I want to start out by saying that I think this place is a perfectly respectable stables for…read moreboarding your horse, showing your horse, or retiring your horse. They are knowledgeable, respectful of the animals, and relatively organized. This review is to comment on the experience we had reserving a trail ride.
First of all, it was not a trail ride... they claimed that due to the chiggers in the woods, we couldn't do the trail ride... so what followed was literally a walk up and back the gravel driveway to the adjacent property and a there and back trip around the fencing of the stables. Did I mention that the trail guide didn't even mount a horse herself? She just walked on behind, beside, or in front of us. Now this lady, Sally, was perfectly nice and pleasurable (all except for the instance in which we mounted our horses, but I'll get to that). Nevertheless, it felt like a pony ride at the fair, and me, with a pretty decent riding background, could not have been more disappointed.
The issue that really got my goat was when it came time for us to mount at the outset of the ride. First off, English saddles.... I don't have an English accent and I'm not a girl, so I had never ridden English before... not that it's incredibly different, but it gives you an impression of the type of place you are at. Then our guide brings over the stool. Yep, that's right... I can't up and over like a man... I have to climb up a stool before mounting the horse... So here I am, a full grown man with experience leading rides myself on trails in the Appalachian mountains of NC, mounting a horse from a stool.
Here is where I interject the fact that I am mounting a sweet but temperamental retired thoroughbred. Not a quarter horse or a big bad draft horse... but an inbred anxious thoroughbred... So no sooner do I get my foot in the stirrup and the entire saddle shifts left and starts to slide off the gelding's back. The horse bucks... as would I if I had a saddle grinding sideways against my back with a 200lb 6'1" human on me. The guide quickly instructs me to dismount, which I was already doing, and accuses me of "lingering too long" before fully mounting.
Now I get it, you run a business. You are inches away from a potential catastrophe with a temperamental horse and a rider who, for all you know, doesn't know a horse from a cow. But don't blame a quick and spotty saddling job on your customer. The girth was clearly not tight enough. I have had horses in the past who don't like to be saddled bloat themselves in anticipation of being saddled, so that when the girth or cinch is secured, they exhale leaving the girth or cinch loose around their chest. May this have happened? I don't know... What I do know is my girlfriend and I felt like two big kids at the county fair getting a pony ride, and it certainly was not worth the $110 bucks.