Clover Run

06/23/2026

We asked equine professionals, “What is one thing you wish clients understood?” Their answers are important for riders of all ages to read and understand.

“That “just one thing ” I do for you that takes me 5 minutes? Yeah, that actually adds an hour to my day. And if I don’t charge for doing the “little” extra things, then I can’t get to the big things”

“How hard it is to go 24/7 365 days of the year. And the money/time/mental facilities it takes to run the farm…”

“The tremendous amount of responsibility we carry on our shoulders. For the client, as well as the horse.”

“That horses aren’t vehicles that anyone can drive. You can’t just buy a 3’6″ horse and do the 3’6″ any more than you can just buy a grand prix horse and do the grand prix.”

“Organizing turnout is way harder than you expect. Who goes where, for how long, with a buddy or not. It is way more thoughtful than just putting a horse in a field.”

“The most expensive ponies are the old ones stepping down. If you want a deal, ask for a green or quirky one.”

“Just because I’m available to the horse 24/7 doesn’t mean I need to be available to the humans 24/7! Clients understand that we drop everything for the horses at all hours, and they expect the same for them which is really unfair. Clients who respect boundaries and our ability to have free time or a day off are worth their weight in gold.”

“There is no guarantee that your horse will stay sound.”

Next time you head to the barn or chat with your trainer, try keeping these things in mind. While questions are always welcome, the timing and the way that you ask them can be key. Remember, your trainer wants you and your horse to succeed, so there is almost always a reason for everything they do!

06/22/2026

You drove forty-five minutes each way. You packed the snacks. You wrote the check. And now you are standing at the rail watching your child stare at the horse while simultaneously watching a video on their phone, half present in a place that deserves their full attention, Parker Worthington writes.

Sound familiar?

The barn is one of the last genuinely analog experiences available to a child these days, and that is not an accident… It’s a feature. Horses do not respond to distracted riders. They do not care about follower counts. They demand presence, patience, and the kind of slow, attentive observation that is increasingly rare in the life of a ten-year-old who has been raised in a world of instant feedback and infinite scroll. Here is how you, as the adult in the car, can help make the most of this irreplaceable time.

1. Take the Phone the Moment They Hop Out of the Car

Not later. Not after they check one more thing. The moment the car door opens and the barn smell hits, the phone goes into your bag. Do this cheerfully, consistently, and without negotiation. Replace it with an analog dial watch — a real one, with hands, that they have to actually read — so they can track their lesson time and their chores without being tethered to a screen. The watch is not punishment. It is a tool that teaches them to orient themselves in time without a device doing the thinking for them. It also makes them feel enormously grown-up, which, at ten, is most of the battle.

2. Teach Them to Arrive Early and Walk Around

The thirty minutes before a lesson are not downtime. They are the lesson before the lesson. Teach your child to arrive early, walk through the barn quietly, look at the horses, notice which ones seem energetic and which seem settled, check the water buckets, observe the general atmosphere. This habit builds the kind of ambient awareness that separates a rider from someone who merely sits on a horse.

3. Let Them Carry Things

A ten-year-old can carry a saddle. They can carry a grooming bucket, a water bucket, a hay net, a stack of wraps. Let them. Do not carry things for your child at the barn unless they are genuinely too heavy or there is a safety reason to intervene. The physical experience of caring for a horse, including the weight of the tack and the logistics of the grooming kit, is part of the education. Children who are carried through barn chores grow up to be riders who don’t understand why things take as long as they do.

📎 Read more tips at https://www.theplaidhorse.com/2026/06/21/ten-things-you-can-do-to-actually-help-your-ten-year-old-at-the-barn/
📸 © Heather N. Photography

06/16/2026

06/11/2026

Are any of these “true” for you? All in good fun of course!

06/02/2026

It’s happened, Lauren Mauldin writes. Maybe at the office during a work lunch. Maybe a family reunion with a distant cousin. One of the peripheral people in your life who only knows one fact about you (she rides horses!) has asked a dreaded question: how much do horses cost anyway?

I hate this question. It’s not because I’m secretive about money. I like having straightforward conversations about finances because I think it takes away some of the mystery and power around financial stability. But with horses? That’s totally different. How do I even begin to answer this question?

I want to answer everything. They cost everything. Your time, your heart, and definitely all your disposable income. It doesn’t even matter how much extra money you have, they cost all of it (and then some). They cost in ways you don’t care about, like an extra $20 bag of treats from the tack store because you’re running low on bestest ponykins favorite horse muffins. They cost in ways that break you, like when you’re finally about to finish rehab and your horse reinjures the same ligament you’ve been nursing back to health for the last 8 months.

But the sales manager you’re sitting next to at this conference didn’t ask how much horses cost so you could sob into your coffee about lost savings and lost dreams, so you get back to the original question.

“Well, there are different kinds of horses…” I start to say. I want to simply explain that there are show horses and pet horses, and pleasure horses, and all of them have different costs associated with them, but then I realize I don’t even know what a safe pleasure horse costs these days. Early in my riding career, you could find a decent safe horse for $3,000 in the local newspaper back in 2000, but now my social media feed is flooded with grade horses selling at Amish auctions for $35,000 and kind semi-retired trail horses for “Private Inquiries Only.”

I decide to stick to what I know, and speak on the hunter/jumper show world. Which might be a mistake, but I start out with a metaphor, I think they’ll understand—“While there’s a big range, my horse costs as much as a crossover SUV… not a fancy one or—”

They’ve cut me off, flabbergasted that a horse can cost as much as a car and that I have paid as much as a car for my single horsepower, very slow 0 to 60mph, not even hybrid, horse.

📎 Continue reading this article at https://www.theplaidhorse.com/2025/06/01/awkward-conversations-with-non-horse-people-how-much-do-horses-cost/
📸 © The Plaid Horse

05/18/2026

It’s a great day for a trail ride! Happy summer!