Riding Right is...
Expert Instruction & Training
Welcoming for Horse and Rider
Affordable Rates
Lessons at Riding Right
Thanks for the lesson-- I had a blast!." --Adult Riding Student
"Thank you for all you do to help improve people's riding." --Rider
Lessons for Adult Riders at Riding Right Farm: The Basics
For information about lessons for younger riders, please go to the 'Lessons for Young Riders' web page.'
Riding Right provides a great lesson experience for the adult rider. We're distinguished by our truly professional, internationally qualified instructors and our love for teaching from beginners to the most experienced English riders. We love horses and riding, and we want to make sure you have an experience which not only teaches you how to ride but also shares your joy and excitement at horsemanship.
For riders of all ages and abilities, Riding Right provides the best learning environment in the area. The experience and professionalism of our instructors, our well-cared-for horses, our and extensive facility, and, most important of all, our welcoming attitude make this a great place to learn.
A sampling of students gathered at a Summer party.
Who Are Our Students?
We have a very broad mix of riders, in age, ability, and interests.
Who Does the Teaching?
Riding Right has qualified, highly trained, and experienced instructors who have spent years studying riding and teaching as a serious endeavor. Our instructors are internationally trained and certified professionals, and we pride ourselves on their high qualifications.
Lesson Formats and Costs
We offer group and private lessons. For reasons of safety and skill assessment, a rider's first lessons are always private. Once you have some experience - and we have some experience with you, too - you may join one of our group lessons, or continue to take private lessons.
Riders who want to trailer in their own for a lesson are also welcome. Again, the first lesson with any horse which is new to the farm is private, as a matter of safety.
For lesson costs, see our rates page, please.
Clinics, Shows, and Teams
We offer much more than just lessons for our adult riders. We also have an almost-constant series of other ways to learn more about riding and share the fun:
Advanced and Specialized Lessons
In addition to general English riding lessons, we also offer specialized lessons, including Balimo, jumping, and other advanced topics.
To schedule a lesson, please contact us.
Next
This is the time of year that you hardly get to catch your breath before there’s another event to plan and pull together. We just finished up Sunday’s Dressage Show and now the next show is posted.
The Emma Durrant Dressage and Combined Training Show is open for entries. The show date is June 17th. This show will offer lots of options. You can participate in the dressage show (just like our Mother’s Day show), you can give the two-phase a try, which is dressage and stadium jumping, or you could go all out and do the three phase, which is dressage, stadium and cross country. We are also offering a stadium only for the riders who just want to jump their horse.
On top of that all we’ll be having our traditional chicken barbecue for the Emma show. For those of you who have had it in the past, umm, umm, there’s nothing like it. Puts all the other bbqs in the area to shame.
-Hollie McNeil, Owner/Trainer:Riding Right Farm, Author:40 Fundamentals of English Riding
May Dressage Photos
Just a quick note to say that photos from the May Dressage Schooling Show are on-line. We’ve uploaded the photos from the full day, including shots of every single rider. They’re on our photos page.
-Michael
Ride Times Up
The Mother’s Day Dressage Schooling Show is now posted with ride times. You can get them right here on the website under the shows-entries menu. It’s looking like a great show with lots of rides from Intro Level to First Level. We offered the Dressage Equitation classes again and they are very busy. Happy to see that. Having a judge look at how well you’re riding in regards to your position and aids is a top priority of mine.
Our in-house Show Manager (Andrea) has been hard at work organizing and preparing and was so happy to see that all the entries were in on time! ( You really don’t want to see how cranky our normally mild-mannered Andrea can be when entries are late. )
We’ve got the dressage show arena up ahead of the rain, which has turned the outdoor arena to slop. Based on the forecast we’re thinking this slop is temporary and we’ll be in fine shape come Sunday.
The snack bar organizers really deserve a little blog time too. Here’s the situation: our little snack shack is being organized by Kelly Brown (as in Brown’s Brew Pub of Troy… one of the Capital Region’s most popular and highly rated establishments! and Gail Anderson, Culinary Institute of America graduate and past owner of two restaurants. How did this happen? Both women have not one but two daughters riding in Sunday’s show. Both women jumped at the chance to take over the snack bar. All I can say is even if you don’t give a hoot about dressage you might be interested in checking out our five-star snack shack. It is Mother’s Day after all and Mom might just love some culinary treats from the Riding Right Farm Snack Shack.
-Hollie McNeil, Owner/Trainer:Riding Right Farm, Author:40 Fundamentals of English Riding
Entry Time
It’s Show Time! With Mother’s Day just a week and change away we are getting ready for our annual Mother’s Day Dressage Show.
Entries are due on May 6th… which is Sunday, so if you’re interested in showing download your entry form and get it to us ASAP. Show Management…umm (that would be Andrea) is not inclined to accept any late entries.
New this year to take note of is a year end Championship. We will be keeping track of all scores for all classes for each horse/rider combination throughout our show season. Year end awards will be based a formula that values each dressage score, stadium jumping score and cross country. Full details are here on the website under our show menu.
-Hollie McNeil, Owner/Trainer:Riding Right Farm, Author:40 Fundamentals of English Riding
The Video Advantage
There’s the old saying that a “picture is worth a thousand words.” When you add up the value of moving pictures it must run into the millions. Some members of our adult dressage team got to take advantage of the idea of moving pictures this past weekend when we offered up the chance to videotape a dressage test ride.
Our camera-guy (very scary to a couple of horses) was strategically placed in the bed of a truck right at letter C, where the judge would sit. Riders warmed up outside and then came into the indoor arena to ride a test of their choice. When all of our riders finished up their tests we got together for a little pot luck dinner while the video was being prepared for viewing. From there, we all sat down as a group and watched the test rides, complete with group critique. You could call it, the good, the bad and the ugly (although there really wasn’t any ugly…)
Most of the riders know where their mistakes were but there was an overall appreciation for what seems like the number one comment coming from judges at this stage of riding- “more forward!” That comment doesn’t mean race around the arena but it does mean energy and movement. This is opposed to the sensation that a horse is just plugging around and we’d all like to go out and get a cup of coffee.
We were able to copy of the tests onto dvds for every rider to take with them and I”m sure by now they’ve been watched several times over.
-Hollie McNeil, Owner/Trainer:Riding Right Farm, Author:40 Fundamentals of English Riding
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Next
This is the time of year that you hardly get to catch your breath before there’s another event to plan and pull together. We just finished up Sunday’s Dressage Show and now the next show is posted.
The Emma Durrant Dressage and Combined Training Show is open for entries. The show date is June 17th. This show will offer lots of options. You can participate in the dressage show (just like our Mother’s Day show), you can give the two-phase a try, which is dressage and stadium jumping, or you could go all out and do the three phase, which is dressage, stadium and cross country. We are also offering a stadium only for the riders who just want to jump their horse.
On top of that all we’ll be having our traditional chicken barbecue for the Emma show. For those of you who have had it in the past, umm, umm, there’s nothing like it. Puts all the other bbqs in the area to shame.
-Hollie McNeil, Owner/Trainer:Riding Right Farm, Author:40 Fundamentals of English Riding
Christmas Morning?
If we had a Christmas Tree up in the barn it would have looked like Christmas morning yesterday. The reason? The “blanket lady” made a delivery. I’m not so sure she wants to be known as the blanket lady, but that’s what the woman who runs the blanket repair and wash service is known as to folks around the barn.
Will you look at the pile of clean blankets? They actually look like they’re spankin’ new. Her SUV was chocked full, as you might imagine. The same blankets left the barn a couple of weeks ago in black garbage bags. They were ripped, missing surcingles, buckles, straps. They were covered in hair, mud and manure. They were smelly too. Okay, not all looked and smelled that bad, but quite a few were in rough shape.
It must be quite an operation to have the washing and drying facilities to deal with all these blankets, not to mention what kind of industrial sewing equipment it must take to pull these blankets back together. This business does bring to mind the far and wide reach of the horse industry. Just this little slice of the business is evidence that the horse industry is a truly a multi-billion dollar industry.
-Hollie McNeil, Owner/Trainer:Riding Right Farm, Author:40 Fundamentals of English Riding
Seasoned Veteran
When we began this farm 16 years ago, we had three school ponies to help us get the ball rolling. It was Jelly Bean, Lukena and Laura Lee. A few of you readers might even remember those days.
Laura Lee was the least trustworthy of them all. Her trick at the time was to lay down (with a student on her) if she had decided that she’d had enough. I remember one particular Mom dashing to my house to give me a lecture about how awful Laura Lee was and how I just had to do something about the terrible situation. The instructor we had doing the lesson was at a loss of how to keep Laura Lee on her feet.
Laura Lee has revealed her bag of tricks time after time. There’s almost nothing she likes more than to make a kid cry if she thinks that kid isn’t up to the task of riding her. What’s that saying? “doesn’t suffer fools gladly.” Laura Lee is absolutely intolerant of people who don’t take the job of riding her seriously. Her attitude is, if you think you deserve to get a good ride out of me, you better not think it comes for free.
In the end, it’s a great attitude because you can never ask too much of the girl. She will jump extraordinary heights, never refuse a cross-country jump, gallop her little heart out and show off like an Olympic champion in the dressage arena… if you ask and ask correctly.
Once again this past Sunday she was back in the show ring strutting her stuff. I can hardly remember a show that she has missed in all of her years here. Her show record is long and varied. Over the years she’s shown at all the local shows and the fairs. Laura Lee has shown in Pony Club Show Jumping Rallies, Dressage and Eventing. She’s done three phase events in Cobleskill, Chatham and at Hitching Post. She’s done the Lendon Gray Youth Dressage Festival multiple times. She even took a long trip to Ohio one year to compete at the big Halflinger Breed Show, out jumping all the bigger, new style Halfingers at the show. The number of students who have ribbons on their bedroom walls thanks to Laura Lee is long indeed.
-Hollie McNeil, Owner/Trainer:Riding Right Farm, Author:40 Fundamentals of English Riding
Mother’s Day
When I wake up the morning after a show I feel like I must be hung-over. Some much happens in a single day. There’s the set-up, helping riders overcome worries, nerves, and difficult horses. In between there’s the riding of a horse, the tractor-pull to get a truck out of the mud, and the problem of not enough sunscreen.
Now that I’m done with my list that sounds like a complaint sheet I’ll say that I just love the Mother’s Day show. So many Moms! There are the ones running around making the snack shack hum like a little French Cafe. There are the Moms that carry the coats and a bottle of water for the kids and are quick with a boot shine.
There are also the Moms who ride. I think Dianne had the greatest Mother’s Day of all. There she was riding her beautiful, big, black horse and showing off all of her hard work and how much she loves this thing called dressage, and watching from the side-lines were her two boys. Could the boys have found a better thing to do on a beautiful Sunday morning? I can think of many things, other than a dressage show, that would draw the interest of a high schooler and a college student. Yet, there they were and I’m going to guess that their presence was the best present of all for Dianne. What a Mother’s Day treat. Getting to enjoy your children and your horse all at the same time.
-Hollie McNeil, Owner/Trainer:Riding Right Farm, Author:40 Fundamentals of English Riding
May Dressage Photos
Just a quick note to say that photos from the May Dressage Schooling Show are on-line. We’ve uploaded the photos from the full day, including shots of every single rider. They’re on our photos page.
-Michael
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