Moon River Training

08/25/2025

Moon River store is open!! (Mens polos available too!) Use the order form linked below. Thanks so much to Sew Very Sara for embroidery and Kelsey Steller for the logo! I’ll close the order form in time for Christmas delivery 🙌🏻🙌🏻

https://forms.gle/87KvAbCQaJaGG8oBA

08/16/2025

“The farm effect” 🤣 Growing up on a farm has lots of good side effects, and reducing allergens is one! (Maybe) Get your kids a pony and get them outside! Ask me how today! 🤣

Whether triggered by pollen, pet dander or peanuts, allergies in this day and age seem nearly impossible to avoid. Yet, somehow, the Amish seemingly do.

In fact, one Amish community living in northern Indiana is considered one of the least allergic populations ever measured in the developed world.

But why? There have been many hypothesis.

The “hygiene hypothesis” suggests that early childhood exposure to microbes protects against allergic diseases by contributing to the development of a healthy immune system. The “farm effect” suggests that growing up on one gives you a lower risk of developing asthma or allergies.

Now, researchers are beginning to identify the protective agents in Amish dust that prevent allergic asthma.

Read more: https://wapo.st/4mi6UyL

08/09/2025

Ruby and I survived our first week back to lessons!!! So so thankful for great weather and great people to make it happen!

Did I have to nurse in the middle of a lesson? Yes. Was it terrible? Shockingly no.

Here’s to raising a horse kid!

Tips and tricks are greatly welcome.

Thanks Lisa Wagner Gardner for the pics

08/08/2025

So fun to share our space with friends!! Hope everyone is surviving this weather!

07/28/2025

Our new website is now live!!! Huge shoutout to my husband, Brian, for this amazing site! It makes us super official. He said he’d only make another one for SUPER close friends or family 🤣 I think I broke him!

Hunter and equitation training program at Ardenwood Farm in Chapel Hill, NC. Moon River Training offers full and partial training board, horses for lease, and clinics.

07/14/2025

Loved having our friends spend the morning with us!!

06/25/2025

Moon River Training welcomed the newest pony wrangler in May! Can’t wait to see this little one grow up at the farm 💕

05/25/2025

Wish I could join this cohort, let me live vicariously through you!

05/14/2025

She said it perfectly!

No one wants a horse they can’t ride.

This simple fact promotes a lot of harm within the horse world.

Saddle fitters feel pressured to fit saddles to underdeveloped and atrophied top lines because owners don’t want to hear that the saddle cannot be fit and that the horse should not be ridden until they have more back muscle.

People feel entitled to riding — they don’t want to have to be “sidelined” on the ground, especially if there are other professionals who will give them the answer that they are looking for, the one that tells them they can continue on riding without issue.

Trainers experience som**hing similar.

Client horses who are not completely physically sound, or are mentally struggling, owned by clients who don’t want to hear that they need to slow things down and not ride or take things way slower under saddle.

Humans are creatures that often seek instant gratification, and when this involves another animal like a horse, that desire to seek out the more fun destination often comes at the expense of the Horse.

It also pressures professionals to take shortcuts and enable things that they know deep down are not the best for the horse.

This is so insidious in our industry.

It is the pressure behind a lot of bad decisions that end up permanently damaging horses or dooming horses to lives where they are forced to work through pain.

Riding should not be viewed as a right.

It should be seen as a privilege.

And, when owning a horse, it should be seen as a given that that doesn’t mean that you are perpetually entitled to riding them.

It means that part of your duty as their caretaker and advocate may involve not always having your desire to ride come first.

It may involve taking breaks as needed for the betterment of their physical and mental well-being.

This should be the standard, but it isn’t.

It is so incredibly common to see people putting off their permanently lame horses onto other people because they are not willing to pay for them when they are not rideable.

This is so normalized that people will even say that they don’t want to pay for a horse that they cannot ride.

And while I understand, that horses are expensive, we can’t really skirt around the fact that, for far too many people, horses lose all value to them when they are not rideable.

People no longer want to keep their horse safe or pay to care for them if they cannot sit on their back.

This fact inevitably results in a lot of unwanted horses.

And there simply are not enough homes that want to take on the unrideable horse.

This is an uncomfortable conversation that needs to be had.

How many professionals can think back to a situation where they felt pressured to keep a horse in work when they knew it wasn’t the best option?

How many of them bit their tongue and didn’t tell the owners what they wanted to say because they knew it wouldn’t be listened to?

How many of us have had to sacrifice our morals at some point in order to get a paycheque to pay the bills?

I know that I have. It was necessary to do so in order to further my career, because no one wants to be told not to ride, especially when they are paying you to solve their problems.

But, sometimes it is necessary to forgo riding to solve the root of the problem.

Yet, very few people are open to hearing that.

Has anyone else experienced this?

05/06/2025

Oh the things I learned from a wee ornery pony!!! 🤣

This is Evie, age 4, attempting to convince Mimi of the wonders found in playing in the pasture pond.

I don’t think a photo exists that is more perfectly “pony”—the absolute refusal to move, the glaring side eye at me and all the little girl moxie going into trying to get her pony to do som**hing she has deemed “fun” for both of them. This is what childhood pony life looks like. 😂

Mimi actually came to us as a completely random pony that wandered into my aunt’s yard. She eventually found the owners, who were perfectly happy to not fetch their errant pony back (first red flag🤦‍♀️) and my aunt ended up keeping her. Shortly thereafter, she came and lived at our house and proceeded to teach Evie all that can be learned from life in proximity to a highly intelligent, vastly stubborn, opinionated, wee ornery pony.

Lessons such as:

1. No I won’t.
If wee ornery ponies say no I won’t, they won’t. You can save time if you just quit asking when they are clear on the NO. If they have well and truly decided, it’s not going to happen, and you better figure that out pretty quick. You can cajole, you can get mad, you can lay down and cry and none of your drama will move their iron clad little hearts. And sure, you can go ahead escalate things with a pony but they will happily ride that escalator of stubborn rage right up with you. You cannot win the fight if they have to take the gloves off. Don’t try. Those tiny hooves pack a helluva punch.

2. I will, but…
Wee ornery ponies may relent in some circumstances but there are always conditions. I don’t think any pony has ever actually engaged in unconditional surrender. They are experts at hammering out the details of any war time treaty before they give even an inch. Their demands may seem easy to concede to at first, a cookie here, a promise of grain there and then suddenly you are forking over a whole container of oatmeal cookies to keep them from committing acts of war on the farrier. For a moment, you will always think you have won, only to later realize they got you in the long game. Win the battle, yes…but never the war.

3. This is how it must be.
This bit, this saddle (or lack there of), this time of day to ride…wee ornery ponies rarely make you guess at their preferences. For example, Mimi let us know pretty quick that while she loves to be harnessed up and go for a drive (we were shocked and delighted to find out feral castaway Mimi was very nicely trained to pull a cart), she does not and will not wear driving blinders. It’s open bridle or she isn’t interested. While some equines will put their head down and do the work without complaint, wee ornery ponies rarely keep their opinions to themselves.

4. You are mine, but YOU, terrible fiend, are not.
Wee ornery ponies pick their friends and their enemies. If you end up in the friends column, you have it made. Screw up and find yourself in the bad person column because you do terrible and horrible things like provide them basic care such as hoof, trimming or deworming or vaccinations and you will soon find yourself the subject of much disdain. I have not yet found a way to get back to the good column once you’re in the bad. If anyone knows the route back, let me know. 😂

Being a wee ornery pony’s kid is a classroom all on its own. I think wee ornery ponies do an admirable job of preparing humans for a future job in fields such as being a personal assistant to a nearly mad criminal mastermind or perhaps the nursemaid to an orangutan coming down from a m**h bender or surviving a day in corporate America middle management. Either way, get the kid a pony…they’ll at least end up with some stories to tell. 😜

(and yes, Mimi remains at large 🤦‍♀️)

04/28/2025

Some partial and half leases available for the summer with Moon River Training!!

We’ve got an exciting summer planned with weekly clinicians while Tory is out on maternity leave, and we’d love to share our horses to make your summer pony dreams come true!

Grey-“River” 14hh 8yo mare, jumping machine! So so fun to ride! Could maybe enjoy playing a little in the CTs. Would thrive with a petite adult or competent teen, she does best in regular work and can be pushy on the ground if handled by the littles. Month to month half lease available.

LEASED! Bay-“Zara” 15.2hh 14yo AQHA mare. She’s my favorite, but don’t tell the others! True mare, she gets to pick her riders, and I always listen. Packer around 2’, but you have to convince her you know what you’re doing! Partial lease (2 days a week, one a lesson) available

New lease available! Palomino-“Missy Sugar” 14.3hh aged like fine wine AQHA perfect baby angel. Safe as they come, anyone can ride her if they can convince her going forward is worth it. Poles and baby crossrail queen. Partial lease (2 days a week, one a lesson) available.

04/13/2025