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Culture August 3, 2016
Were you that little girl who traced hundreds of outlines of horses onto paper, carefully filling in the lines with patches of bright colors? Did you beg your parents for horseback riding lessons? Did you spend hours every day after school riding, mucking stalls and cleaning tack? For many of the horse-obsessed, a professional career working with horses is a dream come true. It is definitely not as easy as it looks, though.
Here are five facts I’ll bet you didn’t know about professional equestrians – and some advice on riding into the sunset on your dream job.
It takes years to become qualified enough to reach the top as a rider or trainer. Many professionals started in apprenticeships or low-paying student jobs before rising to the competitive level. Practical Horseman advises riders to avoid skipping steps. Susie Schoellkopf, director of SBS Farms in New York says, “You have to be willing to start from the bottom and work your way up.”
Professional riding is not a walk in the park. Competition is fierce and only the best of the best – the riders who portray elegance, expertise and experience on every ride – make it to the top.
The life of a professional equestrian is not easy, to say the least. Riding is the fun part, but to make a career in this field, riders have to know how to manage transportation, maintain supplies, keep their horses healthy, and be willing to train incessantly. In order to grow as a rider, you need to grow in countless other areas as well.
Although the sport doesn’t require a degree to be successful, more and more riders and trainers are earning college degrees at specialized schools. Degrees can range from associate’s degrees all the way to doctorates, Learn.org reports. This allows riders to gain barn management skills and work on the financial side of equestrianism. Talk about business women who don’t horse around!
There are multiple disciplines within the equestrian field. There’s racing, dressage, polo, show jumping, steeplechasing, barrel racing and a variety of arena sports. A rider can stick to just one or move between multiple disciplines. The level of your riding diversity is up to you!
Being an equestrian may be your idea of the perfect career, but there’s definitely a lot more involved than meets the eye. You may have to start at the bottom and work long hours to defeat hundreds of other fierce competitors, but those who do can be very successful in the equine world.
