Cultural differences?

[Rusty Rider]

Hi all,

New poster here. I am French but have been living in England for around 8 years now. I grew up riding but quit in my teenage years (biggest mistake I ever made, but that’s another story). Anyway, 5 years ago, I started riding again, mostly at home in France as my little sister caught the bug, and Mum got back into it too, and I have been trying to find somewhere to ride regularly at in the meantime.

My biggest problem here is, wherever I go, I am told to show up only 10 min before my lesson, and my horse is presented to me in the arena, all ready to go... At home, you get to the yard 60-40min early and tack up yourself, then look after your horse after. It’s all part of the pleasure of riding to me, but having now tried 4 riding schools around me, it does not seem to happen in England at all?! I even read reviews from people complaining that they were expected to untack themselves... WTF?!

Anyway, is this the same everywhere, or is there hope? My plan was to get riding regularly, then get a part loan, then eventually buy but I’m starting to think I might have to skip steps...

 

[Flicker]

I’m sure if you spoke to your riding school they’d be happy for you to undertake this yourself. Certainly when I had riding lessons in South Africa, the horses were tacked up ready for customers for the first couple of lessons and once they knew what they were doing they could groom and tack up themselves.

 

[Equi]

As said, talk to the school. The problem is, in many UK riding schools the horses will be doing back to back lessons, so won't need tacked or untacked. If you are doing a private lesson though, id be asking to do it all yourself because i would not want to be paying for a private lesson on a horse who has been ridden 100 already that day.

 

[Surbie]

It depends where you go I think. I ride at 3 different stables. At one I get the same as you - horse presented and then taken away after. The other two expect me to go get the (tacked up) horse, and then to put it away after, untacking and giving a quick fuss to after. All 3 yards are busy, but I do like the assumption that I won't just be there to get on, have a lesson and then bog off afterwards.

One of the 3 offers a 'part-share' option where you essentially get a specific horse to have for a day a week. It is pricey but it seems to be offered a bit more at riding stables where I am, where livery fees are very high and where in the term-time week most horses appear to be used fairly little.

 

[pixie]

When I've started at places, the horses are usually tacked up ready on arrival. Once they know that I am capable, they'll leave it for me to do.

 

[confirmedponyaddict]

It's not the norm here for several reasons, one is time- its quicker to tack a horse up yourself (from a groom's point of view) than to show someone where the tack is, make sure they're being safe (horse tied up etc) then check it before they get on, for private lessons its not such a big deal but if you had a group of people doing it it's very time consuming to keep eyes on all of them. Sadly another is good old health and safety, if I tell you a horse is safe to tack up but for some reason it bites or kicks you, then I'm liable and there are some stupid people out there who would try and sue for that (especially if there's children involved) and lastly I think the majority of clients do expect their horse to be 'presented' to them ready. Maybe it's because I've mainly worked in wealthy areas but that seems to be the attitude. I've even worked on yards where tacking the horse up and handing it to the owner is part of the full livery package- flipping ridiculous!

 

[MissTyc]

I did the move from France to UK in 2005 and also suffered this same culture shock even though I had my own horses back home (followed me later - so I wanted to get some riding in the meantime). The way of describing levels was also v interesting. I undersold myself massively because I told them I was novice for jumping and dressage and wanted to improve. I was competing the equivalent of elementary which is pretty much the first level of dressage back home so I thought I was rubbish. I was less rubbish than the school horses it turns out!

Keep looking! Or you might find you'd enjoy a private horse; perhaps a share with lessons? Lots of people do that round here.

 

[gnubee]

I used to ride at pretty much all the stables local to me. Pretty much the most advanced group in all of them. One I was in the first lesson in the morning and after I'd been there about 3 years they started accepting my offer to help with tacking up if I was there early. Two of them I would be asked to tack up on the (very rare) occasion where I was there early and the horse wasn't already tacked. The first one I liked tacking up at as it had one tack room, with tack clean, ready and clearly labled. All the others I was glad were usually tacked up for me. Many had multiple tackrooms and you were lucky if you could figure out where tack for any given horse was. Lots of the pegs were poorly labled, and frequently had tack for the wrong horse on them, bits missing (saddle but no bridle) etc. Particularly in the ones that had "Pony club" days or "own a pony" weeks, you needed a decent amount of experience to identify the tack that had been put together wrong (wrong girth that would never get tight enough, a million ways to build a bridle incorrectly etc) and then for each problem you found you would have to find someone to help you resolve the problem and hope you got someone sufficiently experienced to actually help and not just insist the pony sized saddle on the 18hh dressage horse peg is the right one. Frankly in those situations I would way rather turn up to a tacked up horse than go round locating and vetting all the tack.
Generally when they are tacked up for you the staff or regular volunteers have solved these problems for you, but particularly during the school holidays I would definitely double check your tack before getting on - I learned that the hard way when half an hour into the lesson I discovered the pony's tom thumb bit was on upside down.