FAQs
- What should the customer know about your pricing (e.g., discounts, fees)?
Welcome to SunHorse Stables! We offer private lessons for children and adults who want to learn a solid foundation of horse knowledge and riding skills in a relaxed, non-competitive barn. If you’re looking for one-time trail ride, a birthday party, or a show barn, we’re happy to recommend some of the other local barns that offer those services. **For all riding lessons, the following are required: long pants, riding boots with a heel, and an approved helmet. Groundwork lessons require long pants and sturdy shoes. WC Equestrian and IFA are local, nearby tack stores that carry the necessary apparel.
- What is your typical process for working with a new customer?
We start slow, especially for nervous riders. It’s about building confidence rather than focusing on competition. And we get to confidence through practicing skills — balance, coordination, flexibility, communication, emotional awareness and control. Each student is unique and so is each lesson, but each lesson we start with catching and leading, grooming and putting on tack (saddle and bridle), working the horse from the ground, and ultimately riding, then un-tacking, and caring for the horse post-ride. I teach independence and self-sufficiency, so that my students will learn to do all the horsemanship activities, beyond just getting on and riding.
- What education and/or training do you have that relates to your work?
About the Instructor: Laura began competing in junior rodeos at 3 years old. She started her first young horse when she was 12 years old. And she crashed her first tractor at 7 (no, actually that was her Dad's fault for letting a 7 year old lower the bucket onto the fence!). Laura grew up in a rodeo and ranch lifestyle. Her mother was a barrel racer and rodeo queen, including Miss Heldorado in Las Vegas and runner up to Miss Nevada. Her father was a successful bronc and bull rider as well as bull-dogger and roper. She spent much of her childhood traveling the state of Nevada, going to junior rodeos and high school rodeos with her two older siblings, and 2-3 horses and usually a dog or two. She also spent a lot of time working on ranches, herding cows and driving tractors and old pick-up trucks. She also worked at cleaning stalls at a show barn when she was 10 years old. She has since worked with many trainers and coaches in multiple disciplines, including many years of dressage, as well as equitation, cutting, and reining, which gives her a well-rounded approach, and many many tools in her equestrian toolbox. Laura has taken that experience and passed it on to new riders. Beginners and kids are her specialty. She has taken hundreds of beginners on trail rides, often on their very first ride. She truly enjoys seeing their doubts transform into joy. But she also has the ability to help more advanced students improve and continue to learn. Her multiple areas of study allow her to continually offer something new to prevent monotony for students and horses. Learning across disciplines is also a chance to gain new tools and to create respect for other types of horses, riders, and riding philosophies. In her 37 years of equine experience, Laura has started dozens of horses, ridden and learned from hundreds, and has created a well-rounded training program that combines the best of cowboy groundwork and self-sufficiency with the finesse of dressage and the benefits of biomechanics. There has never been a day when she doesn't think about horses! She loves the horse lifestyle so much she wants to share it with others.