Pine Trails Ranch

12/06/2025

Tack room 2.is getting renovated. If you had unlabeled boxes in there, please collect them. Hannah I put yours in tackroom 3. Thank you for having it labeled.

12/05/2025

Some good demostrations.

12/03/2025

A good new rule. No hiding things.

Riders are now required to trot a circle at the end of their round to show soundness in Equitation, Adult Amateur, Children’s Hunter, Low Children’s Hunter, Low Children’s Hunter Pony, and USHJA Hunter sections.

🔗 Visit ushja.org/knowbeforeyoushow for our guide to key rule changes for 2026.

12/02/2025

If anyone is in need of a little car around town?

11/22/2025

Hey everyone! Tack warehouse in Woodland has offered us a barn party at their shop Dec 6 or 13. Would we like to do that? You get 20% off purchases that evening. And they have snacks for everyone. Please let me know if we would like to do that again this year and what date works best.

11/20/2025

Hi Pine Trails Ranch lesson students. We understand that many will be traveling next week. We won't be holding lessons on Thursday so all of the instructors can have time with family for turkey. But we will be teaching the other days. Please let us know well ahead of time if you won't be here for your regular lesson. And let us know if you'd like a lesson on a different day. If everyone lets us know well in advance, it makes it nicer for everyone! Have a great holiday!

11/19/2025

Horseback riding camp for Thanksgiving is filling up fast! If you want a space, please message right away. We try to give our regulars first chance! Meghean and Cece, and Josie are all excited to teach you at camp! $290 for all 3 days and we will be riding lots!

11/19/2025

This is a very useful skill but many can't find the digital pulse.

11/19/2025

A visual to help you understand when I say point your belly button where you want to go.

11/18/2025

The Pine Trails Ranch Show Team is fundraising! Please consider some nice Christmas photos with your horse!

11/17/2025

This is true. We want to have fun, but we must also consider safety and the welfare of our horses.

Fun crusher

As a teacher, my number one job is to keep my student safe. The second is their horse's wellbeing. Usually, hopefully, these two goals are accomplished together.

So when I listen to their goals and desires, this comes forefront in my mind. Sometimes their goals and desires are nowhere near my priority of their safety.

I work hard not to step on toes or hurt feelings, but sometimes making sure the student is safe means curbing their desires, which can of course feel like rejection. It's important for the student to understand here that they are not being rejected but actually deeply valued - enough to rise above maintaining your money, your adoration, and any other thing that is significantly less valuable than your life and you as a person.

If a student can understand this is not rejection but being called up - if they can adjust their goals and learn to internally align with what will serve them best - they can begin the road to developing the basic building blocks to get to their new goals, preserving their safety and horse's wellbeing, and of course, develop finesse and get results sometime through that process too.

But a lot of it will be tedious. Practicing techniques, making mistakes, and sometimes even being correcting is not super pleasant. It requires some tenacity, some resilience, and some self reflection sometimes.

I think it's important to understand sometimes it isn't all fun, and it's ok to be bored. It's ok to not love every second. As long as you can find a way to give yourself permission to be human for a minute, I find students come back to the process so much more readily -

if they get bogged down in shame or denial that it MUST be enjoyable, they struggle. I think some of this is a messaging that you MUST enjoy the journey - and I think this is a well meaning message. But If it must always be joyful, pleasant, and fun, we are unable to continue when our horse struggles in a moment of problem solving, or is a little tired, or we struggle, or feel ashamed, or whatever the case.

I know teachers have to make a living, and we cant afford to lose students - but if they are constantly placated and given the fun, can they be blamed for being confused when that doesn't happen? In an environment where the beginning to end is rarely shown honestly, where struggles are not shared, and where students are shamed for making mistakes, it's obvious the climate is not conducive to the real work of practicing scales, and sometimes not having fun - to make sure our goals are aligned with what we really need and not what we want