JAKS Stables

09/04/2026

Numbers!!!!

09/04/2026

If you read this and thought, “Sounds like me I’d have been excited too!”

Give us a call.

If you thought, “Gross these people are weird”

We are. You can be too. Give us a call.

09/03/2026

AND ANOTHER THING.....Your trainer is not your 24/7 personal assistant.

We love what we do. We care about your horses. We care about your kids. We care about helping you succeed.

But we are still people. We are allowed to have business hours. We are allowed to not answer a text at 10:47 PM. We are allowed to take a day off. We are allowed to go on vacation. We are allowed to have a weekend where we're not at a horse show.

We are allowed to have a life outside of the barn.

Somehow, because our work revolves around animals and because we genuinely care about our clients, there's this expectation that we're supposed to be available every minute of every day.

And if we don't answer immediately, suddenly we're "hard to reach."

No.

We're running a business.

A good trainer should communicate clearly, be dependable, show up when they say they're going to, and be there when you actually need them.

But being a good professional does not require being permanently available.

In fact, I think boundaries make us better at what we do.

I would much rather have a trainer who gets enough sleep, takes a vacation, steps away from the phone, spends time with their family, and comes back to the barn refreshed...

Than one who is so burned out they're answering your messages at midnight while running on three hours of sleep.

You don't get to demand that someone sacrifice their entire life because you hired them to help with yours.

Respect the business hours.

Respect the boundaries.

And for the love of horses, let your trainer take a vacation. 😂 Pic of me on vaca for tax. I live what I preach.

09/03/2026

Ugh.

09/02/2026

I don't know anyone out there doing what we do- and getting rich from it. This is a conversation I wish we could have more honestly with those already in the industry and to those we are trying to help bring into it...

Your trainer is not the enemy because things cost money. I understand that horses are expensive. I understand that not every family can afford every program, every show, every lesson, or every extra.

But sometimes I see people get genuinely angry at what things cost, as if the person providing the service personally decided to make their life more expensive. They want break downs of every invoice, question every charge....

I promise you, I am not trying to scam anyone.

Hay costs money. Feed costs money.
Farriers cost money.
Veterinary care costs money.
Insurance costs money.
Fuel costs money.
Property costs money.
Equipment costs money.
Labor costs money.
And somewhere in the middle of all of that is the person trying to run a business.

And you know what- We deserve to make money too! A profit. Not just skating by paycheck to paycheck one vet bill away from losing it all.

The ability to pay ourselves for the years we've spent learning, the early mornings, the late nights, the weekends, the risk, the equipment, the overhead, and the work that goes into keeping the doors open.

I don't know many people getting rich running lesson barns.

Most of us are doing this because we genuinely love horses and genuinely care about the people we're serving. Heck- most of us have other full time jobs cause horses don't cut it.

But loving what you do doesn't mean you should do it for free.

And caring about your clients doesn't mean your business should operate at a loss so everyone else can afford it.

Affordable and profitable aren't opposites.

We can work hard to keep prices reasonable.

We can offer scholarships.

We can find ways to help families when we can.

And we can still charge enough to keep the business healthy.

Because if you want your favorite trainer, barn, farrier, or riding program to still be here five years from now...

you have to understand that they need to make money, too.

09/02/2026

Don’t forget to get on the list for beef!

Our second round of local beef cows is now taking deposits. These will be winter slaughter. We have 5 available at this time.

Please fill out the form to be placed on the list!

https://forms.gle/Qs9niGwaoXd2JJLQ6

09/01/2026

And while we're on the subject of experience... Even hours in the saddle aren't enough. No amount of hours in the saddle will matter if they are not productive hours. Stop playing around and calling it practice.

There's a huge difference between time spent riding and time spent learning.

You can ride five days a week for ten years and still have very little productive experience if every ride looks like:

Get on. Walk around. Trot a little. Do whatever feels fun. Maybe lope around.
Get off.
Repeat.

You've accumulated hours, but you haven't necessarily accumulated much *knowledge.*

Productive riding means you're actually working on something.

Maybe your transitions need to get cleaner. Maybe your horse needs to soften.
Maybe you need to fix your leg position. Maybe you're practicing a maneuver you still suck at. Maybe you're working on something your trainer told you to work on three weeks ago that you keep conveniently forgetting about. 😂

And sometimes productive riding means doing something incredibly boring because you know you need it.

That's the difference between **riding a lot** and **training a lot.**

You can spend 500 hours doing the same thing incorrectly and become really, really good at doing it incorrectly.

And that's why when I have a rider tell me, "But I've been riding for X years," my next question isn't really *how long?*

It's:

**"What did you do with that time?"**

Because experience isn't just the hours you've accumulated. It's the lessons you've actually learned from them.

09/01/2026

Apparently, having a kid clean up horse p**p is controversial. 😂

Over the years, I've actually been accused of violating child labor laws because a child was expected to clean a stall as part of their lesson that day.
.. I'm still trying to figure out how teaching a kid to use a pitchfork became a criminal enterprise.

We are VERY transparent about it. It's in the registration information. It's in the contract. We explain it when they start.

And no, you're not paying me because I desperately need your 8-year-old to clean my stalls.

Trust me. It would be faster, cheaper, and way easier to just do it ourselves.

You aren’t paying to have your kid clean my stalls. You're paying me to teach your 8-year-old HOW to clean a stall.

They need to learn how to find the wet spots, sift the expensive bedding, properly muck a stall, use a wheelbarrow, dump it, and actually do the job without turning it into a 45-minute art project

And if I have to stand there teaching them how to do all of that, that's called **instruction.**

Could they "volunteer" to do it?

Sure.

Once they already know how.

Because I'm not spending my valuable work hours supervising a volunteer who is actively throwing my $20-a-bag bedding into the p**p pile. 😂

And, I think kids need this.
Horses aren't just something you ride.

They're something you **care for.**

You don't get the fun without the responsibility.

And yes, sometimes responsibility comes with a pitchfork. 🥴

09/01/2026

Our second round of local beef cows is now taking deposits. These will be winter slaughter. We have 5 available at this time.

Please fill out the form to be placed on the list!

https://forms.gle/Qs9niGwaoXd2JJLQ6

08/31/2026

Someone says, "I've been riding for four years, how come I'm not as good as X"?

Okay... but what does that actually mean? Four years of riding once a week, sometimes skipping? Four years of riding 3-4 times a week? Four years of riding 5-6 days a week?

Those are WILDLY different amounts of experience, even though all three people can truthfully say, "I've been riding for four years."

If you're riding once a week for a year, you're getting roughly 50 rides.
If you're riding five days a week for a year, you're getting roughly 250.
Do that for four years and we're talking about roughly 200 rides versus 1,000 rides.

That's not the same experience.

And this is why I get frustrated when people use years as the primary measurement of someone's riding experience.

"I've been riding for ten years."

Okay. How often? How much time have you actually spent in the saddle?

How many different horses have you ridden? How many situations have you worked through? How many bad rides have you had to figure out?

How many times have you hauled, shown, trail ridden, trained, fallen off, problem-solved, started something new, or ridden outside your comfort zone?

When you do ride, are you actually practicing the things your trainer told you to practice? Or are you just dilly dallying around?

Time matters. But hours matter more. And engaged time matters even more.

So stop telling me how many years you've been riding like that's the whole resume.

Tell me how many hours you've actually put in. Then we discuss your progress.