Camp offers crash course on horses

By: JENNIFER KABBANY - Staff Writer

MENIFEE ---- Learning to ride a horse is one thing.

Learning to ride a horse and how to clean its stable, clear its hooves and saddle it is another.

And learning to do all that plus communicate with and understand the large, four-footed creature is perhaps the most important part of "Horses 101," an unofficial name to a weeklong youth summer camp conducted at a Menifee ranch each year.

Wagon Wheel Ranch owner Christa Schaffer said that riding a horse isn't exactly like riding a motorcycle with hair ---- you've got to listen to the animal, understand its needs and talk its language.

For Southwest County students ages 8 and up who are enrolled in her camp, Schaffer said, the education goes beyond learning to trot and handle the reins. She says that students learn to problem-solve, multi-task and hone their decision-making skills.

"They have to think ahead," said Schaffer, 37, who has worked with and studied horses for 25 years. "They can't ride up behind other horses. The horse relies on its rider, listens for cues."

On Monday morning, during the start of another camp at the 24-acre ranch, Schaffer kept a watchful eye on the 12 students who had already groomed and saddled their horses and were busy concentrating on a circular path around a gated arena from atop their steeds.

"Bump him with your leg a little," Schaffer called out to a young girl trying to urge her horse forward. "Say, 'We're going.'"

The camp costs $250, and those enrolled learn everything from riding, walking, trotting and stepping over logs with their horses to the care, grooming, saddling and cleaning of the animals and their stalls. The students range from those who take lessons at the ranch to newcomers to horses.

Some of the trainers who teach at the camp include local high school students who have come through the camp and lessons at the ranch themselves. They said the youth summer camp offers "the whole ranch experience."

Including the dust, bugs and heat.

On Monday, Schaffer drenched the back of the students' necks with water before they got on the horses, and while they were riding lightly sprinkled them with water from a nearby hose. She encouraged the students to continually drink water as well.

Meanwhile, a breeze kicked up a soft cloud of dust from the nearby rolling hillsides of Menifee, and an occasional large black beetle, as well as numerous flies, zoomed by the students.

The students learned about special sprays to keep the horses safe from flies, and although the students were all girls, aged 8 to 12, none of them seemed to be bothered by the elements.

Sara Powszok, 12, a seventh-grader at Margarita Middle School in Temecula who enrolled in the camp last year and re-enrolled this year, said she enjoys horses and hopes to convince her parents she can handle the responsibility of owning one.

"This isn't work to me," said Sara while diligently brushing the horse she would ride for the day. "I love doing this."

Isabelle Gilmartin, 9, a fourth-grader at Antelope Hills Elementary School in Murrieta, said it was her first time enrolled in the summer camp but that she takes horseback-riding lessons at the ranch. She said she loves horses because of their beauty.

"I've ridden a lot of them, and they work good with me," she said while staring intently at her horse. "I am hoping to learn how to clean their stables and gallop and jump more than I normally do."

Schaffer said she works with each student and caters to how much they know about horses. She said most of the 50 horses at her ranch are at least 20 years old and are very seasoned, having been used as police horses, in parades and as show horses.

She said there are spaces available for the youth summer camp in August.

-- Contact staff writer Jennifer Kabbany at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2625, or jkabbany@californian.com .

HORSES 101:

Wagon Wheel Ranch in Menifee is one of several Southwest Riverside County operations offering horse lessons and summer youth camps. For more information on Wagon Wheel:

Visit: www.wagon-wheel-ranch.com

Call: (951) 672-8486