer. If they are inconsistent in type and expectations, so is the trainer. If they are focused and goal-oriented, so is the trainer.
It is so important to be comfortable with the other students and boarders, and that they are comfortable with you.
What’s really important: It’s not rational to expect that a trainer-barn culture and facilities will morph to match a rider. It will happen the other way around.
It is amazing what the local horse community can know about what a trainer’s program is really about, if you can find and talk to the people who are involved and friendly with many others in the community. Most people are happy to tell all to anyone who will ask and listen.
What I think is the most critical factor, that brings out the truth about the trainer: Who is in the program as boarders and students, what do they do there, and how well do they do it? Doesn’t matter what the trainer’s bona fides include, if the barn is all slow-speed trail riders of a certain age, that is what the vibe, the facilities, and the instruction will lean toward. That’s fine if that’s what the new boarder wants to do. The tack room may have framed photos of 5* eventing from years ago, but the barn as it is today is the one we’ll be living with.
On the other hand, if most of the riders are competing at the top of their divisions, earning year-end championships and aiming to move up, this is going to be a high-energy barn expecting motivated and ambitious riders. That will be the way the boarders/riders converse and the way the horses are managed. Decisions and schedules will be oriented around the shows this barn regularly attends.
And so on.
A trainer-barn is a community. It has a culture, and innate, unspoken expectations.
Every group will have an energy level, and if it doesn’t match yours, you will never really be comfortable there. There are relaxed, moderate and high energy groups. The overall energy level is one of the strongest elements of any barn culture, and it is the one that will make a fellow boarder feel comfortable, or pressured to do more than they wish, or held back from doing all that they wish. The feeling will evolve from the people in the program, from interactions with both the trainer and other boarders/students, and from the availability of necessary facilities and features.
Look at the facilities. If the barn claims to be for general English riding, but everything is dressage and the jumps are never out, the flow is toward dressage, not jumping. On the other hand, if the jumps and poles are scattered everywhere and the dressage riders are regularly complaining about not having a ring clear for them, that’s probably going to be an ongoing struggle for dressage riding. Etc. with different disciplines in the barn.
The facilities - the barn, arena, jumps or other equipment, pasture and lawn, even the wash stall - can be a sign of the culture, energy level and focus of a barn. If everything is reasonably tidy and buttoned-up on a daily basis, the stalls cleaned, the horses fed on time, the jumps maintained, the arenas dragged and the riding fields mowed, there will be a general atmosphere and expectations that match. If things are starting to go downhill, or if they never went uphill, don’t expect to overcome that. There are strong forces and reasons that keep a trainer-barn running the way it is running that a new boarder/student can’t control.
(COTH has had some vivid threads on that topic - “should the barn make radical changes to meet my expectations as a paying customer?” “how do I get Boarder X to realize this isn’t the right place for them, without asking them to leave?” )
There is no definite way to be sure a trainer & barn are really what one is looking for unless you already know them well. But there are some things that one can get an idea about ahead of time, from asking questions of both the trainer and the local horse community.
All this said – in some areas where not much is available, it may come down to making do, and putting one’s own time, energy and even money in to bring the jumps or the feed or whatever needs to be up to basic expectations.
