10/08/2026
I feel really strongly about this! Kids need the hours in the barn to really learn horses, feel, tact, empathy. The things that take time.
When I ran a school program I got the entire spectrum of responses to this mentality. Some parents praised my efforts to create independent, capable riders, and others snarked that their kid didn’t get to ride long enough and spent too much time tacking up. But looking at my riders that have stuck in the sport, it’s always the ones who wanted to learn and craved for that “barn rat” time.
I have a mantra that I think about with my students and with my daughter as she gets older, “let them struggle.” Not in a mean way, not in an “I’ll never help you” way, but in a “you are capable of hard things, I trust you” way. It builds self-confidence and resilience in riders and horses.
The kids will be okay, if we let them.
Ask Dr. Holly Helbig what she worries most about for the future of the sport, and her answer isn’t about judging systems, prize money, or even veterinary shortages. It’s about kids.
“We’ve done this to them,” she said during a recent Plaidcast In Person event. “We’ve tacked up for them, been their grooms, enabled them. They aren’t getting the hours it takes to build intuition around horses.”
That loss of hands-on time—the small, daily habits that teach empathy and awareness—has become one of Helbig’s biggest concerns. And as both a veterinarian and professional trainer, she’s seen how taking those opportunities away doesn’t just change young riders; it changes the horses too.
Helbig describes herself as a “horse-crazy girl, not from a horse family.” She didn’t grow up surrounded by resources, but she found a way to make it work. “My parents went through bankruptcy,” she said. “Being a kid, not coming from a ton of money, I had to be scrappy.”
That scrappiness, she believes, is part of what shaped her success. “I didn’t have the money to pay a braider or a bunch of grooms,” she said. “You just jump in and do what you have to do. At the end of the day, I wouldn’t trade it. My relationship with that horse was stronger because of all the time I spent with him.”
Today, she worries that many young riders aren’t getting those same opportunities. “I think we’ve created a generation that can ride beautifully,” she said, “but hasn’t had the chance to really know horses.”
In her own training program, Helbig made sure her students stayed involved in every aspect of horse care. “My kids tacked for themselves at the horse show,” she said. “We had grooms, but they tacked for themselves.”
When something medical came up, she used it as a teaching moment. “Whenever anything happened in the barn, I’d scoop all the kids up and say, ‘Come look at this. What is it? Look at this ultrasound. Let’s look at this x-ray together.’”
Those experiences, she said, taught her students to see horses as living, breathing partners—not just show animals. “They learned to pay attention, to notice things, and to ask questions. That’s what builds confidence.”
📎 Continue reading this article at https://www.theplaidhorse.com/2025/10/22/let-the-kids-tack-up-why-the-next-generation-needs-more-time-in-the-barn/
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