Like I Have Time For This?

My girls love horses. My girls want to ride. This is no surprise. I loved horses. I rode. I even had a horse for a few years and rode in a couple of horse shows. And I spent summers and weekends and once — between colleges — nearly a whole year working in the barn where my horse lived, feeding, cleaning, riding…the whole smash.

 So, of course I want to give my girls riding lessons. Of course I do. But they’re expensive, to say the least, and money’s tight, and the kids are still little, so I was biding my time, you know? Waiting for them to get older, for us to be more settled (preferably into a small farm with a 4-stall barn), waiting for it all to fall into place.

But then someone in one of the local homeschool groups mentioned something that seemed terrific: A six-session homeschoolers horsemanship clinic. Two-hour sessions, twice a month. One hour dedicated to riding lessons; the second hour to be learning how to care for the animals. And only $35 per kid per session. Sounded like a dream. Sounded too good to be true.

And it was. Too good to be true, that is. It actually sucked.

First of all, there were 17 kids there, and not enough tacked-up horses or instructors. Then they split the kids into 2 groups. One group would ride while the other did horse-care, and then the groups would switch. But somehow, there weren’t even numbers of kids, and then one of the moms said my kids were in the wrong group so I asked the instructor and she said, “yeah, okay, just go over to that group (the riding-first group) so we did, and we watched other kids get very nice riding lessons for about half an hour and then I finally asked if my kids were gonna get to ride at all and the instructors said: “Oh, you’re in this group? We thought you were in the other group.”

At which point I let my irritation show, and asked with frosty calm if all of the children would be receiving equal riding-time. At which point another instructor took us in hand and assured us that my girls would get equal time even if we had to run over the lesson time and we went outside to a nice paddock and I watched the girls ride. For maybe 7 minutes a piece. The other kids were riding for at least 15 minutes, more like 20, and were learning to trot, and the whole bit. My kids got 7 minutes of walking around and learning to say Whoa. Big fucking whoop.

Then after my 4-year-old’s 7-minute lesson was done, kids from the other group came running over because it was their turn, and my 7-year-old got concerned and I assured her that she was next, and she was. But of course, she didn’t get more than 7 minutes because the instructor got nervous seeing the line of kids forming inside the paddock, including one girl who was supposed to be at the indoor ring for her lesson, but just left that area and came over to ours because (she said to me airily — like this was just a weekend in the fucking Hamptons for her) “it’s just soooo much nicer outdoors today, don’t you think?”

And la-dee-fuckin-da…my kids totally got shafted.

And then after the riding was done, the instructor said we should go back in and join the other group because they were already doing horsemanship. So we did, but they were already done brushing the coats and combing the manes and had moved on to cleaning out the ponies’ feet which isn’t as simple as it looks. I listened to this woman explain how to get the horse to lift up its hoof (which she said, was a simple matter of running your hand down the back of the horse’s leg and then asking it — VERBALLY! – to pick up its foot) which is just NOT the way I remember learning this trick, so I bent down quickly to my 7-year-old and quietly explained it to her more clearly.

And that was it. For the rest of horsemanship. the kids just sort of milled around. My 4-year-old picked up a brush at one point and just brushed a horse. At least no one told her to stop. And then the kids got “homework” for next time: to learn about a breed of horse and tell the class next time.

Then they gave each kid a peppermint to feed to the horses. But my 4-year-old got too scared at the last minute seeing those enormous lips coming towards her fingers and she started to cry, so I fed the mint to the pony for her and then she cried some more so I gave her a hug and then a bunch of older girls came running over yelling over each other’s voice so as to be the one to teach my little girl exactly how it’s done, and this just made my little one cry harder, so I said it was time to go (which it was, thank God) and we headed out.

As we were leaving, my 4-year-old said she wanted another mint. I told her no, that we couldn’t feed the horses any more mints, and then she said, no I want one for me, and I had to say no to that, and she just cried and cried and cried.

And my 7-year-old remarked cheerfully that she thought this had been really fun, and I had to explain to her that it really hadn’t been very good at all. That we could do better than this. That if we wanted to stand around and watch other people ride horses, we could do that for free, any time we wanted. And that I would find her something better.

In the car, on the way home, I explained to them how frustrated I felt that they had been short changed. I explained this a little bit too much, and perhaps too vehemently, because they’re now mimicking me and talking about how terrible it was as well. And they sound more indignant than I do.

We stopped at McDonald’s for dinner, because if ever there was a day in which we needed to stop at McDonald’s for dinner, this was it. When we got home, I called RegularDad at work and just sort of went off on the whole thing, and got it all off my chest, and felt much better. Then I was able to call the woman who ran this stable to tell her we would not be returning. That we felt it was much too crowded for our liking. I was able to say that — and ONLY THAT — to the woman and then thank her kindly and hang up. She has NO IDEA how lucky she is that I was able to talk to RegularDad first. Seriously.

I spent $70 on this. I’d much rather have just driven down the highway and let a few twenties go out the window, ya know?

ARRRRGH does not even scratch the surface, my friends. Not one little bit.