How To Find A Riding School

School is about to start up again, and that means riding stables will be filling their lesson programs with eager students. There are thousands of things that make a riding school good, or not-so-good. In this post I'll only touch on a few important things to look for when "shopping" for a lesson stable (assuming you have already located facilities that teach the kind of riding you want to learn). We'll discuss this more at length in the weeks to come.

* Before anything else, you want to find a lesson program that puts safety first. You are dealing with an animal who weighs ten times what you do (plus or minus), but has a brain about the size of a large walnut (of course there are variables, but I am trying to give you an example). Humans are far more intelligent than horses, and it would be good to understand that. If you approach a horse as the superior being in your own mind, the horse will believe you. And unless he is a reincarnated ax murderer disguised as a pony, he will usually respond to your confidence by being obedient.

* Safety in a lesson program means they will not allow you to ride without an approved safety helmet strapped tightly onto your head.
* It also means they include unmounted Horsemanship Lessons as part of their regular program (to teach you things such as how NOT to get kicked or bitten by your horse!)
* Beginner lessons should always take place in an enclosed ring with a gate that latches, and there should be no more than 6-8 students per professional instructor. For first timers there should be extra help available as well, in the form of Working Students or Instructors in Training.

Never be afraid or feel embarrassed to ask the stable manager any questions. If the manager or instructor isn't interested in your questions, you should not be interested in taking lessons at their facility.

Horse Girls*

Recently I had an opportunity to visit the riding school I managed for half a dozen years, Columbia Horse Center, located in Laurel, MD. It has been almost three years since I left that farm to write my book, The Tugboat Chronicles. While there I watched the "Changing of The Lessons," as we used to call it. This is the moment when one hour of group lessons ends and another begins.

I don't know most of the kids who take lessons at Columbia anymore. After three years, a whole new group of kids dismount and lead their ponies from the ring. The girls who grew up while I was there are off to college, or have now been riding long enough they no longer take group lesson, only privates.

But I realized that even though I don't know these "new" kids names, I still know them. How? Because "Horse-Girls" are all the same.

Okay, I have to pause to acknowledge the fact that saying "horse-girls" is sexiest, and therefore politically incorrect. I understand that boys ride too. Many of the top riders in our country are men. One of my sons rode for a while, and his best friend, Matthew, will make a career out of his equestrian skills. But for the most part, the boys who do ride horses do so as their sport, not their passion, like the girls. It is different.

The look on a horse-girls face tells it all. Starry eyes shine as they whisper in their favorite pony's ear on the way back to the barn. They notice everything around them, every swish of a tail or stomp of a hoof. I know their parents scratch their heads and ask how it is that their daughter will rise before dawn to clean a horses stall, but cannot keep her room tidy.

Horse-girls will spend hours cleaning and polishing tack and leather boots before a show, then pick dirty clothes up off the floor to wear to school. Horse-girls walls are covered with photos of horses, not rock stars. Broom sticks become make-shift jumps in their back yards, and on any given day a few of them can be seen "cantering" around a course of imaginary jumps.

Horse-girls live and breathe for the moments they can be within a breath of a barn. Their diaries are filled with thoughts about which horse they will ride in their next lesson. They write about how they know their beloved pony arched his neck with pride when the blue ribbon fluttered from his bridle. Carrots and sugar cubes are always on the grocery list, and the smell of a barn intoxicates these girls in a way alcohol never will.

It was this way when I was a child, and it is this way today. I worried about my horse on bitter cold nights, and took hot bran mashes to him each morning. I cared for any horse or pony like other girls cared for their dolls. Every year I got to spend my birthday in NYC with my father at his office. The entire day revolved around the moment when we would enter F.A.O Schwartz and I raced to the toy horse section to pick my gift.

When I took beginner lessons as a child, I couldn't get out of the wood-paneled station wagon fast enough when we pulled into the driveway at Ox Ridge Hunt Club in Darien, CT. In the dusty old office, Miss Townsend stood guard over the clip board which said which pony was mine for one glorious hour. Miss Townsend had known all day which pony I would ride, but she would barely glance up from her typewriter when I ran through the door. Little did I know I would be another version of Miss Townsend when I grew up.

The look in the eyes of these children I saw assured me nothing has changed. They dream my dreams, they wish for red-ribboned ponies on Christmas morning just as I did, and I know if I read their diaries, their words could have been mine.

Their parents who sat behind me (and didn't know my connection to the center), spoke of the same things the parents always talk about with each other during the lessons. The cost of new boots, what pony their child cantered on the first time by mistake (a wonderful skill riding instructors have for reluctant-but-ready students,) the smell of horse that lingers in their cars, and most importantly, I hear them say, "Thank goodness this keeps them out of the malls!"

Horse-girls are horse-girls, no matter the year, no matter the generation, no matter the location. If it is in us, there is no denying it, no turning back. We will forever be "Horse-Girls, and how lucky we are for that!