teapot
Well-Known Member
We all have terrible memories of some hateful ogre who screamed at us in the first few years of our equine addiction. They faced us with our own cowardice and generally humiliated us on a regular basis. We all like to think that they suffer due penance for these sins. However, once you have had the pleasure of teaching in a busy riding school you will feel nothing but the deepest empathy and forgiveness for every BHSAI that terrorized your childhood.
Imagine this: you've had a long, hard week of s**t shovelling and bronc riding and now on a Friday night, when you long to relax in a hot bath, then put on your face and glad rags and remind yourself and the rest of the world that you are, in fact, human, you have four hours of Thelwellian goings on to supervise.
About 3pm it is time to "catch the ponies". What you really need is fifteen highly experienced horse wranglers from Texas mounted on world champion cutting horses. What you have is yourself, lots of head collars with no ropes or ropes with no clips, and a couple of eager but useless prepubescent girls. These are the "volunteers" that are the Almightys' excuse for not hiring any competent staff that they might have to pay 10p an hour. You trek out into the middle of sixty acres of badly fenced land with a bucket of nuts. You might as well cross the M25 at rush hour, blindfolded and drunk, your chances of emerging unscathed are about the same. After about an hour you are in tears and so are your little helpers. You have one pony - the greediest. He is only 12.2hh but you mount him anyway. This is how you learn to be a cowgirl. Doing your finest impression of Mel Gibson in "Braveheart" you gallop about screaming and bellowing with rage. By 5p.m. when the first lesson is due to start you have three ponies. All very well if you didn't have ten riders. shetland it! Maybe you'll get lucky and be fired.
Once you give up, and sit crying in the wet grass, at this useless waste of your life and godgiven talents the little darlings trot innocently past you into the yard. In the state of calmness and control these proceedings have left you in, you have to face the tacking up of the muddy little nags. Fifteen (who needs to book?) lovely children mill around you as you play the daily puzzle game of fit the right tack on the right pony. It would, of course, make your life far too easy if every pony had its' own tack, with cute little nameplates on it. The Almighty is too stingy to have tack for every pony; after all, you never use them all at once do you? Well if you do, it is your problem, not theirs - they only own the place after all. While you wrestle with the mental obstacle course caused by this mingy behaviour, ten voices are ringing round you.
"Can I ride Star?" squeals the pukey blonde one with the mother that hates you.
"No I want Star, she said I could ride her last week - didn't you?" argues an equally hateful chubby one.
Blah, bleedin' blah blah. Much as you would like to let the little loves cause each other GBH requiring immediate hospitalisation so you don't have to teach any of them, you settle for cunning.
" Whoever can find Star's tack and get on her first can ride her". One less to tack up. This rarely works however, as they will have the saddle on backwards and the bit over Stars' ears. You will be tempted, but it is better not to let them ride like this. If you are prone to the use of some of the more Saxon four letter nouns, verbs and adjectives it is a good idea to say as little as possible at this time because children (bless their hearts) love to tell Mummy everything and Mummy (bless her perfect hair) would relish telling the Almighty what the instructor calls the children.
You will find that all children learning to ride fall into three basic categories. The only similarity is that they are all equally infuriating. Firstly, the Gibberers. These scream and clutch at the saddle if the pony actually moves. They cry if Daddy doesn't lead them. You just do not have the time to cope with these. After all, there is no equestrian discipline, which just involves standing still. Even the guards at Buckingham Palace have to walk to get to their posts. Tell them to ask Mummy to buy them a nice rocking horse and come back when they have mastered that.
Secondly, the Suicide Bombers. These have, rather unhealthily, no inkling of their mortality. They want to ride the jazziest crazy ponies, they throw tantrums if you take away their crops, they scream endlessly " Can we jump now? " and " I want to canter" and "Sharon used to let me, you're no good". Inevitably their skill is not equal to their ambition. It is SO tempting to let them get on with it, in the hope that a few crashing falls or uncontrolled bolts around the school will teach them healthy caution or very hopefully cause such terror that they will be rendered forever speechless. But, alas, manslaughter generally carries a custodial sentence. In any case, if one of these things "accidentally" happens to them you usually find they merely giggle with glee and ask if they can do it again. You hate them most because they are braver than you.
Thirdly, the Pathetic Triers. These kids are scared but nobly try to look like they are having fun. Any self-respecting pony picks up on their underlying wimpishness and has a ball. They bumble about with the child attempting to steer with reins so long that their hands are somewhere around their ears. They could erroneously land a plane with these antics. What is it with kids and reins? They tend to end up in tears of frustration whimpering " But he just doesnt want to do it!" To which the only reply is:
" For ***** sake make him! You useless little Blah Blah bleedin' Blah".
You must also be aware of the perfect workings of Sods' Law within this game. If a child takes a crashing fall, that is obviously your fault in some way, you can be certain that if there is only one parent watching the lesson, it will be the parent of the child that fell off. There is nothing to be gained by pointing out that Sugarlump is normally catatonic and asking how were you supposed to know he would choose today to be reborn as a prize bronc.
Required Characteristics
Love of children would help, but if like most instructors you hate them, it is necessary to have acting skills that would sweep the boards at the Oscars. If you are talented enough to not have all the kids and their parents hate you then you should go to Drama school - what the hell do you want to be a poxy Riding Instructor for? An extremely even temper is required or, if you fail on that one, the ability to bottle it all up to take out on someone else later on. Eyes in the back of your head and the lungs of an Opera singer would help too.
Scales of Remuneration
You teach a lesson of fourteen darlings, which including the rounding up, tacking up and arguments with parents takes about three hours of your time. For this the Almighty will reap about one hundred and forty pounds. You will gain the usual one pound and a handful of coppers if you work full time at the yard. If you are freelance, then you might earn a tenner or so. If you are doing it to clock up the required 500 hours of teaching experience, so that you too can be a BHSAI and make this nightmare your means of earning a living, then you will undoubtedly be an unpaid volunteer. Remember to be grateful for the privilege of gaining experience in how to have nervous breakdown quietly and smile at all times.
Imagine this: you've had a long, hard week of s**t shovelling and bronc riding and now on a Friday night, when you long to relax in a hot bath, then put on your face and glad rags and remind yourself and the rest of the world that you are, in fact, human, you have four hours of Thelwellian goings on to supervise.
About 3pm it is time to "catch the ponies". What you really need is fifteen highly experienced horse wranglers from Texas mounted on world champion cutting horses. What you have is yourself, lots of head collars with no ropes or ropes with no clips, and a couple of eager but useless prepubescent girls. These are the "volunteers" that are the Almightys' excuse for not hiring any competent staff that they might have to pay 10p an hour. You trek out into the middle of sixty acres of badly fenced land with a bucket of nuts. You might as well cross the M25 at rush hour, blindfolded and drunk, your chances of emerging unscathed are about the same. After about an hour you are in tears and so are your little helpers. You have one pony - the greediest. He is only 12.2hh but you mount him anyway. This is how you learn to be a cowgirl. Doing your finest impression of Mel Gibson in "Braveheart" you gallop about screaming and bellowing with rage. By 5p.m. when the first lesson is due to start you have three ponies. All very well if you didn't have ten riders. shetland it! Maybe you'll get lucky and be fired.
Once you give up, and sit crying in the wet grass, at this useless waste of your life and godgiven talents the little darlings trot innocently past you into the yard. In the state of calmness and control these proceedings have left you in, you have to face the tacking up of the muddy little nags. Fifteen (who needs to book?) lovely children mill around you as you play the daily puzzle game of fit the right tack on the right pony. It would, of course, make your life far too easy if every pony had its' own tack, with cute little nameplates on it. The Almighty is too stingy to have tack for every pony; after all, you never use them all at once do you? Well if you do, it is your problem, not theirs - they only own the place after all. While you wrestle with the mental obstacle course caused by this mingy behaviour, ten voices are ringing round you.
"Can I ride Star?" squeals the pukey blonde one with the mother that hates you.
"No I want Star, she said I could ride her last week - didn't you?" argues an equally hateful chubby one.
Blah, bleedin' blah blah. Much as you would like to let the little loves cause each other GBH requiring immediate hospitalisation so you don't have to teach any of them, you settle for cunning.
" Whoever can find Star's tack and get on her first can ride her". One less to tack up. This rarely works however, as they will have the saddle on backwards and the bit over Stars' ears. You will be tempted, but it is better not to let them ride like this. If you are prone to the use of some of the more Saxon four letter nouns, verbs and adjectives it is a good idea to say as little as possible at this time because children (bless their hearts) love to tell Mummy everything and Mummy (bless her perfect hair) would relish telling the Almighty what the instructor calls the children.
You will find that all children learning to ride fall into three basic categories. The only similarity is that they are all equally infuriating. Firstly, the Gibberers. These scream and clutch at the saddle if the pony actually moves. They cry if Daddy doesn't lead them. You just do not have the time to cope with these. After all, there is no equestrian discipline, which just involves standing still. Even the guards at Buckingham Palace have to walk to get to their posts. Tell them to ask Mummy to buy them a nice rocking horse and come back when they have mastered that.
Secondly, the Suicide Bombers. These have, rather unhealthily, no inkling of their mortality. They want to ride the jazziest crazy ponies, they throw tantrums if you take away their crops, they scream endlessly " Can we jump now? " and " I want to canter" and "Sharon used to let me, you're no good". Inevitably their skill is not equal to their ambition. It is SO tempting to let them get on with it, in the hope that a few crashing falls or uncontrolled bolts around the school will teach them healthy caution or very hopefully cause such terror that they will be rendered forever speechless. But, alas, manslaughter generally carries a custodial sentence. In any case, if one of these things "accidentally" happens to them you usually find they merely giggle with glee and ask if they can do it again. You hate them most because they are braver than you.
Thirdly, the Pathetic Triers. These kids are scared but nobly try to look like they are having fun. Any self-respecting pony picks up on their underlying wimpishness and has a ball. They bumble about with the child attempting to steer with reins so long that their hands are somewhere around their ears. They could erroneously land a plane with these antics. What is it with kids and reins? They tend to end up in tears of frustration whimpering " But he just doesnt want to do it!" To which the only reply is:
" For ***** sake make him! You useless little Blah Blah bleedin' Blah".
You must also be aware of the perfect workings of Sods' Law within this game. If a child takes a crashing fall, that is obviously your fault in some way, you can be certain that if there is only one parent watching the lesson, it will be the parent of the child that fell off. There is nothing to be gained by pointing out that Sugarlump is normally catatonic and asking how were you supposed to know he would choose today to be reborn as a prize bronc.
Required Characteristics
Love of children would help, but if like most instructors you hate them, it is necessary to have acting skills that would sweep the boards at the Oscars. If you are talented enough to not have all the kids and their parents hate you then you should go to Drama school - what the hell do you want to be a poxy Riding Instructor for? An extremely even temper is required or, if you fail on that one, the ability to bottle it all up to take out on someone else later on. Eyes in the back of your head and the lungs of an Opera singer would help too.
Scales of Remuneration
You teach a lesson of fourteen darlings, which including the rounding up, tacking up and arguments with parents takes about three hours of your time. For this the Almighty will reap about one hundred and forty pounds. You will gain the usual one pound and a handful of coppers if you work full time at the yard. If you are freelance, then you might earn a tenner or so. If you are doing it to clock up the required 500 hours of teaching experience, so that you too can be a BHSAI and make this nightmare your means of earning a living, then you will undoubtedly be an unpaid volunteer. Remember to be grateful for the privilege of gaining experience in how to have nervous breakdown quietly and smile at all times.
