I need some adevice. Right now I am 15 years old. I show very successfully at the 3ft, and have been for years now. I want to move up and do the big eq, but I can’t afford it. I want to become a full time working student. I know I have the talent to go to the top, and I am willing to work as hard as I possibly can to get there. Will becoming a working student help me. And how can I find one at such a young age? And I obviously need to switch to online school if I go through with this. Please share opinions!!
Have you spoken with your parents and your trainer about this topic? What do they say?
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Don’t neglect your education.
Working student position may very well further your riding education/career, but it depends who you ride for and how willing they are to train you and help you find rides and finance your showing. Generally you’d be a WS for your trainer or perhaps one of their connections.
I would not count on this turning into a sustainable career. But if you have supportive parents and can handle school and being WS, it’s probably more doable as a junior, than later on in life when you have to adult, to develop your riding skills, IF you can find the right situation/person to work for.
You may find out horse training/showing isn’t the industry you want to work in and that’s ok too. My trainer tended to have a WS at any given time who would help out with pro rides and assistant/groom duties, in exchange for lessons and experience they’d otherwise be unable to afford; they maybe also got free board (perhaps not their own horse but a sales or lease horse for them to ride/show). I do not think they got paid enough to survive without some parental support however. Some turned pro after and are still going strong (the most successful ones I know completed some post-secondary education, as riding is only one aspect of having a good training business). and some did not, or were unsuccessful as professionals on their own for various reasons.
And some WS positions promise a lot but don’t deliver on horses to ride/show. Or the trainer isn’t that good or invested in bringing along riders who can train their own horses, especially if they’re not a paying client. So there’s that to look out for as well. If your local trainers have seen you at shows and like your riding ability, they might give you a chance. But be sure if what you’re getting out of it, be skeptical of anything/anyone that seems too good to be true.
My daughter’s experience is a little difference than most as my daughter was asked to catch ride a pony at a rated show when she was 11. She was showing her own pony in Short Stirrup and Children’s Ponies. A mom of another junior riding and I started talking when she commented on my daughter’s riding. She told me of her daughter’s catch riding/working student experiences. She had a Jumper she was looking to do a feed lease on. She invited my daughter to try said jumper at their community riding ring with their home trainer. My daughter rode said Jumper well and we did lease her . This allowed my daughter to do the FEI Children’s Jumper Qualifier along with the Talent Search and 1.10 to 1.15 meter Jumper classes. My daughter was looking to do a working student/catch riding gig which was hard to find in SoCal. Her current trainer was not helpful at all. The other junior working student became friends with my daughter and she contacted a trainer in the mid west who owns her own farm and was always looking for talented juniors. My daughter called said trainer and I flew her out during the summer of her 15th year to the trainer’s farm. First thing trainer did was put daughter on both a horse and a pony as soon as she arrived from the airport. Trainer liked what she saw and invited my daughter to spend the summer riding and showing with her. She came back for school and then I worked out a program with the school, so my daughter could go on independent study for three week intervals during the school year to compete at shows… My daughter stayed in public school. The high school had other athletes in non-traditional sports doing the same thing. My daughter qualified and competed at the major medal finals except the WiHS and Talent Search.
By being a working student/catch rider she determined that she does not want to be a professional. She likes riding as an amateur and after graduating college two years ago, she wants to be a cardiologist and works for two doctors while she is currently applying to school.
The point is to get yourself noticed at shows. Be available to jog a horse and ride in the hack for riders that have multiple horses. Ask your trainer for help. You need to be the one asking. You must make sure your parents are 100% on board. Explore school options. It is hard to find good opportunities and sometimes you have to be in the right place at the right time.
Don’t take this the wrong way, but first you need to humble yourself. Confidence is great, but most potential employees do not like cockiness. I have first hand experience doing the Working Student/catch rider gig as a junior and I learned a ton. It is hard work. It will wear you down and make you question your love for the sport at times. It is also a lot of fun and I have friends across the world now. My advice would be to look into Daniel Bluman’s “Ride into the future” program on FB/Instagram. I think it is a super interesting idea and needs to be supported. Join the ISO Working Student Facebook page. Just know that it is many long hours, a lot of time not spent in the saddle no matter how talented you are, and it will take a toll on your physical and mental well being. Let your hard work speak for itself and be a sponge. Absorb everything.
I understand WS to be an apprenticeship at being a horse professional, and a position that varies depending on the needs of the trainer. The emphasis is on working. The student part is learning all about horse care and handling. You might get rides on horses, but they might be client horses or they might be project horses, and there is no guarantee that you are going to get set up with a horse that will take you to the big eq.
From what I’ve seen IRL and read on COTH 
it is pretty hard to go to the top if you have absolutely no money to put into horses, lesson, and show fees. Yes, there are top ranking juniors who are also working students of big name trainers, but usually those juniors are putting some of their own cash into buying or leasing their horses. Not all WS are poor. Some have plenty of family money, but want the apprenticeship to develop their own skills, and plan to start their own training barns as adults (with that family money). It is quite common for the WS deal to include board or reduced board for the student’s own horse.
Thus, I think the chance that you will find a WS position where you will get lessons and free use of a horse to do the big eq is remote, though things are always possible if a trainer has real faith in you.
Becoming a WS is apprenticeship to being a horse professional. The number one criterion to being a successful horse professional is that you always put the clients’ needs ahead of your own (because that is how you earn an income). Many horse pros put their own competitive career on hold to service the clients who are their bread and butter. So you have many successful coaches who spend almost every weekend in summer earning a nice income by taking the kiddies to the local crossrails and two foot six, because they want the day fees and lease fees and the advertisement for their program, but don’t have the time or resources to continue a campaign with their own four foot horse.
So if you are a WS, you will be expected to put the clients first (because that’s what your trainer will be doing). That means you might be schooling green horses, resale horse, project horses, two foot six horses, whatever is going to turn a profit for your coach.
Obviously if you go looking for a WS position that can support you going to the Big Eq, you will need to try to find one where the whole barn is already competing at your desired level, because otherwise you are going to be on a support team for the talented 11 years with deep pocketed parents.
However, the paradox is that you might actually be really useful to a trainer who has a clientele that is jumping under 3 feet, because you have experience and ability at that level. You could probably be very very helpful warming up kid’s jumpers and schooling OTTB that are going to jump 2 foot 9, etc. You will learn an enormous amount about coaching and training and horse care. But you are unlikely to get any help in going to the big eq because the horses, the other clients, and the whole focus of the barn is not in that direction.
If you take a WS position in a barn that is focused on the higher levels, you will have the potential support there. But you might turn up at this kind of barn and find that you don’t ride nearly well enough to be trusted with schooling the big jumpers. You will be less advanced than many of the clients. You won’t be nearly as useful to the coach right off the bat as the WS who is already jumping 4 feet courses. You might or might not get to ride as much. You might only ride flat to warm up for the trainer.
I’ve certainly heard IRL about high end barns that take on a number of WS in a season, and then watch to see who can be promoted to riding and who stays just a groom.
Anyhow, there are always exceptions of course, but I think that it will be a challenge to find a WS position that will supply a free high end horse for a big eq campaign, and teach you to ride it too.
You will need to think about what you bring to the table that is so much better than all the other teenagers jumping 3 foot.
Also these are questions to ask your current trainer.
I think IF one could find a position where trainer was game to teach them and use their connections to find them rides – say, maybe they like having a student in the ribbons in the eq/medals or a finals contender, because it’s could be good for their business too (as well as have someone in the barn to help out with pro rides/hacks/assistant/groom duties for “free”) – I think it’s much more likely that the horse they get to ride/show is in for re-training or to be sold; you could also lose the ride at any moment, if he gets sold or owner wants him back. Seems unlikely that horse will be a well-trained eq campaigner that could command $$$ lease or purchase price; those are going to go to paying clients first. At least that’s been my experience/what I’ve seen for several WS (they were not paying for training/board/showing) or trainers’ kids (who were basically like WS in not having all the money for shows but having a solid riding education and opportunity to ride clients’ horses).
I think ponypenny makes a good point too, that if OP’s current trainer does not have the interest or horses to offer you a WS position, you may have to make your own opportunities by putting yourself out there to be noticed by other trainers and taking whatever rides come your way (within reason! don’t get on anything with questionable safety issues or the like). Someone in any WS situation needs the finances and connections to get WS in the ring; if your trainer doesn’t have the connections, it may be up to you to branch out and make them yourself or even switch trainers.
I would be curious to know why you haven’t pursued the route of making your own 3’6" horse. With years of 3’ experience, you could put some miles on a greenie, flip it, or make it up. I have known a lot of kids who have used their talent to do this when money is a restriction, and you are still young enough at 15 to do this. Is there a reason why you aren’t considering this instead? I know several kids you bought much less expensive jumpers and used their talent and skill to convert them (under trainer supervision, of course).
Tori Colvin would have never made it had she and her mother not started flipping her ponies. Taking a green and making it up will also go a long way with a potential employer, as that would showcase your real talent.
Becoming a working student doesn’t necessarily mean you will get to the big eq ring. Sale horses showing in the upper divisions by working students are usually done so to showcase the horse for a sale, or to put a show record on it, so it is marketable.
If you don’t already have winning experience in the big eq ring… it will be tuff to get a trainer to trust your ability to go in and win. Horses at this level will not sell easily if the rider misses lead changes, doesn’t get down the lines or makes any other number of mistakes. Big eq horses are a lot of money and trainers looking to buy for clients want to see the horses winning.
Being a catch rider can be very stressful. Trainers expect a good ride. If you make to many mistakes over & over again… you will lose rides.
