Advice horse riding 4 year old .

[Orchid90]

Hi all,

I an after some advice from people that know about the horse riding world .

I start saying I have never been on one as it was just too expensive for my family growing up.

my daughter has been asking to try for a few months .

She is 4 , start school next year but seems older than her age ( so they say )

Anyway I got her a little walk at a school the other day for her birthday. It’s family run and far away but they did walks rather than lessons .
She was put on this little pony , maybe 12 HH ,
and he reared twice . Maybe got 25 inches of the ground. She was fine , didn’t fall , they got her off , changed pony and she loved the walk ( obviously)

Today I rang an equitation centre ,just 10 minutes from me . Got really good reviews , BHS approved and I asked if they could do their 20 minutes lessons for my daughter . The lady did book her in , but said that they could just fit her in this week then once kids are back at school they are fully booked and made it sound like there is no much chance for my daughter to get there regularly. She kept say they are totally chokablock.

I would have thought they were less busy once school started again , at least during the week but I think they get disabled children booked in ( she said)

Anyway , I would like to take her while she is interested , or at least not denying it to her .

I got a feeling this place near me is very good to the point that maybe they just want to focus on serious good rider , rather than a random 4 year old. they do have a little tot club though ..

the other place seemed more easy going, but I’m not sure if that pony rearing on a small child is to be considered a red flag .
I mean they are animals , it’s dangerous and it’s part of the package but if I have to take her I’d like her to go somewhere that’s good.
mother places don’t have reviews or not even a website ….I’m so not into the horses word that I don’t even know where to start .

shoukd I ask this BHS place if they have a waiting list ? Am I wasting time ? ( mine and theirs) Is she too young ? Where should I try to take her if she wants to be around horses at the moment.

also this nearby good school is 50£ for 30 minutes private . 35£ 30 min group . 25 £ 20 minutes for little ones .

buyIng a horse is not an option 🤣

thanks everyone, sorry it was long .

Id avoid the first one, I’d not go near any school that wasn’t BHS and/or ABRS accredited, it’s not a gold standard it’s the bare minimum really.

Good schools are busy, where I live several have closed down and there is only one good one left. I know the lady that owns it and they aren’t even putting kids on their waiting list for weekends anymore, it’s that long.

Im not sure where in the country you are but £50 is very steep for 30 minutes. It’s not a cheap hobby but that is ridiculous.

What id do is look for a riding school with a pony club centre (go on their website, you want a centre NOT a branch) and look into that. Your daughter might be too young for the time being but I’d get her on the books at that school and when she’s old enough get her doing the pony club.

Thank you!

that’s very helpful.

I am in Lancashire. it’s not a posh area but the village they are in is extremely posh , like millionaires live theirs . I think that’s why . It’s 15 minutes from me by car ( ..that was the advantage ) . I do think it’s very expensive though .
ill keep my research going x

100% this.

I wouldn't have anything to do with the first place.

Ask about a waiting list. At DTs yard they are busier in term time because none of the kids are off on holiday, during term time you don't have a hope of getting a last minute after school / weekend lesson.

I don't think £50 is that bad for private. I pay £22.50 for half hour group, and that is at the cheaper end of the scale locally.

Definitely look for a PC centre. My kids have been going for years, they love it and now they are older they can exchange sessions for tokens which they can put towards lessons.

Thank you so much .

so my daughter isn’t at school so I thought maybe the mornings would be less busy as majority of kids are at school but it seems like they do other things . I’ll ask when I take her anyway .

can I just ask you about the PC centre ? Do you need to be riding to attend or is it a separate thing altogether?

Lots of riding schools are forced to shut down due to huge increases in cost, hay, feed, shoes, electric, etc. Also if they rent their yard many are sold from under them, usually for housing.

my livery has increased a lot, but that is modern life and it is a fantastic place

Pony club centres vary hugely depending on the place, usually it’s one session a week split into pony care/knowledge and also riding

When my daughter started riding we could only get her into ad hoc lessons when someone had cancelled so for the first few months she didn’t have a regular slot. However we kept asking and she was so keen and eager to learn that as soon as a space came up they offered it to her. When she was a teenager she used to teach little children at the weekends and school holidays - she said there were very few 3 and 4 year olds with the strength and ability to concentrate to be able to make any progress at all coming just once a week. Personally I wouldn’t be in a rush to start your dd riding - keep looking and get her on the waiting list for a couple of pony club centres. If she’s still keen in a year or two then great, and you’ll have saved quite a bit towards your pony fund 😉

My dd started on Shetland's at a Shetland pony club. At 5 she joined a yard with a riding school but many dc rode the Shetland's until they were 8-9. We got her first pony at 9 and her current horse when she was about 14. She's 16 now and still as passionate as ever.

We are in Surrey. £50 per half hour is a lot for 30 mins. I wouldn't expect to pay more than £35 and we live in one of the most expensive parts of the country.

In layman's terms op the horses can't work all day so in term time it will be after school when they are busiest and her get fuller rides.

There are many exceptions, but most kids at 4 will happily enjoy the odd ride once in a while. I think from around 6 or 7 they really start to learn what to do.

I did classes for my girls when they were 2/3, then stopped, as basically they sat and laughed as they bounced along. Tried again a few years later (occasional lead rein walks in between[ and stopped again. When they were 7 and 8 we went for it and they actually learned to ride.

I think occasional sessions are great for smaller kids - they get to spend time with ponies, so many plusses. But they won't learn to ride as such til later on. As I said, many exceptions - some people seem to be born in the saddle - they are mostly people who have horses at home.

One of the very best riders I know is about to turn 18. Gifted, amazing to watch. He started when he was 12.

So, no hurry.

Hi OP,
Perhaps you could put a card in a newsagent window in a horsey area or an ad on a local horsey page on Facebook asking for someone with a small pony that pretty easy going for a weekly hour for your daughter to help groom, tack up (watch I guess) and ride (under their lead reign or walking round a field/menage under their supervision and yours of course) for 20-30 mins. £30. I would have thought some people might find that extra £120plus really helpful at the moment. If your daughter just wants to be around ponies it gives her more time and I wouldn't think she will be learning much technique at her age.

Don't know if there are still many venues about but when I was a child we had a wonderful weeks holiday where we spent each day on a farm with ponies - just looking after them/cleaning tack and a little ride each day. One to look for when she is a little older.

I don't want to poo poo this idea entirely as I totally agree that for little kids it's all about having fun being around the ponies and not about too much formal teaching/technique at this stage, but the trouble with doing this is that technically that person would be running an unregulated riding school and by taking money for 'lessons' could theoretically be in trouble with the council etc. It could well also invalidate their horse's insurance if they are taking money in exchange for teaching/supervising someone (different to a share/part-loan arrangement where the person takes full responsibility while riding the horse that day). Also OP isn't horsey and in a position to properly assess if the person really knows what they are doing, pony is suitable, tack and equipment is correctly fitted and safe etc. If it was a case of a person already known and trusted by the OP and everyone was willing to do this on the QT cash in hand I'd say fine, go ahead, lots of that sort of arrangement up and down the country and of course it can work great. But even the small risk of advertising and it going wrong makes it not a good idea in my mind, this child has already been put on a pony that rears and that's at a proper albeit not BHS riding school, I can just see some stranger with ££ in their eyes and an overfed and under-trained mini pony lawnmower saying oh yes I have the perfect super cute pony for your DD to ride in my field, oh don't worry she can wear plimsolls and won't need a proper hat, I don't have a proper saddle at the moment but we'll stick this old thing from my garage on, she won't fall off, pony is an angel...if it turns out to be anything but the child could end up scared and put off riding entirely or god forbid worse than that, and there would be no insurance to be claimed or comeback or anything.

OP I'd ask about a waiting list at the BHS school, yes I am sure they are quieter in the week but that doesn't necessarily equate to slots available for your DD, like with any business it often isn't really worth their while opening up for public bookings during weekday daytimes if they can't reliably fill their slots (just like how restaurants etc are usually closed on weekday afternoons). Most schools give their staff and horses time off during the quieter weekday times so their full capacity can be used at the busier weekend and evening times, or like yours open up only for group bookings or special events which guarantee them a certain income rather than £20 for one half hour lesson but for which they've had to pay a staff member a whole day or half day's pay etc plus fetch the pony in and get it cleaned up etc. I get it's a bit annoying for you though and communication and customer service is really, really not the strong point of the horsey industry (you'll tend to find schools act as though it's the most enormous privilege/personal favour they're doing you for you to give them £££ for your child to have a glorified pony ride) but really especially for children from a health and safety and learning to ride the right way point of view it is worth waiting for a regular slot at a good, BHS regulated school rather than take shortcuts for a cheaper/quicker alternative...

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Sorry - is the add message button new? I was trying to quote winter2020 post, but in the meantime maxelly has pretty much covered what I was going to say.

Those type of farms/ponies simply don't exist anymore. The past is a foreign country where kids hung out at farms pretty much unsupervised and had fun all day messing about with ponies, it was great fun while it lasted, but it's gone forever.

It's all about incredibly expensive insurance now.

I completely agree with Maxelly.

In a way I do yearn for the days where you could find a random farm and send your kids off to ride there though. It does make me come over all nostalgic and misty eyed when I think of my own childhood with ponies in the late 60s/early 70s, a totally different experience to what kids today get, out all day from dawn to dusk, my mum would wave me off with some sandwiches and a bottle of pop (if I was lucky, stick head under yard tap when I got thirsty if not, although there was of course none of today's relentless focus on hydration, I think we'd often go all day running around in the hot sun with no sunscreen and nothing to drink at all with no notable ill effects), spend all day messing around with my gang of friends and the ponies, total freedom. We all had great seats and hands because we mostly rode bareback and often not holding the reins either and rarely saw the inside of a school, it was all hacking and hooning around the fields, there was barely any traffic on the roads. Adult interference/teaching was very minimal but there were high expectations of how we'd look after the ponies and we did everything ourselves from a young age (the theory being if you were old enough to ride you were old enough to look after your pony too and no-one else, parent/yard owner/groom was going to do it for you, woe betide you though if you cut corners when mucking out or were late in the morning to feed and water your pony, yard owner would rip you a new one in pretty choice language) so we learnt to work hard, be very self-sufficient and problem solvers. Costs were also exponentially lower so there were kids from all backgrounds and wealth levels there mixing and it was much less materialistic than today, everyone had the same basic clothes and kit, no matchy matchy or fancy gadgets or anything.

In a way if I could have recreated that for my own children I would, it was so idyllic and a very effective way of learning compared to today's risk averse health and safety fun and independence stifling culture. But then again when I take off the rose tinted glasses and really think about of the risks we ran, not just on the horses, although we were plenty reckless enough and safety equipment was limited to flimsy jockey skull caps, but also things like we used to spend hours playing in the hay barn daring one another to throw ourselves off higher and higher bales onto flimsier and flimsier landing stacks, meanwhile little kids of 3 or 4 years old played under the casual supervision of some distracted 8 year olds around heavy farm machinery, open slurry pits and big farm animals. As it was I can remember several serious falls, broken limbs and concussions which we tended to treat pretty casually, and it's quite a miracle there wasn't a more serious accident. Safeguarding was not a word that had been invented yet and we found the 'creepy' old drunken yardhand who'd try and lure you back to his cottage for 'tea and biscuits' and would cop a feel of the girls bums if you got too close a source of endless hilarity . Plus on a lower level there was lots of teasing, unkindness, 'dares' and borderline bullying from the older or posher kids to the younger or generally less popular ones and no comforting adults to go to if you were hurt, sick, upset, worried etc. And I have to say we weren't terribly inclusive and kind to kids different to ourselves, disabled or non riders or even just from a rival pony club or yard either. So perhaps under the surface it wasn't all quite such jolly japes as it seemed within the norms at the time and there is something to be said for the way we do things today as well and when I eventually have grandkids, if they want to ride I probably will be kitting them out head to toe in protective gear and only allowing them to ride supervised in an arena until the full supervision of a BHS AI until they're 18 too (kidding but only slightly!).

Yes I hear you Maxelly! Definitely rose tinted spectacles and my god did we learn to ride! I feel sorry for kids nowadays, unless they have their own ponies from an early age I don’t think anyone really learns properly in the super risk averse riding schools, back in my day it was normal to have some really tricky ponies so you could learn to sit a buck or deal with something with a proper drop-a-shoulder spook in a controlled environment, nowadays you don’t, and when you leave a riding school finding anything that doesn’t terrify you is hard… that said I do wonder how many naughty/cheeky ponies back in the day were obviously in pain, especially with the “one size fits all” attitude to tack that was common.
I had a a really quirky jumping pony that with the benefit of hindsight probably had a lot wrong with her, but she trotted up sound, and I do think if she was a teenagers pony now she’d have got a decent MOT to get to the bottom of her issues

I keep on seeing posts along the lines of kids these days don’t learn to ride properly, in my day etc etc but it’s not always true … when my dd was a young teenager she was being used to school all the naughty (probably in pain with ill-fitting tack we realise now) riding school ponies - I even posted on here asking for advice as she was getting bucked off so much 😳. She was also working every Saturday from the age of 11 and as many days as possible in the school holidays. She didn’t have her own horse until she was 15 but despite having a relatively late start she certainly learned to ride and learned to sit to pretty much anything. I don’t think things have changed that much in the last 5 years or so 🤷‍♀️

In my experience of trying several riding schools in a large city while my mare had a year out (before covid) most of them were AWFUL.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t some good ones out there but completely overworked, school sour horses being chased round with a lunge whip and kids essentially learning to smack them with a crop until they move was so normal.

I was pretty shocked at a lot of what I saw.

I would say that unless you are a horsey family 4 is too young for lessons. Stick to the occasional walk out until she's about 6 would be my advice. Others will disagree!

My DD (5) went on the waiting list for regular riding club 15 months ago and I have been told she is in the next batch to reach the top, so am awaiting a phone call.

I have to book well in advanced for ad hoc lessons, they need to have the manege, a small pony and a suitably qualified instructor all available at the same time.

So, the situation your in is pretty standard.

We live in a general poorer region of the UK, 30 mins 1:1 lesson is £37/ 30 mins riding club is £15, but I'm not sure how much time is spent actually on the pony or what the ratio of riders to instructors is.

The place where I ride has a waiting list for the after school/weekend group lessons, all you can do is join the list and see what happens.

While 'logically' during the day has more free time for lessons, they tend to have fewer staff members on shift, and they are doing horse welfare jobs (mucking out, feeding, getting them in from the fields ready for lessons later, grooming, livery related tasks). Plus there is a lot more focus on not overworking the animals than there used to be, so it is also possible they do not have the 'correct' pony hours available.

Private lesson costs £34/30 minutes currently where I ride.

Around here, during the week, most riding stables are open say 1-5pm (or maybe 2/3-7 if they have an indoor), maybe 4 days a week or similar. It's partly for horse welfare reasons and also due to staffing. If they're open 9-5 in the week, they need staff on probably 8-6, which is a big expense if they're only doing a few privates in the morning. Whereas if they mainly target evening/after school, for groups, it's a lot more cost-effective). If they're getting the horses in for a shorter period, it also reduces costs like hay/bedding/electricity etc.

I'd look a bit further afield, and see if there's anything else that might be suitable, otherwise, try the BHS place, and perhaps once you've been for a lesson, and chatted to them, they may be able to suggest some suitable times.

Basically, very quiet times, they may not be open at all.

What area are you @Orchid90 and someone may be able to suggest somewhere .