Olde Saratoga Farms

Gilbert gave our daughter a wonderful lesson complete with safety and animal awareness. Our daughter left feeling confident and enthusiastic about riding in the future.

I was spending a few weeks in Saratoga for business and thought since I was in the middle of horse country, it would be nice to do a brush up lesson. I rode for about 3 years around age 10 – 13 (so about 15 years ago) but had only been back in the saddle a couple times for trail rides since then. Gil was my instructor and the lesson was exactly what I was looking for. We started with the basics so I could get to know the horse (mine was named Diamond) and then he had me do some double lunge line work to warm him up — I’d never seen a double line before so it was neat to learn something new. Once on we did some bending work and some trotting work. I was struggling a bit with getting back into the groove of keeping my horse on the right path, keeping him moving and keeping my form decent all at once, so he put me on the double lunge so I could practice my form without having to worry as much about the other stuff. That was perfect — I got to get back into the groove of posting and then do some cantering and build up my balance.
Overall, great lesson, great instructor. He knew his stuff and was very gentle in giving instructions and feedback on things to adjust so I bet he’s great with kids too. If I lived in the area, I would definitely be signing up for more!
One note: I got a little lost finding the place following google maps… took me too far up the road. Eventually I just stopped listening to it and watched the house numbers instead — that worked much better.