Working Students 2

Today I am comparing my job with a 'real' working student job (as I imagine it) based on a summary of job postings. I'm focusing on the type of working student job that I would be looking for, and getting my job postings from Yard and Groom.

Most working student jobs require some experience with barn work and riding. Often this experience is just mucking, grooming, and basic riding. Some postings include details: “Minimum, dressage basics and jumping Level 2”. Barns sometimes want more experience with different tasks – things like lunging horses, experience working with green (or largely untrained) horses, and recognizing various types of equine disease.

Most of the more serious working student positions offer a stipend of about $100 a week. This is obviously not enough to pay for rent, so these barns provide places for the working student to live on the barn property. Some barns allow working students to board their horses for free, many don't. Usually, riding lessons of some sort are offered in addition the stipend as compensation.

In contrast to my 20 hours a week, live-in working students will work five and a half or six days a week. They are long days, and usually involve the normal barn chores I mentioned last time (mucking, watering, turning horses in and out). A working student at a training barn would hope to be actually training one or more horses as an additional daily duty. I spend considerable time tacking horses for lessons. At a training barn, the time I spend tacking would ideally be used to work with horses.

Were I looking for a full-time working student job, the above description would be more or less ideal. I would expect to do some mucking, but would also hope to be learning a lot about horses.

Anyway, I hope this post and its predecessor clear up confusion about what I'm doing and my alternatives.

Working Students

Well folks, it looks like we're looking at updates once a week. Maybe. I am, by nature, lazy and unmotivated. Because I'm having trouble getting some photos from my phone to my computer, I'm going to write a series of posts about Working Student jobs. This one talks about my current working student job and duties. The next one will talk about some working student job posts and discuss more about what 'real' working students do.

Horse barns are established for different purposes. The Barn is a lesson barn. It owns many of its own horses, and also allows customers to board their horses for a monthly fee. There are barns that focus on breeding horses, and barns that focus on training horses, and probably more different types besides.

Many lesson barns are willing to barter riding time of some sort for work. The Barn (my barn) has a fairly well-defined working student program. Working Students at The Barn can exchange hours worked for practice rides, group lessons, and some show and clinic fees.

Working student duties at The Barn are mostly simple tasks that can be necessary to barn operations or just helpful. There are regular tasks, and tasks that are done seasonally. Working students give hay and feed to horses at feeding times. They groom and tack horses for lessons, and help less experienced riders bridle their horses. We have an automatic watering system, but we have to turn it off during the winter because the pipes will freeze, so the working students fill up water buckets. Working students may help turn the horses out to paddocks and to retrieve them later. Seasonal tasks include things like checking tack for safety and helping to prepare horses for horse shows.

I work in the neighborhood of twenty hours a week doing mostly the above tasks and sometimes tasks where I learn new things. I ride a lot, and I learn many things about riding and horse care just from listening to people at the barn. Some time in the future I will compare my job with what I can glean from other job postings.

First Week

Well, I'm falling behind already. I've been working at my new arrangement for two weeks now, and have a lot of news. This post will be exclusively about the first week, and I will continue to update soon (hopefully), with simple notes on saddle fitting, comparisons between my situation and 'real' working student jobs, and a post on politics and drama.

My first week at The Barn was atypical for two reasons that do not affect my Real Job. The schools were having a day off on Monday, and there was some considerable snowfall and fear of snowfall on Wednesday and Thursday.

Growing up, my mother stayed home with my sisters and me, and could take care of us at home when school was out. For a lot of families, the kids have to go somewhere when the schools close. To this end, The Barn hosts “Day at the Barn” camps, which provides day-care for the younger kids, and employment for the day for the older kids. There wasn't quite enough help from the older kids this day, so I helped lead horses around in lessons as small children (who can't really steer) learned to ride them.

“Day at the Barn” may seem like it has nothing to do with the care and keeping of horses (and therefore doesn't belong on this blog), but providing care for children during the day while their parents are both at work is part of the way barns like this one make money.

On Wednesday, The Barn was closed. I didn't know this, and showed up unnecessarily after my short day at my Real Job. I did a little prep for the evening work, but left about 5 hours early. Thursday The Barn was closed again, and I didn't go in.