The stars have consulted your ride times and have some thoughts. photograph by Jess Ogden ARIES (March 21 – April 19) September is going to make you feel invincible, which means you’re going to sign up for something you haven’t fully thought through. Say yes anyway. The thing you’re slightly underprepared for is usually the […]

Article & Photographs by Sarah Thomann Most of us have a complicated relationship with the show office. We go in when we have to, hand over our paperwork, try not to take too long. We don’t think much about what happens in there between our visits, or who’s managing the twelve other things that keep […]

The show covers ground that most equestrian media doesn’t: the real economics of the sport, the client/trainer dynamic, what it takes to report bad behavior at a show, how to rebuild confidence after a setback.

The Incredible True Story of the Riders Who Put Their Stories Into PS of Sweden’s Most Personal Collection Yet There is a Facebook group called PS of Sweden Unicorns, and if you know, you know. It is a resale group, technically: a place to buy, sell, and trade pieces from a Swedish tack brand that […]

For years, the show office at most venues has been cast with a dark shadow by exhibitors. It’s whispered about at in-gates and barn aisles, with many making the conscious decision to avoid it entirely. Here at Modern Amateur we have heard the whispers and we want to change that mindset! Our goal is to […]

Somewhere between a full-time job, a real budget, and a horse with opinions, she figured out how to make it work. We’re not saying it’s easy. We’re not saying it’s logical. We’re saying she does it anyway, and she was kind enough to tell us how. Age 37 Annual Income $60,000 Lease or Own? Neither […]

Adult amateur eventer Aria Bachan on the horse who challenged her, the trainer who pushed her, and refusing to accept that she didn’t belong. Before Aria Bachan was an adult amateur eventer, she was a ten-year-old with a golf cart. She would drive it up to the fence line at the Chateau Elan hunter-jumper shows […]

Real answers to the horsemanship questions you’ve been sitting on.

Most of us don’t pick our barns the way we’d pick them if money and time were unlimited. We pick the one with the right trainer, the one we can afford, the one that’s twenty minutes from home instead of forty-five. Turnout availability rarely makes the shortlist when you’re also weighing board rates and arena […]

Real questions from real ammys about the messy, complicated, occasionally wonderful experience of being a horse person.