Equestrian Related Careers

southerncharm95
Mon, 28 Apr 2014 20:43:10 +0000

@blossom I was joking about marrying wealthy…there’s not sarcasm font on the internet.

@mathmom and @Bromfield2 I volunteer at shows (hunter-jumper and Dressage) and worked for a few summers at various show barns in the area, and the ones doing well in competition were all extremely wealthy. I have one friend who shows on the A circuit, and her parents pay tens of thousands for her to be able to compete, and she rides a 200K horse. Perhaps I’ve just bumped into the wrong stables and people, but that’s just been my observation. I also show dogs professionally and many of the trainers and handlers used to show horses. As soon as they learn I enjoy riding, they start talking about how expensive it is/was.That said, thank you for your comments, it gives me hope that perhaps I can afford this later on in life. I do get the idea that how far you go up on a limited budget really depends on the connections you make, so perhaps I can try and build those in college.

@qialah In our area, that seems to be about the average. I talked to several of my friends’ vets (two of my friends are also equine vets) and they really discouraged me from becoming an equine vet if I eventually wanted to compete and own a decent horse. They all said the long hours made it hard to have any substantial hobby. I think one of them made 80K per year, and four others made between 30-45K per year. These weren’t recent graduates either, all of them had been practicing for ten years or more. There seems to be an excess of equine and large animal vets in the area. The one vet that made 80K a year had been practicing here since 1976 and had built up a loyal client base. Like you said, perhaps if I specialized, things would be different as all of them were just general large animal vets.