All smiles and long faces

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This article was published 19/08/2022 (1372 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Just south of Assiniboine Forest, there’s a Goose that weighs 1,000 pounds. Goose clops and sways and, carelessly with his muscled flank, knocks 14-year-old Tess Bebchuk on his way to nibble grass and weeds, moving the teenager almost as easily as a horse (which is, you may have guessed, what Goose is) swats away flies with its tail.

“Woah, woah, woah!” Bebchuk laughs, as she hops aside for the ravenous horse, who begins tearing up tall dandelions sprouting from the edge of a long barn with peeling white paint. In this barn, Grand Oak Meadows Stables on McCreary Road houses its approximately 30 horses — some of which belong to the stables, while others are simply boarded there.

Bebchuk keeps a hand on the lead, and Goose stomps one hoof into the dirt, perhaps a touch annoyed at a stranger who has briefly stolen his rider’s attention. After all, that’s why Bebchuk bridled Goose — to share a moment together as she leads him around for fresh greens.

“Taking them for grass is really important,” Bebchuk says of Goose and the other horses she rides. “When you’re riding, that’s a good way to build a bond, but you need to do more. I lead them around, I give them lots of treats, and I just spend time with them, talk to them.”

That sort of trust is important for a jumper like Bebchuk, who relies on that bond as she flies over hurdles on her horses’ backs. And in those moments, it’s a feeling like no other, Bebchuk says.

“It just feels so amazing. It’s so hard to describe, but I feel like myself when I’m on a horse,” Bebchuk says. “It’s my happy place.”

For helping her to this point, Bebchuk credits Ashley Buss.

“I love Ashley’s coaching,” she says. Buss levels with her students and tells them exactly what they need to improve, Bebchuk says, but she always remains positive.

In fact, a broad smile seems permanently affixed to Buss’s face. The riding coach and owner of Grand Oaks Meadows Stables found her “happy place” at these stables, as well.

I feel like myself when I’m on a horse.

“I grew up riding here as a kid,” Buss says. “Started riding probably when I was nine, and later we moved to this location. I got my first horse when I was 15, and I was working here on the weekends and another barn down the road.”

The horse was on the older side, but he’d been through competition before. That served Buss well as she became a competitive equestrian.

“He was a good horse to have because he was experienced, teaching me the ropes,” she said. “Everybody knew him because he was blind in one eye and still was competing.”

Buss speaks with this sort of fondness and familiarity about all the horses in her stables: “This is Cody. He’s one of the more popular horses, but he can be stubborn,” or, “Mikey here is a rescue pony that we got from an auction. He would not have had a good life if we didn’t end up taking him over.”

“They’re so different, the way they act. You can tell this one’s mad because it’s looking at you like this. This one’s got his ears pinned back. They all have such a funny character to them,” Buss says, her grin still locked in place. “They’re like big dogs.”

It’s not only the horses that draws Buss; although, one gets the impression she’d be content to live out her life in a field with nothing but herself and a herd of riding horses.

“It’s fun to see kids and horses progressing. You get a kid that’s scared to touch the horse and three years later, they’re at the horse show, jumping around. Just to see how far they’ve come and where they started off, knowing that was you that got them there— of course, with their hard work and determination,” she says.

Lessons run somewhere in the range of an hour and 15 minutes, including time to prepare the horses. Before riding a horse, a person must brush the horse and pick their feet, which will eventually lead to a stepped-on foot for longtime riders, Buss jokes, but the instructor takes care to help the younger or more inexperienced learners with the task.

“You have to make sure there’s no rocks in there or anything that could hurt the horse. Then they start saddling,” she says.

Buss says about 40 people take riding lessons each week. She teaches riders of all experience levels. They learn in a fenced area outdoors or in a covered, but unheated, area where crossbeams are set up for experienced jumpers. Buss says most learners are kids and teenagers, but she also teaches adults.

Adelle Field Burton found the stables in June 2020, after only a couple months of previous riding lessons, and she hasn’t looked back since.

“I’m a bit older, and I’ve had lots of teachers in my life. Not everyone who can do, can teach, we know that. But Ashley has this wonderful skill of balancing out between keeping you safe and pushing you,” Field Burton says.

Under Buss’s tutelage, the 59-year-old says she’s gone from having a passing knowledge of trail horses to jumping and cantering and experiencing a rush she describes, with a deep laugh, as “an addiction.” But it’s not only the jumping and cantering, she says. It’s the whole experience — the horses’ personalities, the caretaking, the community.

To sum it up, Field Burton quotes something she read that to her rang true: “When things are hard, I go to the barn. When things are good, I go to the barn.”

To register for lessons call the stables or visit www.grandoakmeadows.ca