I had the best barn help. Until last year, when I had to let her go.

I hired Julia Walton in 2018. She was 16, and it was the first summer we owned our farm. For nearly a year I’d done all the chores myself: feeding and turning out in the morning (just two horses then) before leaving for work as a high school teacher. I’d clean stalls and complete the evening tasks after I got home from school.

But as my herd grew, my lesson program took flight and summer camp registrations started to accumulate. I knew I needed regular help. So when I received an email from a woman whose teenage daughter who rode at a nearby barn was looking for a summer job, I thought maybe we could use reinforcements. 

I recall “Jules’ ” mom bringing her to the barn for that first informal interview, excusing herself to wait in the car after making introductions (and hopefully determining I wasn’t a creep). Jules and I chatted about horses, her riding, and the chores she was helping with one day a week at the stable where she took lessons. She didn’t know I’d already vetted her through her instructor, a friend of a friend, and I offered a job on the spot.

I’ve taught high school for almost 20 years; more than 2,000 teenagers have come through my classroom door. But something about Jules, even from the beginning, was different. She was eager to learn. She wasn’t afraid of hard work. She was mature, polite with parents, and patient with even our most challenging campers. She loved and cared for my horses like they were her own.

But what stuck out the most—because it’s so rare in teens—was her initiative. She was constantly on the lookout for things that needed done, then she’d quietly take care of them, never seeking praise or recognition. To her, going above and beyond was just the right thing to do. From the beginning, Jules found ways to make my life just that little bit easier.  

When that fall rolled around, I kept her on to take care of stalls on the days I scheduled lessons. The next year, when she decided to complete her senior year of high school online, I hired her to feed and turn out on weekdays. I’d throw hay and check on the horses in the early morning before I left for school. She’d arrive a few hours later to feed, turn out and clean stalls before going home to do school of her own.

Over the next five years, Julia would prove herself indispensable.

Her job description was to feed and turn out, clean stalls, fill water buckets and hay nets. When needed, she’d refill pasture troughs and re-bed stalls.

And here’s what else I’d find done: Pastures dragged. Run-ins cleaned out. Saddles and bridles soaped and oiled. The barn cleared of cobwebs. Stalls decorated for the holidays with items she’d purchased herself. (I’d have to hide money in her car to reimburse her, otherwise she’d refuse.) Garbage taken out, because she’d noticed the neighbors’ cans on the street. Hooves treated for thrush; salve spread on little nicks and scrapes before turnout. Blankets put on if temperatures dropped; sheets if there was a chance of rain.

When she graduated from high school, Jules wasn’t sure of what she wanted to do “when she grew up.” She took classes at a local community college while still working at the barn, and I offered her more opportunities to get involved. She helped me plan a curriculum for visiting Girl Scout troops and a procedure for birthday parties that kept us from losing our minds. She helped run the first schooling shows we held at the farm.

She became a leader in our growing summer camp program, teaching the younger counselors by example. When the teens perched on hay bales in the back of the barn, chatting together while campers ate lunch, Jules grabbed a wheelbarrow and pitchfork and picked a few stalls. One by one, the others would notice, grabbing a pitchfork of their own. I started putting her in charge of groups of campers, confident that under her guidance they would both learn and be kept safe.

Somewhere along the line, Jules transitioned from employee to friend and then family.

Jules and I talk often about her future. A growing interest in a career as a veterinary technician led her to explore websites of some local programs. But she didn’t want to leave me hanging, she always said. I’d be the first to know her plans. Even if she returned to school full time, she hoped to work at least part time, and she promised to train the next person to fill her shoes.

In late 2023, my friend Alexis Baney, DVM, posted on Facebook that she was looking for a vet tech. I re-read the post: Certification wasn’t a requirement (it’s not mandatory in our state). More important was equine experience and the interpersonal skills needed to communicate with clients. Jules had those in spades.

The veterinary practice Alexis worked for before she branched off to start her own did a lot of teaching; she often arrived at my barn with a vet student or intern in tow. She was clear and encouraging, patient and thorough—an excellent teacher.

And I knew that Alexis’ colleagues and employees also become like family. Her tech, Maddie, followed Alexis through three vet practices but was now pregnant and on hiatus from things like x-rays, heavy lifting and longeing unruly horses. Alexis needed extra help in the field. Something in my stomach knotted.

“This could be the next right step for Jules,” I thought.

I fretted over the thought for a day. Our local equine Facebook pages were constantly posting employment ads, and I always stayed quiet when barn-owning friends complained about how hard it was to find good help. What kind of idiot would I be to offer up my very best employee?

I knew deep down Jules wouldn’t be here in her current role forever, but that reality only ever felt hypothetical. Whether she left to work for Alexis or to go to vet tech school, or to pursue her college full time, at some point, I knew Jules would move on—and I wanted her to.

But what on earth, I wondered, would I do without her? And what kind of person, what kind of friend, would I be if I learned of this opportunity but kept my mouth shut?

I called Alexis first, the day after she put up her post: “I’m pretty sure I’m going to kick myself for this later,” I said. “But I think I have someone for you to talk to about that tech job.”

When I told Jules about the position, her first concern was the barn, and me. We’d be fine, I promised. A half-dozen teen riders wanted to work, and we’d figure it out.

“Just talk to Alexis,” I said. “Get the information. If it’s a good fit for both of you, we’ll take it from there.”

The first day that Jules rolled up to the barn in the vet truck, wearing a polo shirt embroidered with Alexis’ logo, I fought back tears. I may or may not have snapped a few photos secretly to send to her mom as Jules set up an ultrasound machine in the aisle she’d swept and scrubbed just a week before. I was so proud of the person she had always been, and the person she was becoming.

She’s still a regular at the barn, despite her new role. As promised, she trained a handful of our barn’s younger teens to do her daily tasks, showing them her methods and her tricks, complimenting them on jobs well done and holding them to higher standards when their work falls short. If she’s at the barn to put a schooling ride on Oslo, a horse she took on as a project during her time working for me, it’s guaranteed that she’ll have also trimmed his mane or Swiffer-ed the office or re-bedded a stall or filled a hay net.

Jules said she felt weird at first, like she was offered the job just because of me. The only credit I’ll take is seeing the Facebook post. Alexis is my friend, I told Jules. I wouldn’t have sent just anyone her way. Your work ethic, your initiative, your eagerness to learn, your attention to detail, your general good-human-ness—those, I tell her, are what got you hired.

And those will be the things that propel her forward in life, no matter what paths she decides to follow, further down the road.  

Working in the horse world is challenging. Owners and clients have high expectations, and good help is hard to find. And as women, especially, we have a higher hill to climb, in both the horse world and the real world. In 2024, women working full time made only 83 cents for every dollar earned by a man, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

It’s our job as equestrians, and as women, to keep raising each other up: Maybe that means passing lesson students to other trainers or other barns when they’ve outgrown our own. Maybe that means holding our students and employees to the highest standards, whether in the saddle or around the barn. Maybe that means offering guidance or a listening ear, or alerting each other to opportunities that will enable us to grow. Maybe it means that when you see the perfect next step for a lovely young friend, that you make that phone call that’s kind of hard to make.

I miss Jules’ daily presence at the barn. I especially missed her this winter when, in single-digit temps and dressed in school clothes, I steered the side-by-side through the fields to throw hay, then coaxed bleary-eyed equines outside in the dark. And I especially miss her when the teenagers are making TikTok videos in the barn aisle instead of sweeping it. But I’m excited to see where life takes her. I’m excited to hear about what she’s seeing and learning every day in the field. And I’m excited to help the next group of barn workers find themselves, too, at the barn.

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Sarah K. Susa is the owner of Black Dog Stables just north of Pittsburgh, where she resides with her husband and young son. She has a B.A. in English and Creative Writing from Allegheny College and an M.Ed. from The University of Pennsylvania. She teaches high school English full-time, teaches riding lessons and facilitates educational programs at Black Dog Stables, and has no idea what you mean by the concept of free time.