Kraus Farms Equestrian Center — Local services in Valley Park

My daughter has been taking riding lessons here for 3 weeks and we love it. As a complete beginner, she was pretty nervous but the staff here is nothing but helpful and friendly. There are sooooo many horses available for riding, and the instructors assign horses based on the student's abilities.

They also offer boarding, my daughter was thrilled to learn this and is already saving up to buy her own horse.

Things good to know about lessons here:

There is an INDOOR arena for bad weather days, with an indoor viewing area for observers (very convenient). The outdoor arenas have a set of bleachers for observing, but I've noticed most students are either dropped off or their driver waits inside or in their vehicle. Equestrian helmets are required, but they don't recommend buying your own until the student has a few lessons, just in case they don't enjoy it as much as they thought they would. The stables offer a large selection for borrowing, which I believe are sanitized between use. Arrive for your lesson early! Students are expected to groom and tack their assigned horse before each lesson, starting on day 1. This gives student and horse a chance to bond before the actual lesson, so it's very important. That being said, there's always staff and volunteers around to help when needed, and everyone is very helpful and...

The office is poorly managed. We paid for a monthly lesson plan and executed but they continued to bill us after we were finished. We called before, during and after to inform them. There was no contact. We're being billed for lessons we never took and informed the office that we weren't continueing lessons. Kindof silly but they think we owe for several months of lessons that we never attended. We never received a phone call that we were missing lessons that were being billed. It's absurd.

Most lessons were satisfactory except the winter months when they crowd many riders into the indoor arena. One day, they had 17 horses in the indoor arena which was clearly too many because while one of the staff was trying to train a new horse and was continueing to get thrown off, the horse spooked a young girl's lesson horse and it took off for several laps while the girl held on for dear life. eventually, she was thrown off and slammed into the boards and broke her...

I was going to take my son here for horse riding lessons. I asked about their COVID masking policies and said I preferred the teacher wear a mask. A lady called me today to tell me she would not require the teachers to wear a mask because “the safety of the children around a horse.” And it was important for the children to hear the teacher around a horse. She said that they would also come within close contact, less than 6 ft apart. I said all I’m asking is for you to follow the CDC guidelines. You are prioritizing comfort of the teacher over safety of the children, because nothing is more unsafe than being unmasked in a global pandemic. She went on to tell me that COVID does not impact children 🤦🏻‍♀️. I continued to quote the daily death rates nation wide. I can’t handle this ignorance. It's sad that this place prioritizes their own comfort over the customer's comfort, disregarding CDC guidelines, and then asks you to pay $200 a month for...