Frequently Asked Questions

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The majority of our locations are within San Diego County, but we are working on expanding into other parts of CA. We do not have one  single location because we contract with professionally operating equine businesses to provide a higher quality service, a variety of disciplines & locations.  

We contract currently with locations in Jamul, Alpine, and Escondido. 

Reins of Resilience is a charitable nonprofit that provides *funding only* for horsemanship lessons by partnering with existing equine businesses.  We issue a voucher for lessons and you schedule individually with the instructor that we recommend based on your location, goals and  scheduling availability. We pay for lessons for First Responders, Veterans, and active Military to make horses more accessible; Reins of Resilience staff members will sometimes visit these locations or participate in activities but we do not provide any of the instruction (the onsite trainer/instructor provides the instruction). 

They are cost-free for our qualifying applicants. All First Responders, Active Military & Veterans (also dependent minors attending with qualifying parent) are eligible for pre-paid lessons as long as funds are available. RoR functions as a non-profit by paying for the lessons with charitable donations. Lessons are also available on a self-pay basis for all other members of the public, given that RoR does not own any of our participating businesses. 

Yes! A fit healthy horse can typically carry 15-20% of its body weight at full maturity. We have access to everything from miniature horses that stand bellow hip height to draft horses that weigh 2000+lbs. 

Yes! We offer lessons for kids with their parent through our Parent/Child bonding lesson experience. The activities are tailored to the age, experience, and level of comfortability of both the parent & the child. The focus for younger children is more around brushing, grooming, basic horse care, safety and hand lead pony rides. For older kids and teens, the parent and child may ride in a lesson together on two separate horses and involve in more educational games and lightly competitive activities. 

Horse Trainer - Trains the horse how to follow cues (installs "buttons"), observes quirks, works on safe handling (AKA the horse's manners),  facilitates the building of muscles for endurance and flexibility to match workload, and provides "tune-ups" or continued to training on already broke (trained) horses. 

Instructor -  Instructors teach safe horse handling skills to riders, builds the rider's skill incrementally,  matches them to horses appropriate for their level, teaches the traditions of their discipline & etiquette of the equestrian space.  

At RoR we believe it is important that our professionals posses both training and instructing skills. Healthy horses involved in lesson programs often need "tune-ups" to maintain their movements & safe behaviors after being ridden by students. Knowing the horses well is crucial to matching the right horse with the right rider & providing tips for problem solving. 

Some common riding disciplines include dressage, show jumping, eventing, barrel racing, and trail riding. Each discipline requires different skills and techniques from both the rider and the horse.

It is not a question but we do have an answer! While riding horses is not an entirely risk-free activity, Reins of Resilience only contracts exclusively with professionals that pride themselves in proper horse handling and maintain a line-up of well vetted lesson horses. Inexperienced "backyard" trainers with no credentials, certifications or track record are all to common and it leads to a lot of horse accidents. Every instructor/trainer at RoR has been well vetted; we investigate reviews on lesson experiences made by participants, we ensure their lesson horses are healthy and well trained, they all have professional showing records, every one of our current instructors has completed some college education in their field of expertise and most of them are still actively involved as paid horse trainers. 

Reins of Resilience is accepting applications for new contracts through our "contractors" tab.