Providence Farm

01/01/2023

New Year = fresh footing! ❤️🐎❤️

11/02/2022

A couple of days late but still funny....sort of... 😅🤔

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=594009775969322&id=100060809145425

Happy Halloween from ICT Tack!!!

10/12/2022

It costs over $2000 to show your horse at an A show for a weekend in our area....
Expensive or a fair price?? 🤔

BY TPH STAFF It’s no secret that horse shows are expensive. There’s really no cap on what you can spend. We think it’s important to be transparent when possible on real line-item costs. Some people will look at the below line items and say, You can do it cheaper! And others will roll their eye...

10/09/2022

Riders should be trained and prepared for a variety of situations aboard a horse. 🐎

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=634154401376847&id=100043468792096

What about Sarah? At 8 years old, she started riding with lessons at a Hunter Jumper barn, and showed Hunters until she was 18, then off to college. She loved the social scene chatting with the other girls as they sat on their horses waiting for their class. She and her mom traveled to surrounding States, winning tons of ribbons. Grandparents poured a small fortune into the passion.

Sarah showed up at my barn at 24, a college graduate, still with the pickup and trailer bought for her show years. She had a great job and money to buy a new horse for her new adventures. She wanted to try Eventing and Fox Hunting. We rode together in the arena and went out to see the cross country course.

At the first downhill slope, she held onto her show leg position centered on the saddle flap when she needed to move her feet forward to keep them under her for the slope. It was difficult. We jumped a little log on a flat section and she went forward, leaning on her horse's neck. We went up a hill, she failed to move her legs back to keep them under her. Then on a gentle downhill slope, we came to an 18 inch coop. She stopped and went silent, her head hanging down. She was crying.

I asked what was wrong, and she said through tears, "I can't do this". As I had many times before, I said sure you can. It's just different, like you were a figure skater and now you want to play hockey. You can skate. It's just a little different. Sarah dismounted and walked her horse back to her trailer, loaded up and she tried to pay me. I told her to hold on to her money until she returned. I never saw Sarah again.

Educate me. Tell me that Hunters are not a dead end. Explain to me why Sarah never returned, and why as a Staff rider in so many hunts I had to help a former show Hunter get her horse through a hedgerow because her horse couldn't stand the brush tickling her horse. All my experience indicates that show Hunters grow up and discover they cannot do much with a horse. They went down a dead end road. Why do parents continue to send their kids down this well known dead end road?

09/28/2022

This!!! 👇👇🤣

09/19/2022

And THIS is one of the many reasons we always wear our helmets! 👇👇

09/06/2022

Happy Labor Day weekend from Providence Farm! 😎🐴🌞

08/12/2022

The moon over the farm this evening. 🌙 ❤️

08/03/2022

It's definitely a life of blood, sweat & tears...not necessarily in that order. 😅

Oh so many people don’t realize that this horse trainer life isn’t all that glamorous. If you think this is the life for you, I suggest being a working student or a farm hand for a bit to get a taste of what it’s really like.

It’s dirty. It’s sweaty. It’s exhausting.

It doesn’t matter what the weather is like, you still have to take care of the horses.

It doesn’t matter if you’re sick, you still have to take care of the horses.

It doesn’t matter if you’re pregnant, sad, mad, broke or broken, someone still has to take care of the horses.

Very little of a horse trainer’s time is actually spent on the back of a horse. I feed 5 times per day, horses go out, horses come in, stalls have to be cleaned with shavings as needed, water buckets have to be scrubbed and filled, hay bags get filled twice daily, sweaty horses hosed, boots on and off, cuts and scrapes doctored, etc, etc.

Guess who gets paid to do all of that.

No one.

For me, lessons pay for feed, hay, supplements, vet and farrier.

This career is not going to make you millions and it’s not all riding fancy horses.

It’s a lot of grunt work, day in and day out.

And it’s all for the love of the horse and the pursuit of a dream.

💙 Cara