05/26/2026
🚨🚨Important🚨 🚨🥺🐎
We need to address an issue that has become increasingly difficult for our program lately.
We have had several no call/no shows for lessons and rides recently, including a group of four this past week. For that booking alone, two people spent over an hour catching, grooming, and tacking horses, then waited another hour because we had riders scheduled after them. We received no call, no message, and no communication at all.
When you book with us, we are preparing long before your lesson time starts. Horses are pulled in and cared for, staff are scheduled, equipment is prepared, and time slots are reserved specifically for you. When someone simply doesn’t show up, that time and income is gone. Small businesses like ours cannot recover those lost hours.
Our policy has always been that if you cancel with less than 24 hours notice or do not show up, payment is still owed for the reserved time. This is not about being harsh. It is about respecting the time, work, horses, and people involved.
Our staff count on this income to support themselves and their families. They deserve to be paid for the time they committed to your appointment. Horses also do not understand why they were pulled from turnout, prepared, and left standing for hours waiting.
This is also a huge reason you don’t see many beginner-focused horse barns anymore. Many trainers become reluctant to accept new clients because they are repeatedly burned by no call/no shows and last-minute cancellations. Eventually, many barns only take established clients they know will follow through.
We have intentionally stayed beginner friendly because we genuinely love helping people get started with horses. Everyone deserves a place to learn. But repeated situations like this make it incredibly hard for programs like ours to continue operating the way we want to.
Life happens. Emergencies happen. Most small businesses are understanding when people communicate. But completely ghosting people after they have spent hours preparing for you is incredibly disrespectful and damaging to small programs.
My word means a lot to me. If I commit to someone, I show up. We simply ask for the same respect in return.
We love what we do, we love our horses, and we love sharing this world with others. But moving forward we may have to make changes to booking policies and/or raise prices in order to protect our staff, horses, and business from continued losses due to no call/no shows.