Keeping Horses In Your Life Through The Different Seasons
In the span of a year and a half, I went from riding up to five times a week, to once a week, then once a month. My riding schedule has varied throughout the different seasons of my life, but I’ve always found a way to keep horses as a constant in my life, even if it meant riding less frequently.
From ages twelve to sixteen, I was a once-a-week lesson kid. Some summers, I attended horse camp, but my riding schedule was always dependent on my parents’ ability to take me to the barn.
When I turned seventeen and got my driver’s license, I began half-leasing a horse. My lease ended in the midst of COVID, and after I graduated from high school, I left the barn and stopped riding for almost a year. It was the longest I had gone without riding since I started taking lessons.
Towards the end of my freshman year of college, which was online, I wanted to ride again. So, I got a job at a local horse farm mucking stalls, feeding and watering the horses, and teaching some beginner lessons. That fall, when I was able to attend college in person, I joined the Rutgers University Dressage Team. Over winter break, I became a working student for the Rutgers dressage coach. I worked and rode there for the next three years of my college career.
In 2024, after changing my major three times, I graduated from Rutgers University with a bachelor’s degree in English Literature. Unsure of what I wanted to do next, I decided to take a year off to figure it out.
Outside of a month of travel, my only plans for the summer were to ride, work at the farm, and have fun. Knowing that I thrive on a consistent schedule and routine, I set some parameters for myself during my gap year: I would give myself the summer to enjoy some time off and recover from the burnout of school; then, come September, I would come up with a plan for when my gap year was over.
When I came back from traveling at the beginning of August, I spent as much time as I could at the farm. I was there anywhere from three to five days per week. My trainer would let me work off my lessons, so I would spend the entire day at the farm working and riding.
I had made an extensive list of things I wanted to accomplish over the year. The list was ambitious, and my plan was never to accomplish everything, but as I thought of things that I had always wanted to do, big or small, I added them to the list: learn Greek, take a road trip to D.C., learn how to style my natural curls. Of the eighteen items on the list, four centered around horses: showing First Level, learning to drive a horse trailer, improving my physical health to better my riding, and starting a riding journal.
From August to October, I showed First Level, learned to drive a trailer, started taking barre classes, and kept a running list of notes from my lessons. Horses consumed all of my time in one way or another throughout those three months. Not only was I spending extensive time at the barn, but when I wasn’t there, I was actively doing things to improve my riding.
I would watch videos of my lessons and jot down notes – just little things, a few words of a metaphor or analogy that my trainer used to explain different concepts to me, or a couple of buzz words that would remind me of things to keep in mind that we worked on during the previous lesson. Things like “water bucket”; my trainer would say, “Imagine the feeling of holding out a water bucket in your outside hand with the rein” to illustrate the feeling of outside rein contact, to highlight what muscle the contact should come from. She then gave me a water bucket to hold while I rode to get that feeling.
Keeping a riding journal was especially helpful when time grew longer between rides. Before my lesson, I could open my notes and remind myself what we had been previously working on. This allowed me to make the most of my limited riding time as I was able to pick up where we had left off more easily.
During the months I was riding numerous times a week, I was also taking barre classes three to four times a week to improve my strength and balance. Barre quickly revealed the differences between my right and left sides, including which side I favored, which side was stronger, and where I have a tendency to lean. All things that showed up in my riding were made very apparent when taking the barre classes.
For example, I became very aware of the strength imbalance between my right and left sides during seat work. During classes, I found that if my left leg was the supporting leg first, it would fatigue much more quickly than if I began by working my left side and then switched to the right. My right leg was noticeably less fatigued after being the supporting leg, the transition from supporting to working leg was much easier. This highlighted the fact that my left side was weaker than my right.
As I continued taking barre classes and consistently strengthening both sides, the asymmetry in my riding began to even out. Staying consistent with the barre classes allowed me to retain muscle and keep my riding skills sharp so I could avoid regressing when I inevitably went longer than I’d like between rides.
During my gap year, I volunteered at a Stephen Peters clinic, audited Ingrid Klimke’s Masterclass at Dressage at Devon, attended Rutgers Intercollegiate Dressage Association (IDA) shows, and, when I wasn’t riding at the barn, watched other people ride. When the chiropractor or the dentist was coming, my trainer would let me know so I could be there to observe. Watching the chiropractor work taught me about horse biomechanics and helped me better understand horses’ natural movements, and understanding the fundamental mechanics of a horse and why they respond a certain way, not just how they will respond to certain aids, helped the progression of my riding immensely.
Summer came and went very quickly. When fall came around, I was consumed with graduate school applications and a graduate class that I was auditing at Rutgers. I went from being at the barn three to five days a week, to going once a week for a lesson on my way home. The transition from so much uninterrupted time to ride and learn at the barn to making less frequent trips made me even more appreciative of every moment spent there, whether riding or just observing.
During my gap year, I learned how to incorporate riding and related activities into every season of my life. I learned that the work done outside the saddle, both physical and educational, is just as important – and sometimes even more important – than the time spent riding. By continuing to work on my riding outside of the saddle, I could make the most of the limited time I had in it. I consumed everything horse-related around me and took every opportunity to learn.
I went into my gap year knowing that I would probably never again have that kind of time to dedicate to my riding, so I soaked up every bit of time with horses that I could. The biggest takeaway from my gap year wasn’t the progression of my riding itself; it was about reframing my idea of what keeping horses in my life looks like. Just because I’m not physically able to get to the barn to ride doesn’t mean I’m not actively working towards my passion. I came out of my gap year with an understanding of how to nurture my passion for riding throughout the different seasons of my life and that there is no time limit for accomplishing my equestrian-related goals.
