On having too many noobs to function

Which is exactly the problem with my volunteer job. Pretty much all the really experienced people left, and we have instead a bunch of 12-13 year olds who are, while well-meaning, utterly useless.

Today, one of the girls walked a pony down having not secured his saddle properly. By the time they'd gotten to the arena, the saddle was literally hanging sideways off the pony. For those of you who don't know much about horses, let me tell you why this is a BAD DEAL. Even without a kid in the saddle. Horses are preyed on by animals that attack by jumping on a) their backs/necks and b) their bellies. A horse that is not ridiculously brave and well-trained will FLIP A SHIT if their saddle rolls, and let me tell you that even a little 900 pound pony can and will break fences and heads if it gets scared enough.

Luckily, this pony is not only brave but has also been around long enough that he has faced everything from bears to Blue Angels. He was perfectly calm, but it exemplifies just how clueless these volunteers are. Basic rule of riding: check your saddle before you go anywhere.

And honestly, I did feel a little bad at her (the farm's director was there, and she's about six feet tall and can be REALLY SCARY when she gets mad), but for all the stupid things I did as a green volunteer, I never did anything quite that stupid or that dangerous. But, more importantly, she would never have touched a horse without someone supervising if we hadn't been so short on trained help.

Which is what we really need. I, entirely on my own, am more efficient at setting up for pony camp than six new volunteers. I pretty much set up the past two days because I'd gotten there early--today, I was running a little later than usual, and the whole thing was chaos. And they'd gotten less done, to boot. None of them know what needs to be done, so they mill around getting in the way, and none of them will ASK what needs to be done. Which, you know, is the whole point of volunteering--VOLUNTEER TO DO SOMETHING EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE. IT WON'T KILL YOU.

What else would be nice would be if they could ask for help when they need it, rather than trying to do things on their own to show off and then screwing things up. I know they all want to look good so that they can start handling horses, but the reason they aren't working with the horses is because THEY'RE NOT CAPABLE YET. Honestly, I don't even mind babying them a bit, rather than having to save them when they've already messed up. One of the two boy volunteers actually asked me for help today, because he didn't feel comfortable catching a really big horse who's not used for camp. And so yeah, I caught his horse and the one I was supposed to get myself, but it wasn't like I was complaining about him not doing his own work. I was there to support him in the first place, and it'd be nice if some of the other volunteers got that through their heads. We're not trying to upstage them. We're trying to HELP.

Obviously this is a subject about which I could go on and on. But I'll stop. After all, they're probably all going through puberty (ick). I should cut them some slack.