teapot
Well-Known Member
Stolen shamefully from another forum:
Wanting to work with horses is a symptom of the most vicious strain of equinitis. This disease is extremely virulent and although it is possible for any human being to contract this disease, females are generally more susceptible and usually show the first symptoms between the ages of 5 and 12. Some of the early symptoms are as follows; ecstatic shouts of Horsey! Horsey!; a tendency to climb aboard the Labrador; reins on the bicycle; frantic dashes to the window at the sound of hooves on the road; nose pressing the window in the car when passing fields containing equines. This is the time to hit the disease hard. The best cure for early equinits is a Shetland pony. This treatment is successful in many cases but sadly for some the disease runs unchecked into the teenage years, causing poverty and retarded social development. Happily many teenagers will simply grow out of equinitis around the time they notice the opposite sex. If, as a sufferer, you havent grown out of it and instead of accepting a place at university you find yourself uttering the fatal words Dad, I want to work with horses your disease has entered the mature stage and you will just have to learn to cope with the disfigurement to your future this causes.
This article is written on behalf of your parents/spouse/friends whose advice you just wont take.
Here are the facts.
Firstly, if you want a career with horses, be prepared to isolate yourself from society and forget anything that vaguely resembles a social life. Become celibate and put holidays in the sun far from your poor disturbed mind. Forget lazy weekends and distance yourself permanently from the goings on in Albert Square, Brookside Close, Coronation Street etc. Put all normal human pastimes out of your mind and focus for a moment on the lives of junior doctors. They are the only group of people who work the sort of hours that will be expected of you if you work with horses. Junior Doctors, however, are learning stuff that in five years time will reap them detached suburban residences, holidays in the Maldives, BMWs, gourmet meals and designer labels.
You, on the other hand, are learning stuff that will enable you to live in a damp, smelly freezing caravan, have holidays either at home with your parents or at the local pony club camp, (very dangerous). On your one day off your Nissan Micra might get you as far as Lidl, but as you cant afford to tax and insure it you will probably have to get the bus to buy your beans and tinned pasta. Before you head home you can browse in Oxfam and the RSPCA shop and maybe splash out on second hand jeans and misshapen sweaters that smell a bit funny.
Horses are not a job- generally you are paid for those; they are a vocation, a life sentence in poverty. It should be made quite clear at this point however that I blame not the innocent beasts. After all, Dobbin would be delirious if he could just be left to his own devices on a hillside somewhere; give him a few buddies to gad about with and he would be sorted. No, it is the whole set up of the "Equine Industry" that is backbreaking and heartbreaking. Somewhere along the way it has all gone cockeyed. It seems that performing degrading labour involving excrement and risking life and limb on animals the boss refuses to ride is somehow a great privilege, which requires little or no remuneration. Here are some of the jobs you will see advertised. Better get to know the lingo.
Working Pupil
This position is c**p. Dont do it. Have more respect for yourself. The idea is supposed to be that you learn in return for work, sort of apprentice like. The idea from the employers point of view is that he doesnt have to pay you. So then in his eyes you must be mad and desperate and he need not tire himself acknowledging the fact that you are human. You can forget about learning the deep secrets of horsemanship from your hallowed master. Unless, of course, you are in need of instruction in the fine arts of wielding a fork, barrow, broom, sponge, paintbrush or hose. The working pupil is the lowest of the low. Sometimes referred to in the authors experience as "bitchslave", "amoeba", "cretin or, most flatteringly " Oi! You!
As a working pupil you will be in charge of mucking out anything from four to twenty boxes depending on which country you are in and what planet your boss comes from. Beware of the most well known trick that catches out dewy eyed horsey teens. If, with your misplaced and dangerous desire to impress, you get your stables clean and well kept so that you won't miss your coffee break every morning, it is likely that they will be swapped with someone elses. Their boxes will inevitably house a horse somewhere under a tall pile of excrement. If you dig it all out and leave the stables sweet and clean and the horses much relieved, not only will you miss your coffee break, but you will also be derided by your fellow workers and chewed by the boss for being slow. Your fellow amoebas will industriously make sure your former boxes are filthy after a week and they will be assigned back to you for remedial digging. You will be sweating and cursing while they are drinking coffee, laughing at you and snaffling all the goodies that owner brings over because YOU have his horse looking so well. You will, however, have learned lesson one: nobody will appreciate hard work. If you work quickly and thoroughly you will just be given more to do until your spirit is satisfactorily broken and you go off to stack shelves at Lidl. So slack off, everyone else does and it's not like you're being paid or anything.
Once the titanic mucking out is done, and the sloanes who are full of your cakes trot off on their shining beasts, you will be saddled with every mind numbing task you can possibly imagine; sweeping acres of concrete with a brush that is little more than a stick with designer stubble; raking in the sides of the arenas, which total two miles (give or take a yard or two); hosing the arenas with water pressure that occasionally astounds by being more of a trickle than a dribble; cleaning the toilets; whitewashing the equivalent of the exterior of Badminton House; creosoting fifteen miles of post and rail fencing; painting show jumps; hefting other show jumps hither and thither while the Almighty sits upon his/her dazzling horse pointing hither and thither in an exasperated manner.
When grooming and tacking up horses for the Almighty, learn quickly their particular foibles or acquire earplugs and grow elephant skin in place of your own. With some it is the tightness of the noseband and the oiledness of the hooves. With others, the dampenedness of the mane, the perfect, checked with a setsquare, straightness of the numnah, even the colour coordination of the horses bandages with their shirt. Then there is the horrible sin of the shavings from hooves marring the perfection of their concrete (which you swept, so you should damned well be allowed to dirty!). There are also those who would send you to bed without any gruel for using anything other than your fingers to tease out a tail. The fact that the horse has a tail a Rastafarian would die for is irrelevant of course. This area is a minefield, there is no way of knowing what the deadly sins are unless you bribe a sloane with cakes for a list of the seventy (or thereabouts) deadly sins.
Most of all beware of THE GADGETS. Many a working pupil has gone under the lash because of these abominable puzzles. Learn faster than a Krypton Factor champion how to tack up a horse with double bridle, cavesson, chambon, balancing rein, draw reins and De Gogue (occasionally all at once) and get it wrong at your peril! Even if the pulley systems are made from bits of baler twine and the attachments are snaffle bits tied to the headpiece - get it right!
Sometime during the long day you may be allowed to grace the same arena as the Almighty on your own embarrassing animal, or the old yoke they keep for bitchslaves to bumble about on. The Almighty will drop the odd hint in your direction, but don't be fooled if they seem preoccupied sixty metres away piaffing a four year old from the Verden sales, if ye yank or boot they shall see and ye shall suffer the wrath that maketh the ears ring and the head hangeth in shame!
After all the tacking up, the washing down, the grooming, the rugging, the feeding and watering, the lugging of wet haynets, that is your afternoon, you stagger into the tack room dreaming of coffee and a peaceful smoke. You are faced with twenty dirty bridles hanging on one three pronged hook. The ceiling groans. At this point it is recommended that you sit cross-legged on the floor, use those breathing exercises you read about in the dentists waiting room, and attempt to accept your karma. If you can't - take your Micra and go see what Lidl are paying these days.
Required Characteristics
Utter lack of self respect, impaired hearing, thick skin, Kypton Factor puzzle solving skills, cunning and a metabolism that can function on coffee, nicotine and baked beans alone.
Scales of Remuneration
Payment for this work varies from you paying them anything up to £100 a week, to them paying you nothing. Or you might get your horses keep and your caravan for nothing. Well, they call it nothing. Most of all remember to be grateful and to smile.
Wanting to work with horses is a symptom of the most vicious strain of equinitis. This disease is extremely virulent and although it is possible for any human being to contract this disease, females are generally more susceptible and usually show the first symptoms between the ages of 5 and 12. Some of the early symptoms are as follows; ecstatic shouts of Horsey! Horsey!; a tendency to climb aboard the Labrador; reins on the bicycle; frantic dashes to the window at the sound of hooves on the road; nose pressing the window in the car when passing fields containing equines. This is the time to hit the disease hard. The best cure for early equinits is a Shetland pony. This treatment is successful in many cases but sadly for some the disease runs unchecked into the teenage years, causing poverty and retarded social development. Happily many teenagers will simply grow out of equinitis around the time they notice the opposite sex. If, as a sufferer, you havent grown out of it and instead of accepting a place at university you find yourself uttering the fatal words Dad, I want to work with horses your disease has entered the mature stage and you will just have to learn to cope with the disfigurement to your future this causes.
This article is written on behalf of your parents/spouse/friends whose advice you just wont take.
Here are the facts.
Firstly, if you want a career with horses, be prepared to isolate yourself from society and forget anything that vaguely resembles a social life. Become celibate and put holidays in the sun far from your poor disturbed mind. Forget lazy weekends and distance yourself permanently from the goings on in Albert Square, Brookside Close, Coronation Street etc. Put all normal human pastimes out of your mind and focus for a moment on the lives of junior doctors. They are the only group of people who work the sort of hours that will be expected of you if you work with horses. Junior Doctors, however, are learning stuff that in five years time will reap them detached suburban residences, holidays in the Maldives, BMWs, gourmet meals and designer labels.
You, on the other hand, are learning stuff that will enable you to live in a damp, smelly freezing caravan, have holidays either at home with your parents or at the local pony club camp, (very dangerous). On your one day off your Nissan Micra might get you as far as Lidl, but as you cant afford to tax and insure it you will probably have to get the bus to buy your beans and tinned pasta. Before you head home you can browse in Oxfam and the RSPCA shop and maybe splash out on second hand jeans and misshapen sweaters that smell a bit funny.
Horses are not a job- generally you are paid for those; they are a vocation, a life sentence in poverty. It should be made quite clear at this point however that I blame not the innocent beasts. After all, Dobbin would be delirious if he could just be left to his own devices on a hillside somewhere; give him a few buddies to gad about with and he would be sorted. No, it is the whole set up of the "Equine Industry" that is backbreaking and heartbreaking. Somewhere along the way it has all gone cockeyed. It seems that performing degrading labour involving excrement and risking life and limb on animals the boss refuses to ride is somehow a great privilege, which requires little or no remuneration. Here are some of the jobs you will see advertised. Better get to know the lingo.
Working Pupil
This position is c**p. Dont do it. Have more respect for yourself. The idea is supposed to be that you learn in return for work, sort of apprentice like. The idea from the employers point of view is that he doesnt have to pay you. So then in his eyes you must be mad and desperate and he need not tire himself acknowledging the fact that you are human. You can forget about learning the deep secrets of horsemanship from your hallowed master. Unless, of course, you are in need of instruction in the fine arts of wielding a fork, barrow, broom, sponge, paintbrush or hose. The working pupil is the lowest of the low. Sometimes referred to in the authors experience as "bitchslave", "amoeba", "cretin or, most flatteringly " Oi! You!
As a working pupil you will be in charge of mucking out anything from four to twenty boxes depending on which country you are in and what planet your boss comes from. Beware of the most well known trick that catches out dewy eyed horsey teens. If, with your misplaced and dangerous desire to impress, you get your stables clean and well kept so that you won't miss your coffee break every morning, it is likely that they will be swapped with someone elses. Their boxes will inevitably house a horse somewhere under a tall pile of excrement. If you dig it all out and leave the stables sweet and clean and the horses much relieved, not only will you miss your coffee break, but you will also be derided by your fellow workers and chewed by the boss for being slow. Your fellow amoebas will industriously make sure your former boxes are filthy after a week and they will be assigned back to you for remedial digging. You will be sweating and cursing while they are drinking coffee, laughing at you and snaffling all the goodies that owner brings over because YOU have his horse looking so well. You will, however, have learned lesson one: nobody will appreciate hard work. If you work quickly and thoroughly you will just be given more to do until your spirit is satisfactorily broken and you go off to stack shelves at Lidl. So slack off, everyone else does and it's not like you're being paid or anything.
Once the titanic mucking out is done, and the sloanes who are full of your cakes trot off on their shining beasts, you will be saddled with every mind numbing task you can possibly imagine; sweeping acres of concrete with a brush that is little more than a stick with designer stubble; raking in the sides of the arenas, which total two miles (give or take a yard or two); hosing the arenas with water pressure that occasionally astounds by being more of a trickle than a dribble; cleaning the toilets; whitewashing the equivalent of the exterior of Badminton House; creosoting fifteen miles of post and rail fencing; painting show jumps; hefting other show jumps hither and thither while the Almighty sits upon his/her dazzling horse pointing hither and thither in an exasperated manner.
When grooming and tacking up horses for the Almighty, learn quickly their particular foibles or acquire earplugs and grow elephant skin in place of your own. With some it is the tightness of the noseband and the oiledness of the hooves. With others, the dampenedness of the mane, the perfect, checked with a setsquare, straightness of the numnah, even the colour coordination of the horses bandages with their shirt. Then there is the horrible sin of the shavings from hooves marring the perfection of their concrete (which you swept, so you should damned well be allowed to dirty!). There are also those who would send you to bed without any gruel for using anything other than your fingers to tease out a tail. The fact that the horse has a tail a Rastafarian would die for is irrelevant of course. This area is a minefield, there is no way of knowing what the deadly sins are unless you bribe a sloane with cakes for a list of the seventy (or thereabouts) deadly sins.
Most of all beware of THE GADGETS. Many a working pupil has gone under the lash because of these abominable puzzles. Learn faster than a Krypton Factor champion how to tack up a horse with double bridle, cavesson, chambon, balancing rein, draw reins and De Gogue (occasionally all at once) and get it wrong at your peril! Even if the pulley systems are made from bits of baler twine and the attachments are snaffle bits tied to the headpiece - get it right!
Sometime during the long day you may be allowed to grace the same arena as the Almighty on your own embarrassing animal, or the old yoke they keep for bitchslaves to bumble about on. The Almighty will drop the odd hint in your direction, but don't be fooled if they seem preoccupied sixty metres away piaffing a four year old from the Verden sales, if ye yank or boot they shall see and ye shall suffer the wrath that maketh the ears ring and the head hangeth in shame!
After all the tacking up, the washing down, the grooming, the rugging, the feeding and watering, the lugging of wet haynets, that is your afternoon, you stagger into the tack room dreaming of coffee and a peaceful smoke. You are faced with twenty dirty bridles hanging on one three pronged hook. The ceiling groans. At this point it is recommended that you sit cross-legged on the floor, use those breathing exercises you read about in the dentists waiting room, and attempt to accept your karma. If you can't - take your Micra and go see what Lidl are paying these days.
Required Characteristics
Utter lack of self respect, impaired hearing, thick skin, Kypton Factor puzzle solving skills, cunning and a metabolism that can function on coffee, nicotine and baked beans alone.
Scales of Remuneration
Payment for this work varies from you paying them anything up to £100 a week, to them paying you nothing. Or you might get your horses keep and your caravan for nothing. Well, they call it nothing. Most of all remember to be grateful and to smile.
