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.