Should I change riding school?

Dwyran_gold

Dwyran_gold

Well-Known Member
Joined
17 January 2020
Messages
430
Visit site
So I’m 32 I’ve rode since I was 6 but after having my kids, putting my horse on loan and then selling him to the girl who had him on loan I’ve found myself three years down the line without riding. So I thought for a bit of ‘me’ time I’d book in some private lessons every week at my local riding school.
so last night I get there (my 3rd lesson there) and I get my horse, the instructor says “before we go in I want to tell you, this is a young horse, he is very lazy, he doesn’t listen to many commands you really have to tell him, he hasn’t been rode in a few months so isn’t in good condition either”.
I could see he wasn’t in good condition as he was 16.3hh with a massive head and the thinnest neck to hold it with and gaunt looking with a fat tum.
I got to the arena which they had split in to three and then split the three in to half so for my lesson i literally had a 20 meter circle to work with. The poor horse had his head as high as it would go in order to carry it with having no muscle tone.
The instructor kept telling me to get him on the bit so I would push him forward from the back to get him in my hands and on to the bit and he’d lose it right away. He was struggling so much.
He wouldn’t keep in any gate for long even with firm encouragement.
anyway the instructor said to me “I can see your doing everything right but you have to be very firm with this horse you have to whip him on ever stride, he’s not in good condition”
So I said “I know I could get him moving with a hard whip on every stride but I’m not sure I’m doing the horses owner any favours if she is working with him”
Instructor says “do what you have up do to get him going, this is a riding school, he can do it I want 5 20m circles without a change of pace”
So I do what she says, I whip the hell out of this poor animal every stride and yes he went but not how I’d have wanted him to get there.
Instructor says “that was great, you really worked him hard” then turns to the horse and says “don’t worry the next lesson is a starter”.
So I get off the horse and ask his age.... he’s 8!!
I got in to the car and was sick from absolute exhaustion and the whole situation.
so anyway, I spent the entire lesson trying to get the basics out of a horse who was totally out of condition and practically incapable of performing unless he was whipping to half an inch of his life.
So.... sorry for the long post but is this usual in the riding school world?
 
holeymoley said:
Owner/instructor sounds like a clown.

Tbey can’t expect an inexperienced unfit horse to work correctly nor can they expect anyone to get anything out of a lesson by riding like that.
Click to expand...

thats how I felt, I came away thinking I’ve got nothing out of this lesson but more importantly what did the horse get out of this? A LOT of the wrong way of training. Then it just filled me with dread.
 
Yeah, that sounds like a good time to look at other options in your area.

I'd expect school horses to be fit enough to teach me during a lesson, not for the rider simply to be exercising a horse who needs work.

It sounds like they used you to exercise a horse and I'm not sure you really got value for money from your lesson.
 
I had a lesson like that. Horse needed a smack every 3-4 strides to maintain canter for a lap or he would just break to trot. After 1 canter I turned in, got off and said 'this horse is hating every second of this and so am I. ' Did not go back. That is not normal so yes vote with your feet and find somewhere else.
 
That is unacceptable on every level, you are paying good money for lessons and should be provided with a horse that is up to the job, the horse needs to be got fit so it is able to perform his job, I think a call to the local licensing authority should be considered, send a pm to Adorable Alice on here with more details and see what she suggests, it is her area of expertise.
 
Yes!! Change. I have had lessons like this at riding schools in the past when I was too inexperienced to know any better so I just assumed it was normal and carried on.

Later I made our entire university’s BUCS league change venue due to poor practices like this. Lame and unfit horses and horses who were acting out due to being in pain were consistently used in lessons so we moved and they lost approx £8k pa of business. They asked us why and when we explained they basically said ‘fair enough’ so they clearly knew what they were doing. It makes me so cross!

Vote with your feet.
 
emilylou said:
Yes!! Change. I have had lessons like this at riding schools in the past when I was too inexperienced to know any better so I just assumed it was normal and carried on.

Later I made our entire university’s BUCS league change venue due to poor practices like this. Lame and unfit horses and horses who were acting out due to being in pain were consistently used in lessons so we moved and they lost approx £8k pa of business. They asked us why and when we explained they basically said ‘fair enough’ so they clearly knew what they were doing. It makes me so cross!

Vote with your feet.
Click to expand...

oh wow, that’s terrible. I was always taught as a child that to scale a horses response level from 1-5 In firmness and if you ever have to get to 3 then you need to work on training your horse again. Then after this I go online and read some instructors saying that learning to ride properly is about riding every horse how it asks to be rode and to be as firm as it takes and I wonder why we have horse trainers? Why we keep our horses in a good condition? So I thought I’d post my experience on here... I’m glad I did, I was starting to think it was me x
 
The horse is not lazy it is underweight unfit and has no energy! The fat belly sounds like worms. Definitely report them to the council this does not meet animal welfare regulations. If the riding school is BHS or ABRS registered report to them too. Those organisations cover the standard of instruction. Telling you to whip any horse every stride is wrong but especially one in that state!
 
Is it normal to "whip a horse to within an half an inch of it's life" just because someone tells you to?

Please, take some action now, maybe contact the BHS Welfare for your area but also take some time to try to understand why you'd comply with the instructor. We are all responsible for our own behaviour and need to draw lines that we will not cross when it comes to horses and instruction. I'm sorry you had this experience - even more so for the poor horse.
 
ozpoz said:
Is it normal to "whip a horse to within an half an inch of it's life" just because someone tells you to?

Please, take some action now, maybe contact the BHS Welfare for your area but also take some time to try to understand why you'd comply with the instructor. We are all responsible for our own behaviour and need to draw lines that we will not cross when it comes to horses and instruction. I'm sorry you had this experience - even more so for the poor horse.
Click to expand...

i complied because unfortunately I’d been online beforehand and read a lot of comments from instructors on here saying ‘it’s not the horse it’s the rider’, ‘it’s not the instructor it’s the rider’, ‘a rider should be able to get any horse going’ in my pre riding school research. So I was expecting difficult school horses. I was blind sighted to thinking I must have gotten in to bad habits having owned my own horses. So I went with it even though I knew it was a load of crap. I was half expecting someone to pop on here to tell me I was I. The wrong but not what you’ve said!
 
ozpoz said:
Is it normal to "whip a horse to within an half an inch of it's life" just because someone tells you to?

Please, take some action now, maybe contact the BHS Welfare for your area but also take some time to try to understand why you'd comply with the instructor. We are all responsible for our own behaviour and need to draw lines that we will not cross when it comes to horses and instruction. I'm sorry you had this experience - even more so for the poor horse.
Click to expand...

I think this is a little unfair on the OP. When you are inexperienced and not confident in your own abilities it is difficult to make judgment calls in the moment, especially when bad advice is coming from the person who you expect to be better, more knowledgeable and more experienced than you are. It sounds like the OP questioned the instructor and voiced her concerns but was dismissed and encouraged to continue.
I’m sure she will now know this isn’t okay and will take a firmer stance on welfare issues in future. An experienced eye wouldn’t have got on the horse in the first place, but OP is not an experienced eye and she went to the riding school expecting experienced help from people she could trust, and this trust was abused.
 
ozpoz said:
Is it normal to "whip a horse to within an half an inch of it's life" just because someone tells you to?

Please, take some action now, maybe contact the BHS Welfare for your area but also take some time to try to understand why you'd comply with the instructor. We are all responsible for our own behaviour and need to draw lines that we will not cross when it comes to horses and instruction. I'm sorry you had this experience - even more so for the poor horse.
Click to expand...

You ever heard of the Milgram Experiment?
 
OP do you think there is a welfare issue with this poor horse. From what you describe it does sound the case to me and far from fit to be used in a riding school. You haven't replied to comments about reporting to local authority etc. . Was the RI qualified - hopefully the governing body who gave her/him the necessary teaching qualifications might also be interested to hear about this horse abuse?
 
Yes, it can be difficult to make judgement calls, I agree. And the OP, who has ridden since she was six, had her own horse, and is a parent, so not without experience, whipped the hell out of it every stride until she was exhausted. All I'm suggesting is that adult riders are responsible for their own actions when it comes to whip use/abuse. I nearly had an "only ignorance" rant here!
See Black Beauty for details : )
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top