Riding School Memories – 15 things you’ll remember if you helped at a riding school as a kid
If you were lucky enough (as a kid, or even an adult) to help out at your local riding school then some of the points below you may remember well…..
- The earlier you got to the riding school at the weekend the better, as this meant you got to choose which horses and ponies you could muck out (and we all knew which were the cleanest!)
- Students were the coolest people who ever walked the planet, but really you thought you knew much more about horses than they did
- Friends made at a riding school were friends made for life, naturally
- You used the same grooming kit for every horse and pony, except you kept your special kit for your fav and it was ALL coloured the same – purple
- You had your favourite horse and felt threatened when someone else rode it, or even worse still … groomed it!
- Newbies made you feel ‘knowledgeable’ and you felt kind of ‘ace’ showing them what to do
- Pot noodles, chocolate and cans of coke were the staple diet
- Each Christmas was an opportunity for a new grooming kit – again, naturally all in the same colour
- Leading beginners around made you feel experienced and above all, important … however, this resulted in much exhaustion after trotting endlessly around the arena for 30 minutes
- Working a ‘late’ made you feel even more super important, topping up waters, haying up and skipping out was best done in the dark anyway …
- You spent every minute away from the riding stables engrossed in horse books and videos that featured horses, and their riders, even if the videos were all in subtitles … GCSE revision didn’t even get a look in
- You dreamt of the day you could own your own horses and the freedom you would feel being able to ride how you wanted to
- You desperately (but hid it well) wanted to be that person behind the desk making the decisions on who rides what horse
- You could tack up in under two minutes
- Christmas gymkhana games with your yard buddies rocked, on horse back or off!!
Suzanne Ashton, Founder of Everything Horse (Est, 2012), has a BA Hons in Marketing Management and a Diploma in Equine Science. Suzanne has ridden and owned horses all her life and has twelve years of experience in marketing, writing, design, SEO, and website creation.