Poor pay is just one downside of trying to work hands-on with horses. A person who makes their living riding horses is always just one bad fall away from permanent unemployment. I know two people who were very good young dressage riders whose careers were derailed permanently by back injuries.

A degree can be a useful thing if you go into working with horses from the business end, which is also where most of the better jobs are in terms of pay. Within the Thoroughbred industry, there are jobs at the track involving business administration: the horsemen’s accounts office, horse identifier’s office, racing secretary’s office, and other “front-end” jobs.

On the backside of the track, there are jobs involving maintenance, records, liaison with horsemen, licensing, security and other jobs. Some trainers who have multiple divisions at different racetracks have business managers and administrative assistants to keep up with all the paperwork and communications.

There are jobs within the bloodstock sales business, on both the buying and selling sides. One career that involves both knowledge of horses themselves and a strong business background is “pinhooking:” buying horses for resale later on. Becky Thomas of Sequel Bloodstock made a career of pinhooking. Here is her bio: http://www.ntra.com/stats_bios.aspx?id=2237

Within sales agencies, there are administrative jobs that involve cataloguing horses for sales, completing the paperwork involved in sales transactions, assisting clients with shipping arrangements and verifying credit, working on catalogues for upcoming sales, processing sales nominations, and all the other administrative things associated with the horse trade.

On the farms, in addition to the “hands on” jobs, there are administrative jobs involving processing paperwork, accountancy, payroll disbursement, record keeping, client relations, and so forth.

There are also publications-related jobs in horse periodicals.

If you’re interested in following up, the University of Arizona offers a racetrack industry program: http://cals.arizona.edu/rtip/

There’s also the Darley Flying Start Program….http://www.darleyflyingstart.com/

Good luck!

If you elect to make horses your trade, having a degree will only be an asset. It also ensures that you have a good, solid educational background. It actually also give you a ‘fall back’ plan if working in the horse world does not work out for you as there are plently of jobs out there that just require a college degree and they don’t care what it’s in. Yes, there are jobs in the horse world that pay enough to live comfortably. But you have to be a very big name to get there, which means many years of struggle. Usually the big names have to own their own boarding stable, teach lessons, ride client horses at home and at shows, and do horse sales, along with clinics in order to have enough streams of income to live comfortably. And by big names – I am talking Olympians so you’d need to be in the top 1% of riders.

Of the alternate careers you have thought about, only being an airline pilot would probably give you enough money to afford horses comfortably. However, being a pilot means a lot of time away from home and from your horse. I know a rider who is a pilot, and she has to pay her instructor to ride her horse while she is gone. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but something you need to be aware of. It basically means that you have to keep your horse at a boarding stable and not at your own home.

Good luck with your decision.

I’d go for a none-horsey job, and keep the horses as a hobby! I’ve done well and just landed a job with Gleneagles Hotel on their equestrian centre, but I’ve been lucky with that. Most of my college friends are working in a call centre, or shovelling stables.

I spent a few years out of horses but I couldn’t stick any jobs – the horses are where my heart is.