A Day in the Life
There are plenty of blogs and articles about being a working student, and they span the whole spectrum. There are the wonderful “my life is perfect and I get to ride all these pretty ponies and learn from the best of the best”, then there are the “I am trapped in a living horse-hell as a slave and I hate my life and everyone else too”. The truth, at least for me, encompassed a little of both. As a working student you learn many things, most of which are not even listed in the job description as things you can “get experience in”. For instance, you learn, with astounding speed, how to recognize when all hell is about to break loose. You know as soon as that very expensive, very fragile horse starts walking that fence line, you better get your butt over to that pasture before you see six-figures running for all its worth around a muddy paddock. You quickly become a master at the 100-meter dash in your riding pants and muck boots. It’s amazing how much speed you can pick up as you run to close the gate, when that horse you were leading oh so quietly just seconds before, decides to make its bid for freedom. There are upsides too though. You develop the arms of a body builder, you lose at least 15 pounds (you think it’s probably your body’s desperate attempt to make that all too frequent 100-meter dash a little easier), and you can now claim sleeping anywhere at any time as your other super power, second only to baby talking large terrified creatures.
For me the positives were very real too. I really did learn from the best of the best. I learned more than I ever thought could. Even if I had had the ability to take regular lessons from and FEI trainer, the experience is totally different when you get to live, breathe, walk, eat and sleep that life. Some days it was so easy it seemed to be just what I imagined as a kid. I had fantastic rides. Everything went as planned. The weather gods smiled upon me. The horses were well-behaved and they came in from their fields clean. They made me and their owners proud. They were happy and healthy. Those days I would all but scoff at people who worked in offices, with their two-hour lunch breaks and climate controlled workspace. I almost pitied them. They would never understand the beauty of my job, my absolute fortune to be where I was. Then there were normal days. I had some good, some not-so-good rides. Everything went decently, nothing great. Just normal. Trust me those are still good days.
Then there are those days. The days where I felt like I had made the wrong choice, not just that day, not just that morning, but for every freakin day of the past ten years of my life. Those are days when my rides went horribly. I couldn’t seem to get the horse to do anything, my training felt like it was failing me and the horse. It was ugly, wrong, and sometime dangerous. Those days I was angry, the horse was angry, sometimes the people around me were angry. Days where I did nothing but clean mud plastered horses, or mop up water from broken pipes, or be on day 15 since my last day off. Some of those bad days were when a horse breaks loose and gets hurt, and you wonder, was that your fault? You are up all night with a serious colic and they have to put the horse down. You have a horse seriously kick a groom and have to rush them to the hospital. Anyone you talk to who is any kind of professional in this industry has these stories and more. Then what? Let me tell you, I know. Then you question the reasons you made this choice. If you still feel them, if your reasons are still valid, if it is still the only thing that makes you happy, if all the pros outweigh all the cons, you stay. If they don’t? You leave.