Roisiny
Active Member
We applied for a foreign riding student 5 days ago, thinking we may get one next year. Yet to our surprise we got one immediately, and she arrived yesterday! She's a really lovely 17 year old girl from Paris and a nice rider. Pretty good english though a little shy of-course.
My question is, how much should we be "entertaining" her? We're a small riding school located in the rural west of Ireland, with camps 11-3pm, and a couple of hours of lessons in the evenings, that she can help with\ride in. We've also said that she can bring on 2 horses we have, riding and hacking them as they just aren't quite experienced for the school yet. Also mentioned if she felt up to it she could help reback a horse that was previously riding away, but was put out to grass over the winter and never restarted. Feel a little bit uncomfortable asking her to do stuff like muck out, as I have two daughters around her age, and they don't do it - I do.
Today brought her out on a long hack, and then brought my daughter's eventing pony to a XC course for her to school (although pony didn't need it) with my younger daughter's green horse. Her mother asked could she compete while here (which she hasn't done in France) but because we only do pony club and affiliated competitions, she can't compete in shows. She's coming to watch a SJ show tomorrow, and an ODE on Monday.
The only two other people we know who have had foreign students have either been
a) a massive stables, who'd have about 5 at a time and worked them like slaves
b) a family of horse producers, who have about 30 connemara ponies for schooling
So at both they would be constantly riding and riding daily, but as we're a lot smaller (13 horses, and only 2 broken without "jobs" currently) we're worried we'll be boring her a little. She's here for 4 weeks and we just don't want her to feel regret that she came to a riding school with a schedule and there's not unlimited riding!
So just wondering if anyone has ever been in the same boat before, and what have you done to keep yours content, or should this be enough? TIA
My question is, how much should we be "entertaining" her? We're a small riding school located in the rural west of Ireland, with camps 11-3pm, and a couple of hours of lessons in the evenings, that she can help with\ride in. We've also said that she can bring on 2 horses we have, riding and hacking them as they just aren't quite experienced for the school yet. Also mentioned if she felt up to it she could help reback a horse that was previously riding away, but was put out to grass over the winter and never restarted. Feel a little bit uncomfortable asking her to do stuff like muck out, as I have two daughters around her age, and they don't do it - I do.
Today brought her out on a long hack, and then brought my daughter's eventing pony to a XC course for her to school (although pony didn't need it) with my younger daughter's green horse. Her mother asked could she compete while here (which she hasn't done in France) but because we only do pony club and affiliated competitions, she can't compete in shows. She's coming to watch a SJ show tomorrow, and an ODE on Monday.
The only two other people we know who have had foreign students have either been
a) a massive stables, who'd have about 5 at a time and worked them like slaves
b) a family of horse producers, who have about 30 connemara ponies for schooling
So at both they would be constantly riding and riding daily, but as we're a lot smaller (13 horses, and only 2 broken without "jobs" currently) we're worried we'll be boring her a little. She's here for 4 weeks and we just don't want her to feel regret that she came to a riding school with a schedule and there's not unlimited riding!
So just wondering if anyone has ever been in the same boat before, and what have you done to keep yours content, or should this be enough? TIA
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