Saddle up for camp
A BUNCH of day-long horse riding camps help fill the off-season at expansive Lovely Banks horseriding school Saddle On.
Started as a children’s birthday party venue, Saddle On has evolved into a horse riding and registered training operation featuring two indoor and three outdoor arenas and a cross-country course.
The heart and backbone of the business are the school’s 35 horses, which support the riding lessons held three days a week during school terms, generating about 60 per cent of the business.
To complement the core offering, owner Katrina Hore has added extra strings to the bow, including the camps that help with the business’s key costs over summer: hay.
“That is the biggest challenge, just finding the hay at a reasonable price, and reasonable hay,” Ms Hore said.
This summer hay will be particularly expensive amid a shortage in supply and with more of it heading north to drought-affected farms.
Ms Hore said the cost of hay this month was up to five times what it had been 20 years ago.
Six camps for up to 30 riders are being held between January 14 and 23, with a Saddle On holding a couple before Christmas.
They include lessons in how to put on a saddle and bridle, and caring for a horse, as well as morning and afternoon rides.
The camps are catered for at Saddle On’s on-site cafe.
It is also a registered training provider offering certificate II in animal studies and equine studies and certificate III in sport coaching, which allows a graduate to become a horse coach.
Training which attracts 40 to 50 people a year, is conducted in relocated classrooms.
Ms Hore said Saddle On, which sits on 32ha, was one of the biggest riding schools in the country.
She and husband Grant, a motor mechanic, moved to the property 22 years ago after her daughter, Zoe, was diagnosed with leukaemia.
It was Zoe, who fully recovered, initiated the first event on site with her seventh birthday wish for “a horse party” in 2002.
Ms Hore said the concept quickly took off and people then started asking for horse riding lessons.
“The next thing you know we were applying for permits and starting a horse riding school,” she said.
Becoming a registered training provider followed Ms Hore’s own experience of being unable to access hands-on training while getting her qualifications.
Saddle On is cutting back its opening days, but it will continue to offer private lessons during the day, when it also caters for riders with disabilities, and group sessions after school on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
On Saturdays there are group sessions.
Saddle On still hosts birthday parties.