EDIT: I just got off the phone with the owner. It's been almost two weeks and despite me having spoken to two other people and all the people who were there when it happened, this was the first she'd heard of it. She was kind and promised to make changes, but communication and process are important in this setting involving children and animals. My review remained unchanged.
This is not where I wanted to end up with TES, but here we are.
I'll get to the heart of it: My 6 year old was mildly injured by a horse. I dont blame the animal - shit happens, he was eating and he maybe thought she was too close. Totally fine. It would be foolish of me to not think that getting injured in some way (be it a bite or a fall or a push) wasn't inevitable.
The problem is the staff - or their version of a staff, since no one is actually employed by TES apparently.. they are all just private instructors. From day one, you are largely on your own with the animals. You get a mandatory class on tacking, or prepping the animal (putting on the saddle, the bridle, cleaning it's hooves, etc...) but from then on you're expected to do it yourself.
The instructors were always okay with mistakes I made when tacking, but what should have been my first red flag was that every lesson, with every new horse, I was told that I could come to them for help if I needed, but they are short staffed. Every. Single. Time. Without anyone there, even the first time, it's difficult to find the right time to engage staff. Do I walk away from the horse? Is it okay to leave this stuff here? There's just stuff you can't be sure of, and the staff is difficult to find amongst the boarders, students and general workers all roaming around.
But all of this isn't terrible - until something bad happens. I'm in the stall tacking a horse with my daughter. She is too small to do any of the work herself, but I was encouraged to make her as much a part of the process as I can. She was behind the horse, which is dangerous, so I asked her to move around to the head. I watched her walk over, to make sure she went where I asked. Once she got near the head of the horse, he turned, bit down on her stomach and tossed her into the stall door. I figure he probably thought she was too close to his food and went to nip and nudge her - but him being so big and her so small, it was much more dramatic than that. The impact of the door knocked her tooth almost completely out (thank god she had a helmet on) and her stomach was cut from his teeth.
There was a woman in a golf cart eating a sandwich next to our stall. I assume she worked there since she had a vehicle she was carting around the property freely, but who knows. She looked up from her sandwich when it happened and just as quickly resumed eating her sandwich.
I took my bleeding child to the front to tell them what happened, and the girl behind the counter just said, "Okay, we'll comp your lesson." There happened to be a maybe 10 or 11-year-old girl there who offered to get us a towel for her bleeding mouth - so far the most help we were offered.
Since no one was trying to assist us, I sent my husband over to make sure I locked the horse's stall, when a woman walked by and heard me consoling my kid. She stopped to make sure we were okay and said she would go make sure the saddle and stuff were put away. Did she work there? I don't know.
After no follow-up (no one called to see if she was okay - which I'd hoped for after the abysmal experience), I called the school to reschedule our next lesson about 4 days later (aka cancel, but at that point I didn't want to. I thought it was important to get her back on a horse so she wasn't afraid.) I asked to speak with a manager - and this is where TES lost me. The manager had not heard of the incident. Look, again, I don't blame the animal per se, but does TES not have a system of documentation with the animals? Was this the first time he'd bit someone or the fifth? Why didn't anyone know? Long story short, I called again today for a refund after no one followed up after my last managerial call and this new manager I talked to hadn't heard anything either.
So here is where I stand: your kid getting hurt is the worst case scenario when you send them to any class. You trust and hope that the staff will provide assistance as needed. It's not about them being legally liable, but human. If someone had even made eye contact with us the day of, I would be happier. But the blase attitude of the staff is dangerous to me. I was lucky I was right next to my daughter when it happened, but what if something happened during a lesson where she's 100 feet away from me? Does the staff just stand there? Keep eating their sandwiches? I need to be able to trust them to be capable of helping in the worst case, and I cannot trust TES to do that after what I've experienced. read more