Lead with awareness.
Manage the group, pace, spacing, horses, riders, terrain, and changing conditions while keeping the experience calm and enjoyable.
Equestrian Experiences · Guest Adventures
Horseback Adventure Guide
Trail Rides & Recreational Experiences
Lead safe, memorable horseback experiences for families, tourists, first-time riders, and special-occasion guests while building real professional experience working with horses.
EmploymentPart-Time
SeasonSeasonal / Year-Round Potential
ScheduleVariable Guest-Experience Schedule
FocusTrail Rides & Recreational Riding
LocationRansomville, NY
Lead the ride. Read the horses. Create the experience.
A trail ride should feel like an adventure, not a transaction.
For many guests, their ride at Autumn's Gate may be their first time on a horse, the highlight of a family trip, a birthday or anniversary memory, or one of the experiences they remember most from visiting Niagara.
Horseback Adventure Guides make that experience work. You help prepare the horses, welcome the guests, explain safety, match riders with appropriate horses, lead the group, monitor what is happening throughout the ride, and make sure people finish feeling safe, confident, and glad they came.
This is also a real entry point into professional equestrian work. We are interested in people who want to build a career around horses and are willing to develop the horsemanship, judgment, guest-service skills, and operational experience that make that possible.
Your mission
Make horseback riding feel safe, approachable, and worth remembering.
Make guests feel comfortable.
Welcome riders, explain what to expect, teach the basics clearly, answer questions, and help nervous or first-time guests build confidence.
Build professional horsemanship.
Grow your horse-management, trail, guest-service, safety, and operational skills as a legitimate pathway into professional equestrian work.
What you'll own
Your responsibilities may include:
- Preparing horses for trail rides and recreational experiences through grooming, tacking, untacking, and approved pre-ride checks.
- Inspecting tack and equipment and reporting anything damaged, unsafe, poorly fitted, or needing attention before a ride begins.
- Helping match riders with appropriate horses based on experience, confidence, size, temperament, and the needs of the group.
- Welcoming guests and delivering clear pre-ride orientation covering mounting, stopping, steering, spacing, trail etiquette, and safety expectations.
- Helping first-time, nervous, or inexperienced riders feel comfortable without minimizing real safety requirements.
- Leading trail rides, family rides, private rides, special-occasion experiences, and other recreational equestrian offerings.
- Continuously monitoring riders, horses, group spacing, pace, trail conditions, weather, and other factors that can affect the ride.
- Adjusting pace, position, horse assignment, instructions, or the experience when a rider or horse needs something different.
- Maintaining control of the group while still allowing the ride to feel relaxed, conversational, and memorable.
- Recognizing signs of horse stress, discomfort, behavioral change, soundness concerns, tack issues, or other conditions that may require the horse to be removed from work.
- Putting horse welfare and guest safety ahead of schedule pressure, guest requests, or the desire to finish a planned route.
- Answering guest questions about the horses, riding, the farm, and the experience in a warm and knowledgeable way.
- Helping maintain staging areas, tack areas, trails, equipment, signage, and other spaces used for recreational riding.
- Assisting with horse care, turnout, barn tasks, program setup, and other equestrian or farm responsibilities within your training and assigned role.
- Following Autumn's Gate Barn Rules, riding standards, horse-handling procedures, emergency expectations, and operational policies.
- Communicating quickly when you notice a rider concern, horse issue, trail hazard, equipment problem, weather concern, or other condition the team needs to know about.
Experience & professional readiness
You need a horse foundation. You do not need a perfect professional résumé.
Horse experience matters because you will be helping manage real horses and real people in changing outdoor conditions. But this role is intentionally designed to identify people with strong potential and help them build professional equestrian experience.
Important for this role
- A solid foundation handling and riding horses safely.
- Comfort grooming, tacking, leading, mounting, and working around horses on the ground.
- Enough riding confidence and situational awareness to help manage recreational riders safely.
- Good judgment around horse behavior, rider safety, and changing conditions.
- Clear, friendly communication with adults, children, families, tourists, and first-time riders.
- Reliability, strong time-management habits, and dependable transportation.
- Comfort working outdoors and remaining physically active for extended periods.
Great experience to bring
- Western riding, trail riding, outdoor riding, or recreational riding experience.
- Experience working with beginners, nervous riders, children, or family groups.
- Customer service, hospitality, tourism, recreation, camp, or other guest-facing experience.
- Experience leading groups or being responsible for other people's safety.
- Horse care, groundwork, stable management, tack, or lesson-program experience.
- CPR, First Aid, equestrian safety, or other relevant training or certifications.
Before you apply
We're hiring the person, not just the résumé.
Life is pretty awesome.
Good Adventure Guides need horse skills, but they also need judgment, personality, awareness, and the ability to make people feel comfortable. We want people who are serious about safety without making the experience cold or intimidating.
Skills can be taught. Experience can be built. The right person can grow with us.
- You respect horses and treat them as partners rather than equipment.
- You can stay calm when a rider, horse, or plan stops behaving exactly as expected.
- You enjoy meeting new people and helping beginners feel successful.
- You communicate clearly without talking down to inexperienced riders.
- You take safety seriously and are willing to say no when something is not appropriate.
- You notice what is happening around you rather than focusing only on the horse underneath you.
- You accept coaching and want to keep improving your horsemanship and guest-service skills.
- You are interested in building a real future working professionally with horses.
Is this you?
The work should feel right on both sides.
You may love this role if...
- You want to make horses part of your actual professional life.
- You enjoy helping a nervous or first-time rider become comfortable and proud of themselves.
- You like being outside and working in an environment where every ride is a little different.
- You naturally pay attention to horse behavior, rider body language, spacing, terrain, and what is happening around the group.
- You enjoy talking with guests and making an experience feel personal.
- You want to keep building your horsemanship, trail, guest-service, and leadership skills.
This may not be the role for you if...
- You mainly want paid saddle time and are not interested in managing guests.
- You are uncomfortable giving clear safety instructions or correcting unsafe behavior.
- You tend to ignore small horse, tack, trail, or rider concerns until they become bigger problems.
- You do not enjoy working with beginners, children, tourists, or nervous riders.
- You prefer a job with a predictable indoor environment and little physical work.
- You are not interested in helping with horse prep, tack, cleanup, trails, staging, or other work surrounding the ride.
Where this can lead
Turn horse experience into a professional equestrian path.
Strong Adventure Guides can grow as they demonstrate horse judgment, guest-service quality, reliability, leadership, operational awareness, and a willingness to keep learning.
Senior Adventure Guide
Take greater responsibility for group leadership, horse assignments, guest flow, safety, and mentoring newer guides.
Riding Instruction
Build the teaching, rider-development, and communication skills needed to move toward structured lesson instruction.
Horse & Program Operations
Develop deeper experience in horse readiness, care, trails, equipment, recreational programming, and daily equestrian operations.
Equestrian Leadership
Grow toward program coordination, experience development, team leadership, scheduling, and broader equestrian responsibility.
The application process
Simple, conversational, and human.
Review the role
Make sure the horse work, guest interaction, outdoor conditions, safety expectations, and schedule sound right for you.
Submit the application
Tell us about your horse background, work experience, availability, goals, and why this professional path interests you.
Interview with Bit
Bit reviews your application and conducts a tailored initial interview about horse judgment, guest service, safety, and professional potential.
Human review
Qualified applications and Bit's interview summary move to the appropriate Autumn's Gate team leader for review.
Apply for the position
Ready to lead the adventure?
Complete the Horseback Adventure Guide application here. Once it is submitted successfully, you will continue to the Bit interview page. Bit will use what you shared in the application to personalize the initial interview, so you should not need to repeat information unnecessarily.
Bit helps organize and evaluate the initial conversation. Qualified applicants are then sent to the appropriate Autumn's Gate team leader for human review. Bit does not make the final hiring decision.