OK, I've found my riding lesson place
Feb. 2nd, 2007 04:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quietannIt's Windrush Farm, hands down.
They are in Boxford; the horses, barns, outdoor ring, and the founder's house are on one side of a little country road, and the office and indoor ring are on the other. They mostly do therapeutic riding, but use the recreational lessons to supplement their income and keep the horses being worked by riders who don't have challenges. (The cost is $50 for a one-hour group lesson, which is still a good deal.)
I rode Clifford (The Big Red... Horse). He's huge (16.3 hands at least); the instructor misread my application and thought I was 5'11"!!! I said I'd see how it went with him. He's a little bit of a slowpoke, and he's trained Western so he wants to put his head down on the ground. But he's responsive and generally well-mannered.
I am in a class with three other women, all slightly older than me. All but one are returnees to riding, and we're all at approximately the same level (although the instructor thinks I may be a little bit ahead of them.) The instructor is Susan, and she's wonderful. She gives a lot of feedback and explains how and why to do things very well, and intersperses lessons about horse psychology. We ran over our hour a little bit because she wanted to be sure that everyone had a chance to canter. I've had problems with supposedly "30 minute" lessons being shorter because of tight scheduling or other issues. That won't happen here.
And... at the end of the lesson, she actually asked me if I wanted to stay with Clifford or try a different horse. No "this is the horse you ride and don't ask questions." She asked me to tell her a bit about Minnie, since she'd picked up that Minnie is a horse I like riding. And right away said, "OK, we can find a horse with more 'go' for you." So next week she'll try me on either Mac or Bearito (I am hoping for Bearito because he's an adorable large pony.) My argument that I need a horse that moves out freely so I can focus on improving my own skills made sense to her.
So, it looks like this is a win!
They are in Boxford; the horses, barns, outdoor ring, and the founder's house are on one side of a little country road, and the office and indoor ring are on the other. They mostly do therapeutic riding, but use the recreational lessons to supplement their income and keep the horses being worked by riders who don't have challenges. (The cost is $50 for a one-hour group lesson, which is still a good deal.)
I rode Clifford (The Big Red... Horse). He's huge (16.3 hands at least); the instructor misread my application and thought I was 5'11"!!! I said I'd see how it went with him. He's a little bit of a slowpoke, and he's trained Western so he wants to put his head down on the ground. But he's responsive and generally well-mannered.
I am in a class with three other women, all slightly older than me. All but one are returnees to riding, and we're all at approximately the same level (although the instructor thinks I may be a little bit ahead of them.) The instructor is Susan, and she's wonderful. She gives a lot of feedback and explains how and why to do things very well, and intersperses lessons about horse psychology. We ran over our hour a little bit because she wanted to be sure that everyone had a chance to canter. I've had problems with supposedly "30 minute" lessons being shorter because of tight scheduling or other issues. That won't happen here.
And... at the end of the lesson, she actually asked me if I wanted to stay with Clifford or try a different horse. No "this is the horse you ride and don't ask questions." She asked me to tell her a bit about Minnie, since she'd picked up that Minnie is a horse I like riding. And right away said, "OK, we can find a horse with more 'go' for you." So next week she'll try me on either Mac or Bearito (I am hoping for Bearito because he's an adorable large pony.) My argument that I need a horse that moves out freely so I can focus on improving my own skills made sense to her.
So, it looks like this is a win!
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no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 09:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 09:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 10:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-03 05:37 am (UTC)I'm feeling sympathetic pains in my wallet on hearing a rate of $50 per hour for group lessons, but I suppose that everything related to riding is more expensive in the northeast...
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Date: 2007-02-03 06:51 am (UTC)I liked that Susan asked me whether I wanted to stay with Clifford or not. Remember that had she not mistakenly read my height, she would have put me on a smaller horse, so it was kind of an accident that I ever rode him in the first place. At the other place I tried for lessons, they just put me on Oliver and told me "this is who our beginners ride" even though I'm really not a beginner. And there was a very strong "don't ask questions" vibe there.
What I want right now is to get more comfortable and confident in my riding and horsemanship, and that will probably take a horse who doesn't have to be pushed a lot, because then I can focus more on *me* and less on the horse. I have always liked horses with more "go" and through my experiences with Minnie have shown myself that I can deal with some of the issues that brings up (e.g. running away, going faster or at a faster gait than I want, more tendency to shy, silliness in ground manners, etc.) But I do expect to ride different sorts of horses once I'm riding better.
And yep, things are expensive up here! It's one of the reasons I won't try to lease Minnie; I'd have boarding fees plus lease fees plus lesson fees plus.... easily well over $1200/month! I can afford a few hundred dollars per month. Some part of what I'm paying at Windrush also goes to the therapeutic riding program (I need to ask if it's a set amount and if so whether I can claim it as a tax deduction.) But group lessons in this area seem to run $40 to $70/hour. (When I started riding, in San Diego, my parents paid $10. That went up to $15 before I stopped. The longer trail rides we did were $20, and then $25 later... for several hours with the horse and a little bit of casual instruction while we went out.)
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Date: 2007-02-04 04:36 am (UTC)This doesn't include vet expenses. He's had ongoing issues with skin cancer. We got him for only $1,500 because his previous owner didn't want to pay for surgery. After $1,000 in surgery he had a new nickname ("stumpy") and was good to go for a couple of years. He's since needed a couple of minor surgeries to remove small tumors as they appeared.
Until last year, we were getting group lessons for the unbelievable rate of $5 per hour from the owner of the stable (and Pace's rider got free lessons...) She's had to stop giving lessons because of health problems. The going rate around here is now $15 to $20 per hour.
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Date: 2007-02-04 07:07 am (UTC)Boarding here runs from $450/month on up to $1000 or more, depending on the facilities, the amount of individual care and attention the horse gets, etc. Facilities can range from turnout with a run-in shed to very fancy stalls with supervised turnout. A barn with an indoor ring commands a premium; precipitation in the form of rain and snow, and frozen ground, make outdoor riding iffy from November to April. Show barns are of course ghastly expensive.
Most barns do seem to operate under the assumption that the horse owners won't be there every day, not the least because in order to afford to keep a horse, one has to *work* or have a wealthy spouse! So part of the cost is just daily labor needed for stall cleaning, feeding etc. Part of the cost is also the value of land around here. A person really has to be devoted to the horse business to not sell off their land when acre lots go for $150K and up!
Vet care is getting to be a real issue simply because of the lack of large animal vets in this area, and the fact that not many vet students are interested in large animal work. So that's yet another expense. I think getting Minnie's hocks injected cost about $1200. But it was that, or keep feeding her Bute, which was harsh on her systems, and watching her get less and less able to move around. She probably has a couple of years reprieve now, although I'm not sure she'll stay rideable.
It sounds like you have a lucky horse! Is he grey by any chance? I've heard that greys are prone to melanomas.
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Date: 2007-02-04 08:08 am (UTC)He was registered as an APHA paint. The American Paint Horse Association is one of two main breed associations for paint horses. APHA paint horses are stock horse types similar to quarter horses. Pace is fairly big for a stock horse at 15.3 hands and 1300 pounds. He was originally trained for western pleasure but was also a wonderful horse for equitation and western riding (an event that involves loping a pattern with a gazillion flying lead changes.) Sue and I have even done some reining on him- he had great stops and spins but wouldn't move out at the lope enough to be very competitive.
Horses with paint coloring tend to develop skin cancer on parts of their body that are light colored. In Pace's case it appeared on his sheath and penis. It's also common and very serious for paint horses to have skin cancer that effects the face and particularly the eyes.