29/08/2025
I read this post and couldn’t share. So copied and pasted. ⬇️ couldn’t agree more with it all. I started this with no bills to pay and a simple goal. To teach kids real horsemanship. Not just to the back of the ride 👏
You do your kid no favours in the real world making life easy for them. Yes love them but parenting is also letting them learn life skills and lessons to make them capable and confident young adults. ☺️ If interested in being a horse parent - read below or the sport is nothing more than a fantasy land. 💫
The Death of Stable Management
Once upon a time, in a land before TikTok tutorials and matchy-matchy saddle pads, horse people actually knew how to take care of horses. Shocking, I know. Kids like me didn't just rock up to the yard, hop on, and swan off afterward like some equestrian diva.
No, we earned our time in the saddle mucking out stables that smelled like something out of a horror movie, filling haynets that somehow managed to tangle themselves around our legs, and lugging water buckets that felt heavier than our actual bodies.
And Friday nights? That was Pony Club night in Ireland, an unmissable ritual. First, the riding lesson, where we pushed ourselves to perfect our position or attempted (and often failed) to keep our ponies from launching us into orbit over a cross-pole. Then, the real fun stable management. If you thought you were leaving without knowing how to spot colic, wrap a bandage properly, or pick out hooves without losing a finger, you were sorely mistaken.
But now? Stable management is disappearing faster than your horse's dignity when it spots a plastic bag.
From Mucking Out to Missing Out
These days, many young riders don't spend hours at the yard learning the ins and outs of horse care. They arrive, their pony is miraculously tacked up and ready, they ride for an hour, and off they go probably to post a reel of their perfect canter transition. And look, I get it. Times have changed. Insurance policies have made it harder for kids to hang around stables, and busy modern life means people want things quick and easy.
But here's the problem: a horse isn't an Instagram prop. It's a 1,000-pound flight animal that depends on its owner to know more than just how to sit pretty in the saddle. And without that old-school, hands-on education, we're seeing the consequences. Horses suffering from preventable colic, riders unable to recognize when their tack doesn't fit, people feeding their cob the same as a Thoroughbred and wondering why it's suddenly the size of a small elephant.
And the worst part? People are accepting standards of care that would have been unheard of years ago.
The Blind Leading the Blind
It's not just kids, either. There is now an entire generation of adult horse owners who don't actually know how to look after their horses properly. People who have spent years on riding school horses, never mucked out a stable, never bandaged a leg, never had to nurse a horse through an illness, suddenly finding themselves with their first horse and no idea what they're doing. And instead of admitting they need help, many of them turn to social media (sometimes it's ok, but not posts like is this colic?) for advice rather than a vet, a farrier, or an experienced horse person.
It's terrifying. These are the same people who will argue in Facebook groups about whether their horse is "just lazy" instead of recognizing pain, who think a horse standing in a stable 24/7 is fine because 'he doesn't seem unhappy', and who will spend more on a glittery saddle pad than on a proper equine dentist.
Owning a horse should come with more than just a financial commitment, it should come with a commitment to education. But right now, there are too many owners who simply don't know what they don't know.
Bring Back the Basics, And the Blisters
So, what's the solution? We need to bring back the grit. Pony Clubs, riding schools, livery yards everyone needs to make stable management a non-negotiable part of equestrian life again. Not a boring add-on.
Not an optional extra. An essential, just like knowing which end of the horse kicks.
And for those of us who lived through the 'earn your saddle time' era? It's on us to pass that knowledge down. Teach the young ones how to tell the difference between a horse that's playing up and a horse and a horse that's in pain. Show them that grooming is not just a way to make your horse shiny for pictures it's how you check for cuts, lumps, or signs of discomfort. Explain why turnout isn't a luxury, it's a necessity.
A Little Tough Love
I miss those Friday nights at Pony Club. The smell of damp hay, the constant background noise of ponies trying to eat things they shouldn't, the feeling of pride when you finally got your plaits neat enough that your instructor didn't sigh in disappointment.
We need to bring that back, not just for nostalgia's sake, but for the horses. Because if we don't, we're going to end up with a generation of riders who can execute a perfect flying change on a robotic 10 year old riding school horse but don't know what to do when their horse colics at 2 a.m. And that?
That's the kind of horror story no equestrian wants to live through.
