The Hunger Games & Financing Horses in College: Part 1

So clearly I didn't get around to writing my cover letter when I said I would, but c'est la vie. Spring Break has been pretty busy, mostly with fun stuff like making pie, riding and seeing The Hunger Games with my boyfriend. I love to read, but had never heard of the books before all the hype about the movie. Normally hearing about the movie adaptation of a young adult fiction novel would actually make me less likely to see it (OK, I'm a snob), but The Atlantic and public radio were all abuzz with how great and politically significant it was going to be. I'd give it a 6.5 or 7 out of 10. Entertaining throughout, but I saw a lot of scenes that could have been cut (mushy gazes) and some things that were rather mystifying for the uninitiated (what is up with the Girl Scout sign?!)

via Impassioned Cinema. Somehow I doubt that she's affirming her pledge to serve God and her country, to help people at all times and to live by the Girl Scout Law.

Also, The Atlantic misled me a bit--they made it sound like there were all of these connections to issues of today. And yes, class and economic inequality are problems today...but these issues are only very vaguely addressed as background for the movie's premise of having kids kill each other for entertainment of the bourgeoisie/oppression of the masses. Also the end basically left me thinking, "DUN DUN DUN....The Powers that Be are mightily displeased! The End."

Ok, so on to the main attraction: I asked how other people financed their horse addiction in college on COTH and MuckBucket a few weeks ago and I'm just now getting around to compiling all the responses. Midterms, car breaking down, Spring Break, blah blah blah...it's been busy.

One college grad learned how hard she was willing to work to keep riding after her parents unexpectedly sold her horse. She catch rode and then a great free-lease situation fell into her lap. Here's her story:

Well, my parents sold my horse without me knowing which was not part of the plan because I had gotten a ton of scholarship money, both from the school and other sources, so I wouldn't have to take out loans or even tap into my college fund which has now become my grad school fund.

I tried to go without horses for six months and was absolutely the most unhappy child as I was over the college party scene in six weeks, and although involved in practically everything from multiple choirs to my sorority, I hated being so tied down on a small campus. I was very close to transferring on more than one occasion because I seriously felt lost and without purpose.

After advertising "have saddle, will travel" and catch-riding some decent horses, but more often than not, terrible examples of equines including a pony club pony who gave pony club ponies a bad rap and a saddlebred who liked to "jump" ie crow hop everywhere at every possible moment, my mom legit got worried about my safety and consented to helping me get lessons at an actual h/j barn, albeit further than I had intended to travel at first.

Sophomore year new-favorite-trainer-ever had a horse fall in her lap who then landed in my lap as a perfect free-lease scenario, and provided I worked a number of part-time jobs and kept up my grades, my mom paid the other part for the next few years of school. Honestly I was a miserable wretch when I had to take six weeks off from riding once, and my moody-self was more apparent than I thought, since my adviser one day personally sought me out because another one of my professors thought I looked like I wanted my life to end during my riding hiatus and was concerned for my well-being (should add, considering this is a prof that I did not get along with well, I am amazed he paid me that attention). My close friends' first reaction whenever I was in a foul mood was, "um, have you been riding at all recently?" And the answer was almost always "no, why do you ask?" LOL. I showed a little when I had time, but honestly doing lessons and clinics was plenty fun.

The big two reasons why I was able to finance horses in college was a) my mom hands-down rocks and cares about my well-being b) a lot of luck. It was the right barn/trainer, the right (saintly, ammie-proof, low maintenance) horse, the right feasible business situation for both leaser/leasee. I am well-aware these kinds of situations don't always happen, so I view what happened to me as a blessing.

Christina keeps her horse at her parents' house, so she decided to stay there. I'm reminded of a recent, rather controversial Jim Wofford article (that I can't find the link for at the moment, will update later) in which he basically says that in order to reach the highest levels of competition, you have to choose to keep horses in your life, whether that means not having kids right away or choosing a career with horses, even if that doesn't conform to the traditional idea of how life should go. In this case, Christina decided that keeping her horse handy was more important than the traditional freshman dorm experience.

I am on full scholarship, so all I have to worry about with school is keeping up grades to keep the scholarship and pay for gas to and from school (hour drive each way). I live at home to save on living expenses, even though I would love to move out and have space to myself.

I keep my semi-retired horse at home and pay the majority of his farrier and veterinary expenses. My Grandpa and Mom are amazing and help me pay to keep my show horse at a H/J barn in my home town. I pay for all of his vet and farrier bills.

I work at as many odd-jobs as I can; babysitting, house cleaning, house sitting, and pet sitting. I also work as a substitute whenever positions are available at a local private school (do not have as many requirements for teachers as public schools have to) and am looking to get on a more regular schedule there.

I am hoping that I will be able to save enough money to show a few times this summer, but am constantly running the numbers to see how much I can truly afford to show. I have struggled with wanting to work more and keeping up with my school work as much as I would like to, but have decided to put schoolwork as my first priority at all times because truly, my education is more important than earning money so I can go to a horse show.

I am amazed how many people sell their horses when they are preparing to go to school. I think having my horses to ride and care for is what keeps me sane during finals week!

Like many other college riders, kateh from COTH relied on a combination of part-time jobs and her parents' support:

I paid for all of my own IHSA lesson and show fees. My parents paid tuition and living expenses during college. During the school year I worked in labs, which would only pay if you qualified for work-study, and I didn't. But my boss would pay me for the summer field season, which was in the middle of nowhere. So I'd earn money and usually not spend anything all summer. Senior year I managed to get a fellowship for my research, so I got a little extra money.

I also usually didn't lesson during the summer because there weren't any good trainers around and my schedule was ridiculous. I did manage to find a free lease for one of the summers though, so I at least got some horse time. Of course, all summer toodling around someone's backyard with no lessons did nothing for my equitation, and I paid for it in September. 

Kellie Stein of COTH gives the show mom perspective:
My DD, a college freshman rides on her IHSA team and occasionally adds a private lesson with her coach and then she rides whatever her home trainer has available on breaks from school. At this point, I still pay and she will supplement where she can but this will probably be her second to last year riding outside of IHSA, so I'm happy to help out where I can. After next summer, she'll have a full time internship (hopefully) and then onto work after that....

It's great that so many parents are supportive of their children's horse habits, but I know that mine never would have paid for board or moved to a house with land to keep a horse, even when I was in high school. They just aren't horse people. I was glad to see that it is possible to do it all on your own if you are really vigilant about your finances. ngarth from MuckBucket lives with her boyfriend to keep expenses down. Not everyone is in a situation to do that, but I imagine a similar situation could work out if you're ok with several roommates:

Another student here, with two horses. My boyfriend and I have owned them for 2.5 years. The first year we kept them at his family's place, and while it saved us money, it cost us in time and mentally. We would drive down every day, 30-45 minute drive depending on traffic to turn out and muck stalls.His family has never had horses before so they were new to the experience, and tried to skip out on things like, instead of feeding them grain twice a day, just give it to them all at once. So we moved them in the summer/right before school started the following year, to a place that did only outdoor board. The barn owner was actually looking for someone to do the chores, so we signed up for it, and made a little bit of money on top of working off board. It was a lot of work, we both had 5-6 classes on top of that, but we made it by. Moved them the following spring to a great place. Currently the mare (BF's horse) is on outdoor and my gelding is on indoor. We don't take lessons, and we only buy tack/supplies when truly needed.

Outside of that we watch what we spend. We have a monthly budget that includes rent (we live in an apartment together), board, groceries, car payments and insurance, etc. We cut out cable and just have internet now. I try to bake a lot which covers our snacks, dessert, horse treats and some meals. When we go grocery shopping we add up our costs as we go to see if we can buy a treat (extra fruit, veggies, cookies, ice cream, etc) but we manage to keep out grocery bill to under $35 a week for the both of us combined. My boyfriend and I are huge gardeners/farmers, so this year we plan on having a balcony garden to help out with our veggies. We plan on growing lettuce, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, beans, and other stuff.

On thing that we found was key was paying for a lot of our shopping with our visa cards. Some debit cards have a transaction limit, and once your over that limit you start getting charged per transaction. Well we solved this by putting everything on our visas and then paying them off 2-3 times a month. 

Hope you enjoyed all the different points of view--maybe it gave you some ideas. As always, feel free to share how you were able to ride in college in the comments...and stay tuned for a discussion of people's experiences of IHSA and NCAA, and what was/wasn't paid for.

Balancing riding and school

This post was inspired by a high school student's cry for help on the COTH forums :

"I'm homeschooled, which is both a blessing and a curse in this matter. I only began homeschooling very recently, a couple of months ago. I'd gone to three different high schools, had to repeat my freshman year and still none of them were working. I'm way behind the schedule for graduating - I'm sixteen and only have my freshman credits! My hope is to graduate when I'm 19 and to work through the summers to achieve that. The only courses I'm taking at the moment are AP World History and Nutrition and Wellness, but the AP is terribly time consuming and I'm not sure how to fit more riding into my schedule because of that.

I'm going to take a break from my weekly art lessons for a while, so that should free up some time.

This all just seems kind of impossible! I have no idea how other juniors manage to ride and show while maintaining a full course schedule and get good grades" -baudelist

I was somewhat shocked that her parents didn't punish her for choosing to ride over going to school and I wonder if homeschool is really the best option for her. I think that is what allows other young riders to balance it all--school isn't optional. However, I'm not privy to whatever her life circumstances are so even though my first instinct is to blame, it's certainly possible that she has had some challenges out of her control, what with switching between 3 high schools.

Balancing riding and school, or riding and work, or riding and school and part-time work (That's me! So glad I quit my second job.) is not easy, and riding is usually the weak link in the chain. There have been some semesters where I rode once a month or less--school was just too time consuming, and I didn't have a car on campus until this year so I'd have to go home on the weekends to ride. And I think that's OK. I've never wanted a career with horses because I don't want the thing I do for fun to become work, so my top priority has always been school. Well, okay, my parents had some influence on that priority too, especially when I couldn't drive myself to the barn. Horses have always been the reward, not the end goal.

Of course I'm not saying that I am the queen of the horse-job-work balancing act. I don't have my own horse, so I don't have the responsibility to keep him exercised. When I did have my own horse in high school via a free lease, I was lucky that he was old and quiet--I got the same ride out of him every time, whether he had worked five days or zero that week. Also (to further list my disqualifications) I often end up not juggling everything so well, and I spend a lot more time at the barn than I mean to...my boyfriend knows that if I say I'll be back by six, it means seven, and that I'll be prattling on about horsey stuff for another hour. Thankfully he just scolds me with a "Bad baby!," keeps on being loving, and then we make fish tacos with pink pickled onions. Yum!! I smell a food post coming up because there are definitely some dishes that really hit the spot after I ride.

Regardless of tangents... here are some tips to balance life responsibilities and riding:

• Sacrifice riding time: That's right, #1 on the list. School (or work) is what will give you the cash to continue riding in the long run, so that has to be the priority. It might feel like it, but you won't die from not riding every day or even every week. Personally, not being able to ride as much as I want just makes me value the time I have at the barn even more.
• Time management: Know how long you'll be at the barn and how long your homework will take you. This, of course, is easier said than done. There have been so many times when I intended to finish my ride by a certain time and then my horse decided to act up...or times when I thought it would take me ten minutes to read for my Spanish lit class and it ended up taking forty...These things happen, but they shouldn't happen every day.
• Plan, plan, plan: I am completely obsessive about my to-do lists, reminders on my phone, and Google Calendar so that there are not so many balls in the air--they're all on paper. I like to put homework assignments from my syllabus on my calendar right at the beginning of the semester, and then I plan out when I need to start working on big projects. I print out my Google Calendar each week and write extra notes on it as I'm working on stuff.
• Choosing a horse: Do you really have time for a youngster who needs consistent training every day? Even if you have the funds and the riding ability for a horse that requires a lot, it might not be a good idea if you already have the full-time responsibility of school or a job. If you already have such a horse, half-leasing him so he has some consistency is a a good idea.
• IHSA: I have zero experience with IHSA. The idea of showing a horse I don't know just goes against what I like most about showing--it's a test of how far you and your horse have come in your training together. However, IHSA does seem like a good way to keep riding without a time commitment every day  if you can handle the significant time commitment (thanks commenters). If anyone has ever done IHSA I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.
• Combine horses and school: I have an internship at a horse publication, and this blog  was actually started for a blogging class. That means my time at the barn is research, right? If you can find some way to combine your interest in horses with school assignments, you might be able to sneak in some extra barn time as part of your project. If not, it's still fun to write essays about things like the steeplechase scene in Anna Karenina... well, if not fun, at least not horrible.
• Look ahead: One day I will have my own horse and no homework. One day I will have my own horse and no homework. That's what gets me through the readings in Spanish that take a zillion years to read and the essays on differences in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the quartos and folio of Hamlet...ugh, who cares??? Not me! Why did I ever pick that topic?

I'm opening it up to you guys--any other tips on the balancing act of horses, school, and work?

Riding Other Peoples' Horses for Them: Pro/Con

Pro: Free! Sometimes even paid! Sadly, I have no experience with the latter. The only time someone offered to pay me to ride a horse, I ended up doing a flip over the horse's head, banging my own head on a round pen, and landing in poop. Which brings us to the Con...and I'm not talking about Tegan and Sara here.

Con:

Click the picture for full-size

That would be Joey, the new horse I'm riding twice a week for free thanks to COTH's Riderless Horses and Horseless Riders matchmaking thread. My "interview ride" went great, although I have zero experience in dressage and the ad I answered said he goes better in a dressage frame. I took that to mean--stretch him down, and sit back, which gave us a great first ride.

Then yesterday happened. Horses always seem to know when I need to be taken down a notch. There were a lot of little kids and commotion in the barn, so I figured  that with that and the unseasonably warm weather, I'd try hacking Joey out in a big open field with a couple of power lines to watch over us.

I hopped on, felt that my stirrups were a bit long, thought, "Eh, whatever. He's used to that; he's a dressage horse," and walked around, just checking out the terrain for 10 minutes or so. Tried to pick up a trot and realized I was not used to long stirrups at all, so I dismounted, fixed them, and realized something else--I have to work on mounting from the ground and Joey needs to work on standing still for more than two seconds. So we moseyed over to the stool/table thing that I had used to mount up the first time. No problem--then I asked for a trot, and it was sayonara for Joey.

I'm not exactly sure whether he bucked or what, but all of a sudden I was hanging on his neck, and I knew things weren't going to get any better from there so I bailed. Hard. I must have landed on my back, judging by the bruises today, but he definitely knocked the wind out of me. I mostly remember just trying to catch my breath on all fours in the soggy grass while he hightailed it to his hay and his buddies in the barn down the hill. I followed him--much slower.

The farm does therapeutic riding, and so far it seems like stuff is generally well under control. The farm manager had Joey in hand by the time I made it down the hill. I explained what happened, and she pointed out that my face was bleeding. My glasses had cut the side of my nose.

Great, I thought. I touched the bridge of my nose and looked at the blood on my finger. My boyfriend's going to give me crap about this one. I tried to pick a SAFE horse this time! A THERAPY horse, come on!

Turns out he hacks out great in therapy lessons...with an instructor and sidewalkers. My definition of hacking out is a bit different. So I cleaned up, hopped back on in the indoor, and made that little son-of-a-gun MARCH! ...in spite of the stars before my eyes.

Moral of the story: Don't assume an ex-Pony Club dressage horse will hack out. And always wear a helmet!

PS--I was worried I might die in my sleep from a horrific brain injury (though I did wear a helmet, as always) so I called a nurse hotline. Apparently everything is OK and I should just ice my neck, take it easy, and command my boyfriend to give me "gentle massages." Sounds good to me.