12/08/2025
I could not express these thoughts better than this post does.
You wanna be a working student?
Or do you want free ride time?
There’s a huge difference. Decide what kind you want to be. The opportunities are there if you’re willing to work hard for it, be grateful for what the opportunity may be, and be willing to be humble enough to take them.
The last article that I had seen was about how junior riders aren’t being given the opportunities they once were.
I’d like to, from a SMALL trainer perspective, give some insight from my own personal experiences, which may help shed some light on 1️⃣a smaller barn’s struggle with providing these opportunities, and 2️⃣ how riders can help secure better opportunities in the future.
Growing up (25 years ago… I know,
I’m soooooo old…) in order to become a working student, you had to first be a student at that farm. That meant either in active lessons on barn horses, a leased, or your own horse.
🤷🏻♀️In other words, you had to be a financially contributing member of the team.
👉A working student position meant you got freebies for proving your dedication by helping with extra chores around the farm, and making the farm owner and trainer’s life easier, while still helping to keep the lights on.
🫶We showed up at 6 am to do stalls and turn out.
🫶We learned to check for shoes and how to blanket properly; how to move efficiently while also giving the full standard of care, so we could spend more time having fun in the saddle.
🫶We cleaned all of the tack at the end of the day.
🫶We dedicated our time to our sport, not saying “well I can only come once a week because of theater, basketball, soccer, and debate.”
🫶We were there when the other kids weren’t. 🫶We did the things the other kids didn’t want to do.
🫶We didn’t get paid in cash, we got paid in experience.
🫶We rode the devil ponies, we rode the babies, we rode the lame ones working back in PT.
👉And we didn’t care.
🫶We trail rode, lunged, flatted.
🫶We took the saddle time and ran with it.
My personal trainer in my early teens didn’t just give me saddle time. She was my drill sergeant. She took my stirrups and reins away and had me 2 pt for a half hour on her ponies, three times a week, for a year to learn better balance. She would put me on an old fuddy-duddy that didn’t do enough hard work that week, and make me do transitions with no stirrups. She had me get on the pony that laid down in the corners, she had me ride the stoppers, and the dirty little evil things. 7 horses a day on the weekends, 2-3 after school. With farm chores. And I was in charge of cleaning my tack and grooming. It was just me, her, and sometimes her assistant trainer, and we got it all done, on top of my homework, and helping my mom with house chores.
🙌I learned grit, I learned useful life skills, I learned how to really ride, I learned efficiency and time management, and I learned that the faster I went, the more Jo-Ann would let me ride. If I didn’t do it right? I did it again, and lost out on saddle time. 👉No one fixed my mistakes but me; my mom didn’t help, my dad wouldn’t set foot on a farm, and Jo-Ann definitely wasn’t going to help. She already had a schedule for that day. It was up to me to help her make it Happen, because that’s how the lights stay on. If we aren’t working, the horses aren’t eating. End of story. 🙌
🐴At no point in my working student career did I ever not own or lease a horse. That was rule number one: the lights must stay on.
If you couldn’t help make life run smoothly, you couldn’t be there. It’s not fair for everyone involved.
🤷🏻♀️That’s how it was working for Tartan, Robin, the Muldoons, and Marlene. You had to contribute, and in more ways that just saddle time and half hearted labor.
👉Everyone👉Had👉To👉Contribute.
🤷🏻♀️Why am I telling everyone this? Because this just isn’t what people think of when they think of working students anymore.
🧡We used to call working students under the age of 18 Barn Rats. When they became an adult, they were called Working Students. We 👉worked to be students. And students contribute. ❎If the lights don’t stay on, we don’t have a farm to learn on❎
Fast forward to the last 3 years of the industry, and the dread I have of looking for a working student.
I will post: looking for a working student for a few times a week, minimal stalls, occasional feeding, clean tack, lots of flatting, trail rides and occasional jumping. 2-3 horses at the most.
The responses I get:
🤷🏻♀️How much does this position pay?
🤷🏻♀️Do you provide housing?
🤷🏻♀️Do I get a free stall?
🤷🏻♀️I’ve never ridden before in my life, can you teach me, and I’ll need paid.
And what I find, sadly, is that 9/10 “applicants” come out, ready to go, that has wanted paid, asked for housing and free board and lessons can’t find a diagonal, don’t know what a lead is, and can’t post in a balanced manner. To top it off, most hadn’t discussed this with their trainer. 😅I had one girl cry when I told her it’s not a good fit, and begged me not to call her trainer because she didn’t tell her trainer she was coming. This particular young lady showed up in spurs with a whip and then gouged my horses side (sans spurs) to ask him for a soft trot after I told her to be gentle. ❌She was also a half hour late to her interview and called me from Dunkin’s asking if I wanted anything, at the time she was scheduled to be there. 👉Side note: if I’m offering you an opportunity to ride my horses because I’m too busy to keep up, I don’t have time to wait for you to get your caffeine fix.
‼️Punctuality‼️is‼️kind‼️of‼️a‼️big‼️deal‼️
This is just one of the many head shaking experiences I have had, personally, from people that have wanted a working student position. ❌I’ve had “upper level” xc riders show up and gun my dead quiet hunter into a fence and then yank his face off when he charges the fences, which is what they asked him to do. ❌I had another drop my pony at every jump so my pony finally side stepped in the landing, and she fell off. she screamed he was dangerous. No, he’s tired of doing his job and yours 🤷🏻♀️
❌I’ve had “experienced” riders tack up the horses wrong.
❌I asked one girl to make sure the horse got a full bath and she responded with “I’m not being paid to be a groom.” You aren’t being paid to ride either, so take care of the horse you just rode or leave.
❌And many times these young ladies won’t get off their phones long enough to notice if the horse was missing a shoe when he walked in.
Now this is not to say that I haven’t had some wonderful ladies show up. Haley, Emma, Nicole, and currently Izzy and Ash. They give their all when they are here and want to learn.🧡
But every single one of these girls understands what goes into having sound, level headed horses to ride, a farm to ride on, and my time given to them. I break it down their first day: average barn labor is paid 15/hour. Average lessons are 75 in the area. 🟰That’s 5 hours of work for a free lesson. Average cost to maintain a horse with front shoes in the area (everything, not just board) is 1350 a month. Many of us small people don’t have largely funded backers, or barns full of expensive training projects (most of which don’t want working students on their horses anyway…) So what does this mean? It means that their payment for the work they do is their lessons, the knowledge and the experience they get.
❌They aren’t assistant trainers.
👉They’re at my farm for a maximum of 3 hours 2-3 times a week, they contribute to the work load, and they get an opportunity to work towards a goal that they’d otherwise have to pay for.
🧡Many of these girls understood that they had huge gaps in their education, and those gaps were not helping my horses, so whenI asked them to take a step back and learn how I do things, none of them were offended.
I have my two, and they help at shows, help out with paying jobs, and help save money, so it’s worth it for this small peanuts person to have them here. Many barns can’t foot the bills and pay/house part time working students and provide solid good horses for them to learn on.
👉👉👉It has to be a give and take or we won’t be able to continue with smaller trainers giving these young riders the opportunities They crave. And those small trainers are the ones who a. Need the help, and b. Will take more chances on the riders.
👉Here are some ways junior and young riders can help our smaller people out:
🧡Start with your trainer: ask if there are any opportunities at the farm you are already an established client at to ride other horses. Soak up every lesson you can, and help with the farm chores. You are never above mucking a stall or holding horses for the farrier.
🧡If you don’t have opportunities left at that farm, discuss it with your trainer, and seek out a new trainer to continue your education. Take your horse (if it is truly your horse) to that farm. Don’t ask someone to give you opportunities while paying someone else that can’t help you. You must contribute to keeping the lights on where you are being helped, and your old stall WILL get filled, I promise.
🧡Pay for a lesson. Even if it’s just one a week. Contribute to the electric bill. The feed bill. Something. Horses are expensive. Don’t leave all that expense to your trainer.
🧡Pick up shifts at the barn, even if you can’t ride that day, or don’t get an opportunity to ride that day. Barn time is barn time, and barn time will teach you things that just sitting in the saddle won’t.
🧡If you don’t have a horse, lease or partial lease one that you will be riding the most.
🧡Be open to relearning basics. Even the greatest riders in the world focus on basics. Basics build greatness. No one is above practicing basics.
🧡Be open to criticism. No one is perfect, and not every trainer does the same techniques. Learn from everyone and take all the lessons with you.
‼️And keep in mind, if you want to be paid for your work, you must be able to provide a service that warrants being paid. This will seem very harsh, and I don’t mean it to be, just realistic: if I am paying for someone to ride my horse and I have to go back and retrain that horse after every ride, that isn’t helpful. That creates more work. Much like if I pay someone to do a stall, and when they leave I have to redo them. It’s counter productive for any business to pay someone do the work twice. Understand that it’s not our job to sacrifice our riding time to do stalls so you can enjoy our horses. Help everywhere. Be a member of the team.
👉This relationship has to be mutually beneficial or this relationship won’t happen, and from my latest experiences, this is part of the reason we aren’t seeing many of these opportunities left.
👉Working students aren’t meant to be paid, nor are they meant to be full time. That’s an employee.
🧡They’re meant to be taught.
🧡They need to be open to being taught.
🧡And they need to contribute.
🧡Everyone needs to contribute.
🧡At the end of the day, the lights need to stay on.
