Charmayne James explains why growing up with horses helps kids develop into well-prepared adults with good character.
Through my clinics and my own kids’ involvement in sports, I’m around people all the time, especially people who have kids and horses. Why invest the money and time in the horses and barns and equipment and entry fees? To a lot of parents, it’s too expensive, it’s a lot of trouble and it’s a lot of work. But ultimately in this life we have to work, and one thing about having horses is that it does teach a good work ethic, because there’s a lot that has to be done. The stalls need to be cleaned, the horses need to be fed, turned out, cared for, ridden, and there’s all the maintenance that goes into horses — having to shoe them and be there to meet the horseshoer, making sure they’re wormed and getting the right feed, even little things like learning to manage your land by turning horses out on a schedule so that grass can grow. It’s a learning process that bleeds over into anything we do in life. It makes us more responsible and smarter down the road to take care of something other than yourself.
Taking responsibility for something and doing a good job at it helps you learn how to manage tasks. Management skills carry over into any career or role in life, be it a schoolteacher or managing a company one day. You become your own boss when you’re managing a horse. You’re automatically put into the manager role, where you can oversee everything that goes into caring for that animal.
From a parent’s perspective, one of the biggest things is that people young and old love their horses, they take pride in how their horse looks in taking care of them and in their equipment, and that’s how it should be. It keeps kids doing things that are productive, which sets you up better for life.
One of the greatest gifts God could give us is being around horses, riding them, being in the country and spending time outside, not stuck in a building sitting at a desk all the time. I think it’s really how we were meant to live, so I think over the long run of your entire life, spending more time outside helps people be happier.
Competing on a horse adds another dimension of growth beyond just owning and riding horses for pleasure. It’s not as easy as , ‘Hey, let’s get a horse and let’s barrel race.’ Through competing, you’re going to experience some uncomfortable times of winning and losing. Losing causes uncomfortableness, and there is nothing wrong with that positive growth, because you learn from it. Things don’t always go smoothly all the time, in life or in the arena. If you try to create a picture-perfect world, you never learn to deal with problems in life. Through competing, horses and living on a farm or ranch, issues always arise and you have to learn to deal with them, be tough and move on.
“Things don’t always go smoothly all the time, in life or the arena. If you try to create a picture-perfect world, you never learn to deal with problems in life.”
Horses really love people, but they require a lot of maintenance and a lot of care. Any time you’re in a position to care for something, whether it’s a horse, an animal or your own property, you’re further equipped to deal with anything. But I think there’s a special gratification out of riding horses and seeing them do well and get better. I have so many people who tell me at clinics, ‘My daughter started this horse from 2 years old, and look what they’ve done together.’ There’s a lot of gratification in seeing your own hard work or your child’s hard work shine through horses.
This article was originally published in the November 2023 and July 2021 issues of Barrel Horse News.
