07/06/2026
I was so fortunate and am so proud to say that my education in horses was *contingent! on a work first play second experience. My curiosity about animal behavior and psychology drove my interest in horsemanship, the same way it has driven my relationship with owning and understanding and caring for animals my entire life. If I were ever to offer my knowledge up to students this would be the foundation of my program.
Riding Lessons Are Important....but🔥
They're just a spectacularly incomplete education for owning a horse.
Somewhere along the way, we've all quietly accepted the idea that if you want to learn about horses, you should have riding lessons. Nobody really questions it because it's become one of those ideas that feels so obvious it escapes scrutiny. Riding lessons are simply what you do.
Imagine if someone announced, "I've always wanted to become a pilot."
"Wonderful," replies the instructor. "We'll spend the next six months teaching you take-offs and landings."
"What about engines?"
"No."
"Weather?"
"No."
"Navigation?"
"No."
"Maintenance?"
"No."
"Emergency procedures?"
"No."
"So... aviation?"
"Oh goodness no. We're teaching you flying."
At that point, most sensible people would quietly excuse themselves and avoid booking a seat on the inaugural flight.
Because everyone understands that flying is only one part of aviation. Yet, when it comes to horses, we've somehow convinced ourselves that riding is pretty much the whole thing.
Which is curious, because horses have this deeply inconvenient habit of continuing to exist after you get off them. Not to mention the fact they have a mind and feelings of their own that can make riding them not always go to plan.🫣
The vast majority of life with a horse happens when nobody is riding. Horses still need to be caught, led, tied up, fed, transported, treated, rugged, trimmed, managed and understood. They still need to learn how to stand for the farrier, cope with the veterinarian, load onto a float, walk calmly beside a person, understand pressure, gain confidence in unfamiliar places and trust the humans making decisions for them. They also have an irritating tendency to develop sore feet, ulcers, injuries and behavioural problems that stubbornly refuse to be solved by improving your sitting trot.
If horses transformed into bicycles the moment we dismounted, our obsession with riding lessons would make perfect sense. You could lean them against the fence, ignore them for a fortnight and expect them to be exactly where you left them. Unfortunately, horses remain committed to the rather inconvenient business of being living, learning animals.
This matters because I regularly meet wonderful people who have done exactly what the industry encouraged them to do. They've spent years investing in riding lessons before finally buying their first horse. They haven't been lazy. They haven't cut corners. They've been conscientious.
Then reality arrives.
Suddenly the horse won't stand to be mounted. It drags them to grass. It dances around for the farrier. It refuses to load. It develops sore feet. Riding becomes frightening. Their confidence evaporates. Before long they're apologising on social media with the traditional opening line, "Please no judgement..."🫠
What strikes me isn't that these people are unprepared. It's that they genuinely believed they were prepared. Why wouldn't they? We'd spent years telling them that learning horses meant learning to ride.
It doesn't.
It means learning one thing you can do with a horse.
The really tragic part is that many of the problems people think are riding problems aren't riding problems at all. They're horse problems. They're management problems. They're health problems. They're learning problems. They're handling problems. They're confidence problems. They're welfare problems.😎
The accident may happen under saddle, but the cause often began weeks, months or even years earlier, while the horse was being handled, fed, trained, managed or quietly becoming uncomfortable.
Perhaps this wasn't always such a problem. When horses were woven into everyday life, people absorbed practical knowledge without even thinking about it. Horse care, handling and management weren't taught as subjects because they were simply part of living. Nobody needed a book called "How Not to Create Complete Chaos While Leading Your Horse", because everyone already knew.🤷♀️
Then horses disappeared from everyday life. The practical knowledge disappeared with them. Oddly enough, the language stayed exactly the same.
We're still talking about riding lessons when what modern horse owners actually need is an education in horses.
So perhaps we don't need more riding lessons.
Perhaps we simply need to recognise them for what they are.
One module.
Not the entire curriculum.
Maybe it's time we started talking about "Horse Lessons" instead.
Because horses deserve more than people who know how to ride them.
They deserve people who know how to understand them.
And, in one of life's more typical ironies, it's usually that broader understanding that makes even better riders that experience more enjoyment with our horses.❤
Hats off to all the coaches, instructors, riding schools and trainers that already recognise this...becuase I know you are out there leading the way🫶✊
Collectable Advice 251/365.
If this reasonated please hit SHARE or SAVE, the industry needs a shift in perspective ❤
IMAGE📸: Beautiful image by Lynn Jenkin❤
