Consider also the impact your potential leave taking has on other employees-if it is the type of office that needs to have a minimum staffing on Friday, other staff folks can get right annoyed and resentful when the same person is off, meaning they have to work and consistently not take leave on Fridays.
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So- if the OP gets approved for time off, Iām not seeing the issue. That means that most likely no one else has reqeusted it off or needs it off. If OP is burning their time off instead of taking a week at Thanksgiving or Christmas and the coworkers get to- time off is time off.
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And sometimes people love having it this wayāI take most of my PTO during āabnormalā times due to taking off for shows, and that means I usually work the week between Christmas and New Yearās when my team wants to be off. I actually prefer it that way because most of my company takes off then so itās usually pretty quiet for me from an email traffic perspective and I can park myself at home with Netflix on in the background and catch up on all the work things that I canāt do when everyone is asking me for things. My team never has to worry about having coverage then and, vice versa, I donāt have to worry about having coverage when Iām out, so it works out wonderfully for us. Just depends on who you work with and what the priorities are.
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OP opened with asking about managing her horse goals in the face of a new, demanding job, and distance challenges. She included the Fridays off she would need to do 3-day events.
It was managing the time off that hit the radar of some people who have obviously been through it with company management! 
For a newbie, it is much better to look for events where all her ride times will be on the weekend. Some 3-days do have options for that.
If the event is at an extreme distance, send the horse ahead with a trainer or someone who will look after it. Fly out Friday night to ride over the weekend. Many more students and professionals do this than some of us may realize.
However life is structured, the company has control over an employeeās work hours, and thatās the bottom line. Itās a negotiation, and the companyās priorities come first. Also, newer employees have less flexibility with fewer days of PTO to allocate to family, interests, vacation, etc.
What should never, ever be done by a new employee is to tell the management how to run their business. Especially when the reason is that we arenāt getting our way. Back in the day, us younger/newer employees had a joke, āthat was a career-shortening thing to do!ā for verbal and other blunders that left an unfavorable, lasting impression on management.
More established employees can certainly make a well-thought-out effort to pull through changes in practice and attitude from management.
So, thatās how I read the context of the thread drift to PTO expectations and realities.
I know at least one eventing organizer who tried to do the āreal 3-day eventā thing. They were strongly pressured until they did re-organize the schedule to allow working adults and school kids to do all of their rides on Saturday-Sunday. The pros and people who could make the time rode on Friday. But the majority of participants elected for the weekend only. People needed to save their limited supply of days off for vacation, family, etc. It was make-or-break, this lot of riders was unified, they werenāt entering if they would have a Friday ride time.
Many employers have restructured their management of employee work time to make it easier on both employees and on the company. But it is perilous to assume that this is so in every employer.
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I have not yet read through all the replies (I will at some point, because this is a topic I struggle with too!), so Iām not sure if this has been said explicitly yet. But, as I am learningā¦you have to really want it. REALLY want it. I have a FT mostly remote job, keep my horses at home (well, at my neighbors, but basically same thing as I am responsible for all their care as well as property up keep for the horse section), have other animals at home to care for, a young child (6) as well as a partner / relationship to maintain. It is freaking HARD. Even with the flexibility of remote work, it is still hard.
What has worked for me is creating a schedule and (here is the hard part) sticking to it. One of my horses got cellulitis recently, which caused us to get off schedule and O M G it is SO HARD to get back to it. Thatās where the āwanting itā comes in ā¦ Iām starting to question this myself - is this all worth it? To be honest, I donāt know. But I what I do know is Iāll be getting back to my schedule before making any massive decisions. I think getting into a groove is the tricky part, but once youāre in it it is easier to maintain.
I see in your original post you have a remote job, which is great! It does also depend on your company and the type of flexibility they allow. The job I had before this was remote but extremely strict on hours (it was terrible). My position now is with a global company and most of my colleagues are not in my time zone - this means I have to be flexible with my time, but it is great because in turn my management is extremely flexible with me. As long as the work gets done type mentality. But to get this flexibility, it means I will sometimes start work at 6AM with meetings and sometimes am taking care of e-mails / updates / whatever well past 5PM. I think an event every 4-6 weeks is definitely possible, even factoring in long drive times. Iām in California and events are all 2-10 hours away for me. The 10 hour drive is more of a ādestinationā type which I do not do frequently (Iāve been once in 2018 and then am planning on going back end of this year, to put it in perspective). The three standard venues Iāve gone to are all between 2-5 hours. Typically shows are run Friday - Sunday, and I arrive with the horse(s) Thursday. For these shows what I found works best is to leave VERY early in the morning (3-4AM) to get to the show grounds early, get the horses all set up, and then find a coffee shop or some place with WiFi to log in and work for the day. Then you only need to take off (or not, if the company is flexible) ~2 hours in the morning off work and this helps you conserve your PTO. I do typically take the full day off for the Friday ride. I guess this brings me to another important point - you are going to want to conserve every second of that PTO you have. It is AMAZING how quickly horse shows burn through it. This means it is extremely rare that I take a PTO day for a non-horse related activity (again, all this goes back to really wanting it, which is only a decision you can make).
As far as riding goes, I try to ride 4-6 days a week, with 3 of those days being a lesson (2 I trailer out for, 1 my trainer comes to me). I typically average 5 days a week, the 6th day is always my trail ride day which is hit or miss if it happens (maybe every other week, if Iām lucky). My lesson rides on average are about 1 hour (w/ warm up and cooling down), rides on my own are closer to about 40 minutes, sometimes 30 if Iām pressed for time.
It IS important to also schedule non-horse activity time for yourself so you donāt get burnt out. I didnāt do this and didnāt realize how burnt out I actually was until my horse got cellulitis and I could take a breath and was like OH WOW I AM TIRED!!!
TLDR: It is possible, but you have to want it, make a schedule and stick to it, and make sure you schedule non horse time for yourself 
EDIT: after reading some replies, I guess I didnāt take into consideration the PTO affecting other coworkers - that doesnāt really happen for me ā¦I take the day off but always tell people Iām available should something come up. Aside from the what, ~1.5 hours, Iāll be occupied by grooming / tacking up / warming up / doing my round, if someone at work needs me I will take the call via Zoom (I always bring my laptop). I guess this means Iām not truly ādisconnectedā, but it works for me and Iām happy to do it if it means I have the flexibility to show.
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That was my point.
Iām currently eventing at the Preliminary/2* level, and I compete 1-2 times a month for a 5-6 month season. My mare is not on training board. I am an adult amateur ā I have a full-time (non-horsey) job, I have a husband, a mortgage, two dogs, and I see my friends regularly (not just at the barn). I donāt have kids. I am fairly senior at my company, but I donāt run the show, and I started operating my horse life this way about five years into my career. Believe it or not, I do actually get 7.5-8 hours of sleep almost every night. I donāt go to Florida. I am not special ā not at work, and not on a horse ā if I can do it, so can you.
My biggest tips:
- Eliminate commutes. Many things in life are trade-offs: you give something, you get something. You get nothing out of commuting. The closer your home, the barn, and your work are, the better. The more of those places also have a shower, the easier everything will be.
- Prioritize one-day events. Do a three-day as a big goal, or a special occasion. Otherwise, they are burning your time for no reason.
- Get to know yourself really, really well. When do you do your best physical work? When do you do your best mental work? Structure your riding and your work life accordingly if you can.
- Find the cheat codes for the things that donāt matter. I used to think I had to do everything āproperlyā or not at all. You would have fit in a ride, except you didnāt have time to clean your tack? Skip it, and make sure you give it a good scrub on Sunday. You have time to ride, but not to get home and shower before your meeting? I have used the hose (and no one found out). The yoga class with your best friend ends half an hour before your lesson? Riding tights make great workout gear. Etc.
- Figure out how much time things take. Precisely. How long does it take you to groom your horse? Bathe her? How long is a flat ride? (As mentioned, Ride iQ is great for precision here). How long is a gallop set? How long does it take you to eat breakfast? How long is a shower for you? Counterintuitively, you will feel much less rushed when you know for sure whether you have enough time for your tasks.
Personally, I find that you apply less pressure to other areas of your life if you do the horse thing when other people arenāt looking for you. My husband sleeps late, and my boss works late. Guess when I ride? If Iām available to stay fifteen minutes later and push through the occasional unexpected work issue, and Iām not absent when my husband and friends want to interact, no one notices that I showed up at 9:30 instead of 9 and my hair was still wet. You know you need a longer ride today? You are the only one that will notice if your alarm goes off at 5am instead of 5:30am.
@OverandOnward said this:
This is very true, and a great tip. There are other competitive athletes in the workplace. Look for them. Work for them. They understand what you have to offer, and they understand what they need to give you in order to get what you have to offer. People hear that I ride, and think ārich girl with a ponyā. People who understand what I do think ādriven, highly organized person who can manage her timeā. People want to hire that person. Smart people also understand that they can drive a lot of loyalty for free by simply being the job that allows you to do what you want - Iāve given employers a discount on my services because they allowed me to structure my life in a way that worked for me.
While you are looking for things in a job description, jobs that can be flexible are often jobs that need flexibility from you. A very structured 8-4 government job is going to need you to be at your desk from 8-4. A job that occasionally asks you for nights or weekends (which is almost always mentioned in the posted job description, because people have families) is probably already used to employees making up for that time by not showing up until 11am on Tuesday. Give a little, get a little.
A few last thoughts:
Having spent some time in work environments that were less-than-ideal, I agree with this. From experience, though, you can get around this by simplyā¦.not mentioning it. As others have said, other people have commitments in their lives too. You can finish your work and wish people a good night without telling them you are going to the barn every time. You can finish your work and wish people a good weekend without telling them you are competing both days. Be careful who you have on social media. Youād be surprised how much this changes things. In a perfect world, you would work somewhere where the only priority is the quality of your work. If you arenāt working there, let them think that all you do is work. Unless your quality proves otherwise, it wonāt come up.
Oh, yeah. My house is not clean. It is what it is.
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@Marigold this looks really similar to how I try to run my life with work and horses and everything else. So much great advice in here. Prelim is still a few years off for me but thatās the goal, and itās great to see someone else doing it and still maintaining balance in other areas of life.
YES. I wish I could like this 10 times. Iāve definitely had to rearrange my days around fitting in a shower when and where I needed to. Remote work probably makes this a lot easier though, another reason I wish I had the option.
Also really great advice, and easy to implement even for someone early in their career. Figure out what the general schedule is in the office and when your boss likes to work and plan your days accordingly. Conversely, if coverage is an issue you can sometimes work it to your advantage - most people prefer to work pretty average hours, so if youāre ok coming in early to get out early or hitting the barn in the morning and working late you can score some points by taking the hours no one else wants. Applies outside of work too - most of my friends are night owls which is not my speed at all, but 8pm dinner reservations give me time to ride after work and still show up on time so everyone wins.
This one can be tricky, most offices expect a certain amount of small talk and if you donāt chime in it can work against you. What works for me is to have small things to offer when people are making conversation to avoid talking about my horse all the time. Ex - if I was at the barn all weekend I might just tell people I spent a lot of time outside and then say something about the weather (people love to talk about the weather), or Iāll mention a TV show Iām watching or a restaurant I tried or something innocuous. Most people really just want to talk about themselves so give them a boring answer and turn it back on them and youāre usually all set.
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From the horse side of it, make the most of your rides, without skimping on the things your horse needs to feel itās best.
What I mean by that is be strategic about your rides. Does your horse need fitness to compete at the level? If you know that, prioritize the horses fitness over a focused training ride. Be ready to sacrifice some marks in dressage if you need to, in favor of keeping your horse happy and sound. When we were super busy, we just did a lot of straight work on solid footing. We found our horses were naturally able to come back to a harder workload with a better brain. 3 days of good consistent fitness work is better then cramming 5 days of rushed training (same for human fitness )
We just had four lovely yrs where I remote worked and my husbandās schedule was tougher. That meant that I often rode one and ponied one, or did both rides for the horses. I also hauled or rode to lessons so that he could just hop on and ride. Not realistic for everyone, but itās how we made it work for him as well.
Now that we have our own farm, super insanely busy positions and drive 2 hrs a dayā¦we didnāt show for a year. Or take lessons. Mostly just rode on straight aways and worked on their brain. That year off has allowed us to succeed at our current positions, build the farm up, and dare I say it-my horses had a year long reset and are so sound, happy and ready to get back at it.
On all the other stuff on this post, corporate America is WILD and I am so thankful for my job after reading some of this. And I am thankful my subordinates have me as a boss who celebrates a work life balance, encourages physical and mental health, and promotes folks who balance well.
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Was just seconding, no offense intended!
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This I know, although I personally donāt live this way.
Once you have a solid foundation of riding skills at your level, you can remain a good rider by gym work on strength, endurance, and flexibility. You do not have to ride as frequently to keep your own part up IF you are getting the fitness etc. work done elsewhere.
The horseās mind is different from ours. Those training/maintaining ride are important, as well as fitness. So yes, someone does have to keep the horse end up.
There are serious, committed competitive riders, who are in school, or in an urban work environment, who are parachuting in on the weekends, as it were. They donāt ride during the week and they still excel. There are elite amateurs, pros, and jockeys who do this.
Not a suggestion to do this! Itās just another perspective that there are creative ways to make it work with a less-flexible non-riding-life schedule.
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You said it more eloquently 
Just making sure I wasnāt speaking jibberish
I will also say- some people need the horse part in their life. As much as they drive me nuts, my horses have been my sanity through some terrible personal and professional times.
People have different perspectives and thatās ok. I just donāt want new professionals to think they HAVE to give up riding. However, so much depends on the company, occupational etc.
I like reading everyoneās stories on how they have navigated their professional and personal lives.
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Just something to be mindful of.
my wife was a RN working at a major hospital, she ābidā her work schedule each month .she had to work so many days each month or take PTOā¦ she could arrange her schedule whereas she could have up to 13 days off without touching her PTO.
She showed all over the country without touching her bucket of PTO
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Switching gears, and I havenāt read all the responses so sorry if this was mentioned already, but for me, the most important thing determining how much I showed was the personality of my horse. I showed the most when I had a horse who loved traveling places, loved to show himself off, and I literally could just pluck him out of the field and go. For awhile I boarded him, and my pre-event prep consisted of a call to the farm to see if he had all of his shoes on or not. Fitness wasnāt a problemāhe was an ottb and we had lots of gallops.
My next horse was a fusspot who didnāt like surprises and would unravel pretty easily. So he needed a lot of prep during the week, which I had to ship for, and thatās what I didnāt have time to do.
So I would find a horse who is easy-going and likes to travel. It will make your part of the job easier and more pleasant, and once youāre both fit you can maintain it without a lot of work in between events, freeing yourself up to worry about work while youāre at work and not your horse.
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I would be daunted too. I live in an eventing-dense area where almost all events are run in one day. Iām not sure how often I would compete if I had to dedicate 3-4 days to each HT, stay in hotels, etc. While acknowledging that there are other things in life than horses (ha), maybe in the long term moving to an area where events can fit into your work life better would be an option to consider?
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This, during the week going to the barn for me is a well oiled 1.5 hour routine that I donāt deviate from. My chit chat, tack cleaning currying my horse for 35 min is for Sat and Sun. During the week Iām there, I tack up I ride for 45 min and I leave. This has helped not tick off my husband with āthe time such that is barn timeā and made it so I can actually get my other stuff done.
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This is not aimed at you, OP, or anyone else, just a hypothetical example ā¦
Iām a teeny bit worried that maybe some readers could have the idea that, in parts of this thread, a new employee is being encouraged to, say, take a stand for their rights to schedule PTO to their personal preferences ā¦ but here is an example of how that can go very wrong, ESPECIALLY in a larger, older company (they pay well but tend to have much less flexibility) ā¦
Imagine that instead of the new employee, you are a Manager, who is hiring Newbie.
As Manager, you are well-versed in years of the company culture and ways. You find the hiring process disagreeable and tedious, and a major disruptive time-grab to all the other things you ordinarily have on your plate. But of course you do your part with care.
Yay! you found a great candidate, and have hired Newbie and brought her on board.
Now the next series of beyond-normal-tasks for you as Manager is getting Newbie the training and initial experience for her assigned tasks. They are technical and challenging, as befits her background and compensation. Everyone involved is moving toward Newbie working more and more independently.
Newbie is doing well, all seems good. Then Newbie wants a one-on-one meeting with you, Manager. You are wondering what Newbie wants to discuss re the work ā difficulties? task assignments? relations with co-workers?
What Newbie wants is: 5 Fridays off per year. Says that during the hiring process she had asked her HR contact, and the HR contact gave a soft answer and told Newbie that of course this could be discussed with her Manager once she was on board. HR did not encourage bringing it up before hiring (HR wanted to get this hire done and get on with their backlog of hiring processes).
Managerās first thought is: 5 Fridays ??? That is 10% of the working weeks in a year! How would we meet deadlines, how would we cover Newbieās daily tasks on those Fridays? Especially: What if something major slips, and it comes back on me? Plus, the rest of the workers in Newbieās group will be in this office demanding their own 5 Fridays per year. They will be reminding me that the company has resisted scattered 3-day weekends, saying they were more disruptive to manage around than a week-long vacation taken during the normal times for approved vacations.
[BTW, this little parable is based on real-life experience in the workplace! 
]
Newbie pitches that of course she will be here to help cover when other employees take several days or a week of vacation. She will be in the office on more days close to holidays, when others want off. (Companies tend not to care about this, because they slow down so much around holidays.)
As Manager, you explain two things: You, Newbie, with your limited experience in this company, donāt have much scope to cover for other employees who have a different, also challenging, technical task set, that you have never done before.
And, the one-week vacation, with the rest of the PTO scattered among holidays and a few family excursions for each employee, is the norm that the company is accustomed to covering. In the eyes of the company (and you the Manager), these random Fridays scheduled per your wants, not ours, are totally outside the scope of what we do here.
Basically, weāve been running this company for a long time. We may not be perfect, but we have our ways of doing it. During the hiring process we explained the normal PTO process. If you got the false impression that this request might be accepted, that was a misunderstanding of what the HR person should have conveyed.
So I do want to encourage you, Newbie, that in a few years you may have the standing and experience to make something like this work. For right now, please concentrate on your job. Master your tasks first, and that takes months, maybe most of a year. We havenāt even given you everything yet because your job is that involved. Later, as you gain experience, perhaps you can cross-train on other positions, which we will definitely be glad to help you do. But this 5 Fridays per year, especially taken by your schedule, not ours, is a few years off for you. At best.
IF Newbie takes all of Managerās feedback to heart, does not bring this up again and does make herself a valuable and productive employee, Manager will forget about this slight blunder.
IF Newbie tries to push back, especially if Newbie offers talk about current trends and best management practices ā¦
Managerās thought is likely to be: We made a hiring mistake. Damn, weāve got a pot-stirrer here. Newbie sees the job as merely a paycheck that she can spend on her hobbies and sports. Newbie is more serious about her sport than she is about her job. She will have more sport distractions in the future. (This is a standard ding that can happen to an employee, that is, more serious about outside interests than the job.)
Because although Managers hate admitting that they make hiring mistakes, they are taught to look for red flags. They have training on this. They start to worry about how they will look to their management.
Further, an early negative management impression could stick to Newbie for a long time. Even years. It happens.
Anyway. Just another perspective. Learn company culture, keep in mind the managementās mindset and impressions. Donāt come off āentitledā. Itās a stereotype that companies resent, and that can be hard to shake.
I have seen early-onboarding negative impressions happen! Word gets around in the management tier. Itās the only thing some of them know about Newbie ā right after being hired, she asked for a lot of Fridayās off, like more than 2 or 3.
The management memory can be long. Although outgrowing it can usually eventually be done. Think big picture and long term, and always think of how management will view a request.
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I sincerely hope youāre not a manager, this is a really gross take. We donāt live to work. We arenāt drones for a company with no outside lives.
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When I was beginning my corporate career, and electing to leave riding behind for a time ā¦
I chose not to have a horse (or a dog) for many years of my career because:
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I wanted to be able to give an immediate āyesā when asked to go now to Singapore for 3 weeks (or months), without the sense that some other set of plans was being overturned. Or anywhere, any amount of time. (Some people have more tolerance for overturned plans!
) -
I wanted to be able to make a cross-country move to the middle of an urban environment with a minimum of outside worries.
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I did not want the considerable expense and responsibility of a horse when I would have so much time away.
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I did not want to worry about missing many rides (not a few!), managing long work hours, or having to get home to the dog.
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Instead of riding, I did distance cycling in mild weather and skiing in the winter (lived where I could day-ski). I could park the bike and the skis for months at a time for a big, time-consuming work project.
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I knew that I did not have the energy to maintain a worthwhile schedule for both competitive riding and a career job. Some people can do it! Some people excel at both! I knew that it would not work for me. That I would end up eaten alive with anxiety about both.
I put the job first, is the bottom line. For quite a number of years. It is what I wanted.
When I have been riding and have a horse, I tend to be all-in on that. When I was immersed in a demanding, challenging career job, I was all-in on that. For me, I donāt try to split myself between both. But many other people can do it!
I had an idea about when Iād get back into riding. When I looked at the year and realized āitās timeā, I ended up going right back down the horse rabbit-hole. People were still riding horses, it was all still there!
All of the accommodations that others have outlined to maintain a career while also being dedicated riding and competing are well-taken.
Everyone is different as to what will work for them, what is best for them. Plan and strategize your entire life for what you really want out of it. With timelines. Everything about your career and your horse life, as has been said. From the locations to the commutes to the meals to the time management.
It may take some years to get it all the way you want it, but as long as you are always moving in that direction, youāll get there.
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