Triumph Stables Riding Academy

05/27/2026

I am so Thankful all of my students abide by these!

We spend a lot of time talking about what instructors owe their students such as good lessons, safe horses, clear communication, and a program worth paying for. All of that is true but the relationship runs both ways and there are a handful of things every riding instructor has every right to expect from the people they teach - regardless of age, level, or how long they have been in the program. Here is what that actually looks like...

1. Respect the schedule
Your lesson time starts when it starts. Not when you finish tacking up. Not when you finally find a parking spot. Not ten minutes after you were supposed to be mounted because you got caught in traffic. An instructor who has back to back lessons cannot absorb your late arrival without it cascading into every lesson that follows. Be ready and be on time. If life genuinely gets in the way, communicate early and not at the moment the lesson was supposed to begin. Last minute cancellations and no shows are in the same category. Your instructor may have pulled a horse from turnout, set up the arena, and reorganized their entire morning around your lesson. Treat their time the way you expect them to treat yours.

2. Pay on time, every time
Riding lessons are expensive and nobody knows that better than the instructor who spent years and significant money developing the skills they are now passing on to you. While riding might be a hobby or a luxury for you, it is a business for your instructor. They have the same bills, the same living expenses, and the same need for a reliable paycheck that every working professional has. Pay your invoice on time without being chased. It is a basic professional courtesy and it matters more than most students realize.

3. Respect the expertise
There is no shortcut to becoming a good riding instructor. It takes years of riding, training, teaching, continuing education, and a level of dedicated investment that most people outside the industry never fully appreciate. When you walk into a lesson, bring an open mind and leave your preconceived ideas at the gate. The student who arrives already convinced they know how it should be done makes the instructor's job significantly harder and their own progress significantly slower. Trust the process and the person who built it. You hired them for a reason.

4. Show up mentally not just physically
Riding is not soccer or swimming. It is a complex physical education that happens on the back of a living animal and it requires your full attention every single minute of the lesson. Your instructor is prepared to give you their best teaching so come prepared to receive it. Leave the work stress, the family drama, and the distracted scrolling in the car. The horse needs you present and so does your instructor. Frankly so do you because a distracted rider in an arena is a safety issue not just a teaching one.

5. Bring your best effort
Not perfection, not natural talent, but effort and a positive attitude. A genuine willingness to try the thing that feels uncomfortable and work through the thing that is not clicking yet. Riding is one of the most extraordinary privileges available to anyone who has access to it and it deserves to be treated that way. Your instructor is bringing their best to every lesson so bring yours in return.

None of these are unreasonable expectations. They are the basic professional courtesies that make the instructor student relationship work for both people in it. A student who shows up on time, pays promptly, respects the expertise, stays present, and gives genuine effort is a student every instructor wants in their program for years.

Be that student and your riding will reflect it.

05/15/2026

We believe in positive experiences for everyone!

Most lesson programs do a thorough job of teaching the technical side of riding including transitions, correct position, contact, school figures and the aids. What all instructors should be adding to their curriculum is the conversation about the animal making all of that learning possible. The horse is not equipment and it is not interchangeable with the next horse in the barn. It has good days and hard days, preferences and tolerances and limits. Many kids grew up in a world where activities have equipment and the equipment does not have feelings. Your job is to correct that assumption early and build everything else on top of it. Here is the conversation worth having...

1. The horse has a point of view
Every behavior a horse offers in a lesson from a pinned ear, the swishing tail, the reluctance off the leg, the tension through the back, is communication. It is not attitude nor is it stubbornness. It is a horse telling you something about how it feels right now in this moment with this rider. Teaching your students to ask what is the horse telling me instead of what is wrong with this horse changes everything about how they interact with every horse they will ever ride. It also makes them safer. A rider who reads horse behavior accurately is a rider who does not get surprised by it.

2. The lesson horse works hard so you can learn
This one needs to be said out loud regularly and with genuine weight behind it. A school horse carries beginner after beginner through transitions that are unclear, contact that is inconsistent, and aids that are sometimes contradictory - day after day, week after week, year after year. That horse makes your student's learning possible and it deserves to be treated accordingly. Not just with decent grooming and a pat at the end of the lesson but with genuine awareness that there is a living animal beneath them that is giving something in every ride and that has a finite amount to give before it runs out.

3. How you groom matters
Grooming is not just pre ride maintenance. It is the first conversation between horse and rider and it sets the tone for everything that follows. A student who rushes through grooming by being heavy handed with the brush, who skips the careful check of the legs and back, who treats tacking up as a box to check before the real thing starts is a student who has not yet understood that their relationship with the horse begins on the ground. Teach them to groom with attention and care. Teach them to notice. Is the horse relaxed in the cross ties today or is something off? Is there heat anywhere that was not there last week? These observations matter and the student who makes them regularly becomes a horseman and not just a rider.

4. Your aids are a conversation not a command
When a student uses escalating leg pressure without result and reaches for a crop without first asking why the horse did not respond to the leg they have skipped the most important part of the exchange. Before escalating any aid, the question should always be "did the horse understand what I was asking and if not how do I make it clearer". Sometimes the horse did not understand, the horse is tired, or the aid was unclear. Sometimes something hurts. A student who is trained to escalate first and ask questions later produces a horse that is defensive, tense, and increasingly unreliable. A student who is trained to communicate first produces a horse that tries.

5. Rest and recovery are part of the horse's welfare and not a scheduling inconvenience.
School horses need days off. They need turnout, feed and water managed around their workload. They need tack that fits correctly and is regularly checked and maintained. They need a body condition that reflects appropriate care not just minimal maintenance. These are not premium options but they are baseline requirements for any horse in consistent work. Teaching your students that a horse's welfare directly affects the quality of the ride they get is not just ethically correct... it is practically true. A horse that is well rested, well fed, and comfortable in its work is a better teacher than an overworked unhappy one every single time.

6. The horse does not owe you anything
This one is worth saying directly. The horse did not choose to be in your lesson program. It did not sign up to carry nervous beginners or manage inconsistent contact or work through the same exercises several times a week. It is there because we put it there and that comes with a responsibility that every student in your program should understand from day one. We owe the horse good horsemanship, appropriate workload, correct equipment, attentive care, and the kind of riding that is fair to ask of it. The horse gives us something genuinely valuable every single lesson. The least we can do is show up for it the same way.

This conversation does not replace your technical instruction but it does sit underneath it. A student who genuinely understands and respects the horse they are riding becomes a better rider faster and for longer than one who treats the horse as a means to an end. Build the horsemanship alongside the riding and you build something that lasts.

How do you teach horse welfare and horsemanship in your lesson program?

05/12/2026

What an Amazing read!

As riding instructors we spend a lot of time managing the gap between what new students expect riding to be and what it actually is. Most of that gap could be narrowed significantly with one honest conversation before the first lesson ever happens. So here is everything I wish every new student and every new riding family walked in already knowing...

1. Riding is harder than it looks
This is the one that surprises people most. Watching a good rider looks effortless but it is not effortless. It is years of muscle memory, feel, balance, and body awareness built through consistent work over a long time. Your first lessons will feel awkward and uncoordinated and that is completely normal. Every rider you have ever admired felt exactly the way you feel right now when they were starting out.

2. The horse is not a bicycle
It is a living animal with its own personality, its own opinions, and its own good days and bad days. It does not always do what you ask the first time and that is not always your fault but it is always your responsibility to figure out the communication. Learning to work with a horse rather than on top of one is one of the most valuable things riding teaches and it starts from the very first lesson.

3. Progress is not linear
Some weeks you will feel like you have jumped forward three levels. Other weeks you will feel like you have forgotten everything you learned last month. Both are completely normal parts of learning to ride. The students who improve consistently are not the ones who never have bad lessons but they are the ones who show up anyway and keep working through the frustrating ones.

4. One lesson a week is a start but not a program
A single lesson per week gives you exposure to riding. Two lessons per week builds skill significantly faster. The riders who progress quickest are the ones who ride consistently and frequently enough that their muscles and nervous system have time to develop real memory around what correct feels like. If budget allows for more than one lesson per week it is worth it.

5. Your position will feel wrong before it feels right
Correct position in the saddle feels deeply unnatural to most people at first. Heels down feels like you are pushing your foot through the floor. Sitting tall feels like you are leaning back. An independent hand feels like you are doing nothing. Trust the process and trust your instructor. The things that feel strange now become automatic eventually but only if you commit to doing them correctly rather than defaulting back to what feels comfortable.

6. The time around the lesson matters as much as the lesson itself
Grooming your horse before you ride. Learning to tack up correctly. Understanding how to read your horse's body language in the cross ties. This is not the boring part before the real lesson begins. This is horsemanship and it makes you a better rider than an hour in the saddle alone ever will.

7. Bad rides happen to every rider at every level
Including the ones you look up to most. A bad lesson does not mean you are not cut out for this, it just means you are learning something hard and doing it on the back of a living animal that is also having a day. Come back next week and it will be different.
Your instructor is on your side.

8. Every correction we give is in service of your progress and your safety
We are not pointing out what is wrong to make you feel bad but we are pointing out what needs to change so you can get where you want to go faster and more safely. The students who improve fastest are the ones who hear a correction as information rather than criticism and apply it without taking it personally.

9. Riding changes you in ways you will not expect
The patience it builds, the confidence that comes from communicating with an animal ten times your size and being understood. The resilience that develops from falling short of a goal and coming back for it anyway. The community you find at the barn. None of that shows up in the first lesson or even the tenth but it will show up at one point. For most riders it becomes one of the most significant things in their life and not just what they do on Tuesday afternoons but part of who they are.

If you are a riding instructor share this with every new family who walks through your gate. If you are a new student or a parent of one - welcome. You picked something genuinely worth doing!

What do you wish someone had told you before your very first riding lesson?

03/19/2026

The summer camp season has officially commenced, and our dates # are now available.

01/07/2026

12/25/2025

Wishing everyone a Happy Holiday Season

12/14/2025

We invite you to join the fun! New spots are now available just in time for the New Year. Gift certificates can be purchased for all your holiday needs.

12/14/2025

Triumph Stables Riding Academy is delighted to announce the appointment of MaKayla Helgeson as our newest Riding Instructor member. Below is a brief introduction. To schedule a lesson, please call 260-410-8996.

Hello! I am pleased to introduce myself and thrilled to join the Triumph Stables team. As an Indiana native, I developed a passion for horses on my family's small farm north of Fort Wayne, where I spent considerable time. Thanks to influential mentors, my passion evolved into a career, notably during my time at Canterbury High School. In my senior year, I pursued advanced equine education at a renowned dressage facility. Following my graduation in 2020, I opted to leverage my experience in teaching and training while exploring the medical aspect of equine care as a veterinary assistant at a leading equine surgical center. With over 20 years of riding experience, I bring expertise in hunters, jumpers, western disciplines, and basic equine medicine. After a brief hiatus, I am excited to resume teaching. I look forward to meeting you and guiding your growth in a safe, supportive, and enjoyable environment, drawing from my farm upbringing and experience as a small horse farm owner with my two off-track thoroughbreds, Gatsby and Niko, and my pony, Nemo.

11/28/2025

Happy Thanksgiving! We hope everyone enjoyed their day.

07/20/2025

What an Amazing time we had at Camp! Lots of fun and laughter.