The Stables - Work Experience

Here is another one of my work experience adventures. Having a horse of my own, I realised that some people may think that doing work experience at a stables is a waste of time. However, this is wrong, you can learn so much from things which you think you know. Often I find that you can get the most out of something when you are already familiar with the basics.

Anyways, here are some thoughts

Hard Work

Most of my days started at 8:00, which is perfectly reasonable. I already knew how much hard work goes into the work at stables. In the morning, we poo picked the paddocks for around 2 hours (depending on how many of us were there that day). Then we mucked out and swept the stables. By 12:00, we had finished most of our morning jobs (with the odd blister or two).

After that, it depended on what we needed the horses for that day, meaning tacking up for the day and bringing in horses for vaccinations and farrier visits. Quite often we had to exercise the horses. In doing this we often did sets. This was were I rode one horse and led one or two others (it really did feel like I was in some kind of Western film).

The Youngsters

The stables I went to had a lot of young green horses that they are training up to sell. I had the opportunity to help with the training of a few of these horses. A lot of the time, I held the horses as they were being tacked up (normally in kind of half saddle to get them used to the feeling of having one on their back).

Sometimes they used something called long reining. This is where you have two reins and direct the horse from the floor behind them. This is important for young horses as it teaches them how to turn and respond to directions. A lot of the time, the young horses are lunged before being ridden. This allows the horses to use up extra energy (and to prevent the rider being bucked off!).

Before actually riding, the horse must get used to the weight of the rider on their back. This means that the rider must lean over the back of the horse, gradually increasing how far on the horse they are.

When the rider is on, sometimes they were on a lead rein. This allowed the horse to be more certain about the direction that they were headed in. After some time, the lead rope is taken away and the person on the floor must walk alongside the rider, gradually getting further away. This allowed for the horse to gradually get used to the idea of being ridden.

This whole process takes a long time and of course, a horse is never truly finished with their training as it will continue for life. During my work, I saw horses at a couple of stages in this training process.

Horses being horses

I would have to say, the most difficult part was leading the horses back to their field. Quite often I had a few horses with me. Whilst most of my trips were successful, one did lead to me letting go of two horses into the wrong field. This happened because one of the horses went through the gate to the electric fence far too quickly and I lost my grip. Thankfully I quickly caught them, but I do still have the rope burn from this event at the time of writing this sentence.

Another event that I remember quite well was the quirks of this one horse. For some reason, as the girth was tightened on this horse, he would lie down on the floor. The horse did not have any back issues or ulcers and the reason for this were unknown.

The horse was tacked up in the arena to check how he responded. Oddly enough, as he was tacked up in the arena, the horse was perfectly well behaved.

Teamwork

A lot of work involved teamwork and communication. I think that during this week I really improved my ability to talk to others and clearly communicate about tasks.

Learning

I learnt a great deal working at the stables. I think tacking up a horse at speed was difficult and definitely required some practise (especially with draw reins which I have never used on my horse and so was a bit confusing).

This week really did improve my confidence in handling horses (a key skill important in becoming a vet as vets must appear competent when assessing animals). I did this during my trips to the field with 4 different horses going to 4 different fields.

I learnt how to effectively ride doing sets. Sets are basically when you ride one horse and lead one or two other horses alongside you. This was a challenge at first, you nee to make sure that all of the horses are going at around the same speed in a canter whilst exercising them, otherwise you end up being dragged straight off the horse!

Weirdly enough, I also helped to look after the goats that they kept at the stables. Leading them to a new space was difficult as they are one of the most stubborn animals that you could ever imagine!