I took my daughter to Big Oak because she had said she wanted to try horseback riding. Jess (the owner/trainer) seemed to be knowledgeable, pleasant, and capable of teaching her well- gathered from a brief phone call and some online research. When we arrived for the first lesson, I noticed several issues:
1. The barns were not clean, organized, or even seemingly safe in most aspects.
2. The stalls were dirty- even though I have little horse experience, I'm pretty sure it's not ok for there to be puddles of urine in most stalls and a layer of feces that smelled like it was starting to compost.
3. Most of the horses seemed to be either fat or skinny, with very few exceptions. Again, I know I don't have much horse experience, but when I can see all of a horse's ribs, established that it didn't just give birth, and am informed that it isn't sick, there's probably some other issue there.
4. The trainer was running around screaming at her daughter and was not ready to help get ready for the lesson. She passed us off to a student of hers instead of helping us personally because she had to go into her house for some unknown reason.
I figured that maybe it was just a hectic day, so we continued on and had the lesson. The trainer was fine when she was teaching my daughter, but she also had a more advanced lesson going on simultaneously and was screaming at those students. One horse refused to do what it was asked and Jessica proceeded to hit it repeatedly. Again, thinking maybe she was just having a bad day, we agreed to come back for another lesson. The following lessons got worse and worse, with Jess becoming more distracted, yelling more at my daughter, and giving no explanations as to what was going on. In short, I would definitely not recommend this as a place for young children- or anyone for that matter- the trainer is unpleasant and I don't doubt her ability to become physically violent.
more