Curious about Horses and Eventing/ShowJumping

[NeighNeighAndthrice]

If you have a child/teenager who does eventing or show jumping, please can someone tell me a bit about moving horses to UK competitions?

So if you own your own horse (for your child) and you stable it somewhere, how does it get moved to the location of the competition which are all round the country?

Do stables offer this service?
Or are you expected to have your own horse box and move it yourself for the child?
Or are there specialist horse moving companies?

How does the teenager/child get there? do you have to take them every time or does the stables/horse moving let them go in the car towing the horse box?

How much does it cost to move a horse?

why do people do this if they are very amateur? I mean I understand the principel of doing something for fun but the hassle of moving a horse from near London for a five hour drive seems crazy to me. Why not just do it closer to home?

I saw a random instagram feed of a 16 year old who does this and it blew my mind how often they seen to be off at different events round the country.

Do your parents need to be loaded to do this?

Own trailer or horsebox. Yes the expenses keep growing ;)

My DC ride at a local riding school which runs a BRC club as well, and they use riding school horses to compete with at BRC qualifiers/championships and local shows. It’s frankly an amazing set up in terms of making it accessible to all children, but still costs £££… there are two lorries, and a few parents have trailers, then we all chip in for diesel, and try to fundraise RC funds to subsidise entry fees… I reckon I’ll pay about £300 for my two to compete this weekend.

It partly depends on what discipline you compete in and at what level, plus where you are in the country.

There is one venue I could still hack to if I wanted to do local unaffiliated dressage or showjumping (or occasionally kids gymkana). BUT you’d need a pretty bombproof/very good in traffic pony to get there and it would be about 45 min each way.

There’s still one local venue that does two all day shows, with showing classes as well as unaffiliated dressage and jumping. It would probably take about 1.5hrs to hack each way.

To hire a box around here is about £130/140 a day for a weekend day, less in the week. That’s self drive 3.5t box. That means you can drive it on a normal license BUT realistically you can only take one horse or two slimmer ponies due to the legal limits once you’ve got a driver/tank of fuel/your stuff in it.

I used to have a 3.5t lorry. I reckon it cost £100 a month to run, a bit more depending on service/MOT. It was a cheaper way to do it than hiring so long as you went out regularly - when my horse injured himself and wasn’t competing for 18m it only went to horse-pital and back 3 or 4 times.

We first got it when DC were at pony club rallies every month and competing most months/more in the summer. I’m glad we did it/I had it, but my wallet is very pleased I sold it this year!

What you have to remember is that this is a way of life rather than a hobby or after school activity. In most horsey families, everyone rides or is interested in horses otherwise it wouldn’t work. These people’s whole world revolves around getting time to spend with their animals and like minded people. You have mums who are riding instructors, or maybe they took their BHS exams before moving on to a more lucrative career. Then dads who run the local hunt or were top level eventers before getting a ‘proper’ job. Then you have the children of people who are professional riders.
We rocked up at pony club with a cheap trailer, a scruffy pony, me a happy hacker and my dh knowing nothing. Our dc did very well considering and went to the championships every year before the horsepower required was out of our limited budget.
As a happy hacker who had scrapped everything I had in terms of time and money together to enjoy my hobby, I was shocked at the level of wealth on show at pony club. To be fair it was shared in the sense that families with decent facilities allowed the pony club to use them free of charge. It was such an eye opener going to rallies, competitions and camps at all the homes of the most wealthy horse people living within 10 miles of my home.
I had previously used all my time off work to wait in for the farrier, vet, dentist or physio. These people had staff, two weeks somewhere lovely in the summer and an expensive ski holiday every winter.
In some ways I am glad my dc saw how the other half live. They have plenty of more normal friends from the local comp to balance it out.

It's definitely a way of life, not a hobby. And normally only doable with at least 1 parent being horsey too.

I was at the stables twice a day from 24 hours old, i went to the stables every day before and after school, even when i was ill and even throughout the exam periods.

After school i would ride my own ponies, plus any others i was paid to ride.

i competed most weekends, sometimes twice a weekend.

We've always had our own lorries, i used to compete other peoples when i had a big lorry with more capacity so made some fuel money back that way. Never been on a yard where they offered transport out.

These days i run a 3.5t lorry so only 2 capacity, but i only tend to take 2 places anyway. On occasions i've needed to take more out, a friend shoves them in her trailer for me! (but then i have to pay 2x fuel!)

It's expensive, stressful at times, relentless and takes a tonne of organising to get away on holiday with out them! But if i ever got forced to give up, i wouldn't want to be here anymore. it's all i know and all i want to know.

I can't reiterate how much its a life and not a hobby though. They money i spend is classes as household money, not hobby money.

@RedPony1 you are completely right, I timed how long I poo pick for 3 today, its 40 minutes and 2 full large wheelbarrows a day, every day or pay the price later, until it gets too muddy to push the wheelbarrows and hay feeding takes over which at peak costs over £10 a day, possibly for 2/3 months. I did have time for a lovely long ride which still has me smiling today though, tomorrow is quite busy with family stuff so aiming for the poo picking at about 5.30am which is possible and pleasant this time of year which makes things so much easier. This is the level of commitment it takes to keep me as a mum riding, daughter in PC and a younster coming though as a share. I would like the poo picking to disappear as a job but realise it won't and can accept that, our horses are part of the household and I would be broken hearted to loose them.

Don't know if it's still a thing but when I was a child/teenager I used to show & jump other people's ponies. They would pay for everything - entry fees, transport etc & sometimes I'd even get paid.

Regarding horse box hire - my friend and I hired a self drive 3.5T with 1180 payload yesterday for a show appx an hours drive away. Worked out £200 with diesel. Entry fee was £16 per class plus £5 first aid & £2 booking fee. Managed to spend £60 between us on the event photographer.

This was a small local unaffiliated show with showing, Working Hunter, clear round & some gymkhana games. The competition circuit for kids is £££££. Virtually everyone on the circuit will have their own lorry or trailer although occasionally share. It's a lot of work for parents who have to be groom or have very deep pockets to pay someone else.

Not to mention putting all the time, effort and money into getting your pony somewhere just for them to decide they don't want to do it

I took mine to a fun, low level clear round local competition well within his abilities. It was small & friendly & nothing obvious to freak him out but when I took him into warm up he just refused & bronced and napped to the gate & was clearly very unhappy so spent the morning with him either sitting in the lorry or walking him around the lorry park while my friend jumped. That's horses for you! Some people would have smacked him & made him do it but to me thats not what horses are about. If you want guaranteed participation try park run.

Same for us yesterday at a thankfully local show. Pony just didn't fancy it. Luckily my dc have a sense of humour and although a few brief tears from dd11 getting eliminated for the first time, they were very jovial about it!
We share a trailer with a friend at the same yard and our dc do most things together, my dc share one pony so this is definitely the budget option. I am a single parent on a relatively low income and have a second job. It's still a struggle but we do regularly travel an hour plus as there isn't a huge amount locally- even our pony club rallies are around an hour away. Saturday night I worked til 1.30 am, got up at 5am and returned home at around 6pm and as said that was a local show. Definitely takes parental dedication! 😅

Yes it really is a way of life not just a hobby. And also these things tend to creep - you start off doing everything quite modestly, then you want to do a bit more, and you invest a bit more (time, money, energy), and a bit more, until you realise that yes, it is completely all-encompassing.

DD is 13 and on her second pony now. She start riding school lessons at about 7, we started to part loan a riding school pony when she was 9, the riding school took us out to a few arena hires and finally her first showjumping competition (30cm cross poles!). And when she was 10 we took the plunge and got her first pony. Not long after that we wanted to be able to get the pony about without relying on the yard people, so we got a trailer. We joined a local riding club and started going out to more competitions, but still all quite local, and they had an amazing time and did really well. Then about a year later went to our first 'stay away' show that involved 4 nights stabling and multiple classes etc. We've done that 3-4 times since as they have improved and qualified for more national level events.

Fast forward another 3 years and we have a 7.5T lorry with living, her second pony, she is starting to event so now we need to go to comps in SJ, dressage XC to build up their experience.

So....the reason I'm saying all this is it doesn't happen all at once - somebody doesn't suddenly decide to buy a pony and compete it all over the country all in one go...it happens bit by bit, and you gradually make more and more room in your life for ponies and all that they bring and require.

I was driving on the M25 the other day and went past a lorry that had race or eventing horses in - very posh expensive trailer - unfortunately I was driving so couldn't take a photo

This lorry was about the size of a container lorry

Now the question I was trying to work out is - Are the horses all facing forward in 3 rows of 3 horses in each row or do they travel sideways?

My logic says they are in 3 rows all facing forwards so the direction of travel but is this correct?

@SUBisYodrethwhenLarping If its a modern lorry for eventers it probably only carried about 3 horses who would have been positioned at an angle
d across the width of the lorry (herringbone). The rest would be living area for the jockey/driver/groom- some of the poshest lorries have living areas that extend out to the sides to create extra room. I've never been inside one but imagine they are pretty luxurious and a long way from the horse lorries I used in the 70s and 80s.

Thank you for explaining - yes it was very modern and posh looking

So sort of a motorhome for the humans and horses together

Why would they be herringbone rather than face forwards?

Ease of getting out mostly, it's quite hard to reverse them all the way back and safely down a lorry ramp but it also makes better use of space. Horses in a trailer travel forward but most modern trailers have a front ramp for exit. In a small lorry they will often travel backwards with the ramp to load and unload being at the side.

Apparently most horses prefer to travel herringbone or facing backwards - one of ours hasn’t read the research because she hates going backwards in a small 3.5 lorry - she’s fine facing forwards in a trailer but is happiest travelling herringbone in a lorry. Ours has air suspension so gives the horses a very smooth ride (it doesn’t have posh pop outs though!). I love our lorry but if anyone had told me a few years ago that I’d be driving a lorry around I wouldn’t have believed them - as @Deliaskis said it creeps up on you …

Ok thank you so much for explaining - very interesting 🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂

WOW that is a beautiful horse 🙂🙂🙂🙂

I guess some horses want to be individual 🙂🙂🙂

Now the question I was trying to work out is - Are the horses all facing forward in 3 rows of 3 horses in each row or do they travel sideways?

Do they get upset travelling in horseboxes? Is there space for them to sit down or do they have to be wedged in vertically for safety reasons so they don't get flung about.

I always think that about poor Olympic horses that must be flown around the world. Miserable I expect.

They have to stand in compartments that are fairly compact for safety. There is space to each side and front and back, so they aren’t wedged in, but not too much.

Most horses don’t mind at all - they can sleep standing up after all! (Not that they’d be likely to on a trailer/lorry but just to make the point that standing for a few hours isn’t a particular hardship for them)

They don’t need to sit down - sitting isn’t a natural position for a horse. They’re not wedged in - they’ve got room to balance themselves but they don’t lie down when they’re travelling. Ours load themselves as they know that going onto the lorry or trailer means they’re going out to do something fun. None of ours has ever flown anywhere so I don’t have direct experience but the elite horses that go to those competitions will be very seasoned travellers. They wouldn’t be able to perform at the level they do if they found travelling too stressful. To be honest I am amazed at how most competition horses take travelling in their stride but all ours do. Obviously there are horses that aren’t happy travelling but generally they won’t be being taken out to competitions all the time as it’s too stressful for everyone concerned.

I’m assuming OP is trying to turn this into some sort of animal welfare point but Elite horse travel such as for the Olympics is highly regulated. Fun fact - the plane that the US horses flew to Paris in was called Air Horse One. https://www.essentiallysports.com/us-sports-news-olympics-news-equestrian-news-what-is-air-horse-one-discover-how-horses-are-transported-to-the-paris-olympics-by-aircraft/

Reading about the flights of olympic horses reminded me of the donkeys from the Donkey Sanctuary on Isle of Wight. When they need to go on the ferry over to mainland to equine hospital they have companion donkeys (their friends) that travel with them to keep them company 🙂🙂🙂🙂

A lot depends on the level your child wishes to compete at and also where you live. For some there will be plenty of low level local competitions that many will be happy to do and hiring transport or getting lifts may be feasible.

Once you get up the levels (affiliated competitions) those who do well will qualify for the next round of competitions which may well be further away. As the competition levels increase so does the cost - higher entry fees, more specialised tack and equipment, more training required (lessons), transport costs etc and the horses capable of competed at higher levels will usually cost more to buy and have more specific requirements in terms of care and feed.

I show jumped to a good level when I was younger and it took a lot of commitment from me and my family with a lot of time travelling. My son, in turn evented and again it was expensive and very time consuming, it was something we did as a family at the expense of foreign holidays and other things. As we're from Scotland we had to travel a lot to higher level competitions and hiring transport just wouldn't work. Lorries are expensive to buy and keep on the road and their fuel consumption is pretty poor. Trailers don't work so well for staying away on a regular basis and having some creature comforts in the living area of a lorry makes things a lot more comfortable!

If your child is going to compete seriously they are really going to need committed, hands on support from parents.

Do they get upset travelling in horseboxes? Is there space for them to sit down or do they have to be wedged in vertically for safety reasons so they don't get flung about

Are there human beings who think that horses sit down?

My mind is blown by that just as much as the OP is stunned by the fact horsey parents put the graft in.

This takes me back. Hire the horsebox £££, finishing washing/preparing the pony the night before. Up at 5, course walk at 8am, hang around for hours, the actual riding takes 1 minute 24 seconds. Perhaps a jump off (lucky - another minute or so, giving more bang for your buck) or hang around more until prize giving, home, sort the horse, take the horsebox back if not too late, fall into bed exhausted. With the 1 minute 24 seconds having costed over £100…..