There’s a working student position available in Kentucky for anyone looking to pay $3000 a month, which will get you housing, barn work in the morning, riding/lessons in the afternoon. Board for your horse is additional. Who’s up for it?
How much for training board? How much to just do stalls?
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I am 100% sure there is more to this. I manage a barn and make about that month before taxes and my board being removed.
Housing? What kind.
Lessons? Once a week or daily? With your horse or exercising client horses? What discipline?
Morning chores…how many days a week, what do they entail and how many horses will they be caring for? Are there challenging horses on site like stallions, mares with foals or weanlings? Or is it all clients where you are expected to do all the horse’s care from the stall to tacking up to doctoring?
Board: what level of care? Is it the same as clients or do the staff get a discounted rate? Does my horse get tossed in a pasture or does my horse have a stall if needed?
$3k per month is a lot in the horse world. But with as little info provided I dont think I would make that leap.
I think you’re misunderstanding - the role requires the WS to PAY $3K per month; that’s not the salary.
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Oh shoot I misread that.
All my questions stand but who are you working for?
If you think of it as adult riding boot camp, it’s actually not that bad a package deal for room and board, and daily lessons. 30 lessons at $50 an hour is $1500 right there. I assume you would actually be on priority to do lessons unlike many real WS.
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It says “board for your horse is additional”.
If anything I kind of appreciate the transparency. Does this mean we can stop pretending that anyone willing to work hard enough has access to the resources to “make it?”
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I think she means room and board for a human.
let’s say you got lessons 6 days a week, at $75 per lesson, that is $1800. An apartment for $1200/mo is pretty hard to find, so, depending on the conditions, it probably is a break even deal, though I’m not sure why you need to do chores when you could just pay for everything.
This was, in fact, the ORIGINAL “working student” setup. (Read Jimmy Wofford’s “Still Horse Crazy After All These Years”.)
It was a way for an Olympic level rider (at that time Olympic riders were required to be amateurs, with much stricter amateur rules than AHSA/USEF rules) to skirt the Olympic amateur rules. The Olympic level rider wasn’t being paid for teaching and training, only for room and board, so remained an amateur. The barn work was supposed to “pay for” the lessons, since the Olympic amateur rules didn’t say anything about giving lessons in exchange for work.
But that structure stopped making sense when the Olympics dropped their amateur rules.
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Ha. It probably depends who is offering this deal. Is it a true BNT? Or is it a barn just trying this out as a money spinner?
Those with deep pockets already pay their own way until they are well along in their journey. They could go to any training barn and pay board, training and lessons and rent accommodation in the vicinity.
One month intensive at a good barn could certainly boost the average adult ammies skills, but it isn’t going to catapult anyone into the big leagues.
My only quibble here is calling this a working student position. That seems rather stretching the term. If you called it Adult Dressage Boot Camp or Adult Hunter Jumper Intensive, I think it’s actually a cool idea and one that a number of ammies might choose as a summer vacation. Especially those between horses or leasing.
I expect that when it came to it, my dislike of being in programmes, my thriftiness, and my commitment to my own horse would end up tilting me away from doing Adult Sleepover Bootcamp. But I feel like I’m only a few degrees off actually doing something like this, for access to better horses, consistent instruction, and a big change of scenery and context. I probably wouldnt go to Kentucky. But there’s coaches in France that would interest me (my French has deteriorated a lot since I lived in Montreal so there’s that). There’s places closer to home that I might find interesting with my own horse to do a month of cattle work, intro buckaroo, back country trail riding. In other words, it’s not a ridiculous sum to spend for Adult Intensive Bootcamp for a month. It’s even a rather nice idea if you are in a bit of a rut with your horse.
But I agree it’s a perversion of the WS concept.
Correct
I did speak on the phone with the person who is listing the ad. They called me. The deal I was offered was different. Based on that conversation, I would think only a very young, talented, very highly driven person would fit the situation, as it was described to me initially.
Now ?
Well… presumably the chores are the “horsemanship” part of the education. Or it’s just More because muck/TO help is needed.
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Did you query and they returned your call? Or did they cold call you?
The barn may have unrealistic expectations. Or the barn may be marketing this as for a highly talented person to increase the perceived value or status of the deal.
I was a working student for BNT might be a biggest brag for the client than I did Adult Bootcamp at BNT.
I’ve been assuming it’s a month long program but actually perhaps it’s supposed to be a long term position, like a year?
I feel like the only reason a really talented young person would take on a WS role is to defray expenses to some extent. They could also likely get a real job as a groom for a BNT. A young person with very deep pockets and talent can just pay their own way without mucking stalls.
So if this is really meant to be say a year long position and the person needs to pay $3000 plus horse board, I don’t think they are going to get top candidates. For those who could afford $36,000 to $48,000 a year, and already have their trainer and program in place to be successful, it’s not attractive. Those who can’t afford it are priced out. I expect it would only appeal to (a) younger adults or juniors who aren’t having success but have deep pockets or (b) well off older adults who want a gsp year to Live the Dream.
Julie Winkel has a very successful program doing something similar although the cost is only $1,000 a month. https://www.maplewoodstables.com/overview
In Julie’s case, housing is included, which makes it well worth it, IMO. Cheaper than sending your kid to college these days, if horses is something they want to do as a career.
Looks like that program has accreditation by a Nevada education authority. That helps.
