Ok, so I usually try to keep horsey talk to a minimum here, as I know that most of you who read my blog posts tend to be non-horsey folk and I don't want to bore you, however something has been bugging me for a while, and where better to vent about it than to all of you, right?
So, after a few years break from riding while spending my time having babies and getting married, I decided to get back in the saddle. Horses have been my passion for as long as I can remember. However I found getting back into it much more expensive than I remembered..
I rang round a few local riding schools to get some prices, the first gave me a price of £35 for a half an hour private lesson, or £30 for a half an hour 'semi-private' (with 2 others) lesson. I thanked them and promptly hung up. £30 for half an hour? I used to pay £9 for an hours group lesson! There must be cheaper out there. But after ringing round several other places I found that this was actually the going rate for lessons! So I booked a lesson for the following week, and told the hubby that it was actually £20 so he didn't get too mad...
After a couple weeks of lessons, Sam, my eldest asked if he could also start lessons. I was delighted! I've always wanted the kids to experience the fun of riding! So I rang the riding school and enquired about a lead rein beginners group lesson to get him started. Again came the familiar price tags. £27 for a half hour lesson! So in total I would be paying £57 for an hour of riding!
Being a horsey Mum, I decided I couldn't go on paying out that amount of money, and so we bought Zoom. Before bringing him home, I obviously had to find a place to keep him, and so called up the stables where I had kept previous horses, but was amazed to find that the price for a DIY stable, had risen from £30 a week to £45! I decided I would ring round, but we found many yards no longer even offer DIY as an option. 1 Yard owner telling me she didn't want DIY as DIY people are 'messy' another saying people on DIY 'don't take care of their horses'. I think the main reason they don't want DIY owners, is that they don't make them as much money!
Eventually we found a yard for £25 a week DIY. For non-horsey people, DIY means you get use of a stable and a paddock, but you do everything yourself, and you need to pay for bedding, hay and feed separately. Zoom being a cob, and a relatively good doer means he doesn't cost me anywhere close to the £57 I was paying for lessons, and hurrah! All three children could have as many rides as they liked, with free tuition from yours truly. Perfect.
However, since then a few of the kids friends have been to ride Zoom and spend time at the yard, and what really gets me is that while all of them loved being around the horses, and absolutely love riding is that had they not been friends of ours, non of them would be able to afford riding lessons. This is something that really grates on me.
For those who don't know, the UK is in the middle of a horse crisis. Horses are being dumped left, right and centre, and a horse or pony can be purchased for next to nothing, because people purely can't afford to keep them anymore. The market is flooded with youngsters, that have been bred with no thought as to where these horses and ponies will end up. I read an article saying the way forward is to get more people interested in horses, that the more people wanting to own a horse will help find homes for so many unwanted abandoned ponies.
There is only 1 problem. Only people with money can afford riding lessons for their kids these days. Maybe if you have a good job, and an only child, £30 for half an hour doesn't seem that steep. Well I'm telling you, the price of keeping a horse hasn't increased that much since I was a kid paying £9 an hour, the only thing that has changed is the attitude of yard owners and riding schools!!
Take the price of hay and bedding, which is a massive drain on a stables finances. I used to pay £2.50 a bale for straw and £3 for hay, and we're talking 10years ago. You can still pick up hay and straw at this price, shavings used to be around £6 a bale, and are now around £7.50 so minimal increase for 10 years right? Feed is still available relatively cheaply, for only a few pence more than it was back then too although the big brands with their 'new improved' (actually exactly the same) feed and supplements would like you to believe otherwise. (Top tip read your labels, often you pay double for the same stuff with a prettier label) I also suspect that big yards will be getting discounts on those prices as they are able to buy in bulk. So whats driving these massive price increases?
When did we start pricing out normal people from being able to enjoy these amazing animals!
The other thing that strikes me is everyone seems to have gone a bit snobbish where ponies are concerned. Where riding schools used to be filled with shetland ponies, little welsh cobs, they now seem to be opting for bigger, flashier horses. I was shocked to see a very petite little girl of 6, being taught to canter for the first time on a 15hh horse, her legs barely passed the saddle flaps!
When did we fall out of love with ponies? Most of the yards I visit as part of my job now seem to favour 14hh+ no matter how small the rider. In fact when I was looking for a pony, I asked the advice of a few local instructors to see if they knew of anything suitable. When I said Mother/Child share, they instantly started telling me of 14.2 and 15hh horses they knew would do just the job..Hang on a minute, how do you teach a 6,3, and 2 year old on a 15hh horse? I wanted a fun little pony, and so we went out on our own to look and that's just what we bought. However the same yards completely lost interest in wanting us as liveries, they only wanted big competition horses to make the yard look good, not a 13.2 scruff bag gypsy cob. (He is a scruff bag but he's our scruff bag ;) ) I've found many horsey people look down on you for riding a pony rather than buying yourself a big competition horse (which FYI most of these sorts can't even ride the horse in question and in fact make bigger fools of themselves by being so over horsed)
I also question the price of 'Working livery' again for non horsey folk, working livery gives you all the perks of full livery, you only have to come visit your horse when you want to ride, with 1 catch, your horse or pony is used in riding lessons at the riding school. Most yards I approached wanted me to consent to Zoom being used for a MINIMUM of 4 hours a week for lessons, and furthermore, they wanted me to pay £55 for the privilege. So lets get this straight, an hours lesson is around £35 and that's a group lesson, say he is used for 8 half an hour private lessons, the riding school have then made a whopping £240 from using my horse for their lessons, and my £55 more than covers feed and bedding. Back when I got my first pony working livery was FREE and rightly so! As owners, a horse being used in the riding school comes with risk. Risk they may be injured while being ridden, that they may pick up bad habits when allowed to get away with certain behaviours whilst being ridden by novice riders. Their shoes (If they have any) will need changing more often should they be used for hacking and road work, tack will need cleaning and replacing more frequently. Why would you pay someone £55 a week for that? Of course, the other issue, if I put Zoom on working livery, he could well end up too exhausted to want to be ridden by me, and the 3 kids should he already be being ridden by others at the riding school!
I would love to have the funding to set up my own riding school, bring back cheap to keep, cheap to feed ponies, who are much more fun than big horses (especially when learning a fall from the big boys hurts!) Bring back riding for the masses!! Bringing back cheaper livery costs would encourage thousands back into riding and horse ownership. I'm sure I will get responses saying interest rates have increased, that the cost of loans/mortgages on the properties acting as livery/riding schools will have increased and they have to recoup it somewhere. Or that labour costs have increased, well show me a riding school that doesn't have a team of FREE workers who only ask for a free plod on a school pony at the end of the week, or a yard that doesn't completely rely on apprentices, and young workers to keep their costs down. Of course insurance is a big factor too, with people taking businesses to court for the smallest things, a place where there are half ton animals that can and at some point will injure someone, I understand that insurance prices will have increased, but the need for such a huge price leap still doesn't wash with me to be honest.
I find it incredibly sad that so many young people will never get the opportunity to find their love of horses, their passion for riding as I did. That so many people are now so priced out of horse ownership. As we have seen with the horse crisis as bad as it is, its the horses that suffer for the greed of others.
