Fall Happenings at Hoofbeat

Hello From Hoofbeat!

We hope everyone is enjoying what's left of summer.

We want to say a big thank you to everyone of the campers, staff, and horses - it was another great summer at Hoofbeat!

Whoopi the barn cat is really missing all of the campers and staff. She walks around the barn looking for anyone that will stop and pet her. Today she came down the barn hill and was looking in the office windows, hoping someone would come out and say hi to her!

We are transitioning to our fall programs at camp now. We have some UW groups coming to do planning sessions and our after school riding lessons with the Madison middle schools starts in a couple of weeks.

We also have our fall Mother/Daughter Weekends on September 25 - 27 and October 2 - 4. Both weekends are full, but we do have waiting lists. Our spring Mother/Daughter Weekend dates are May 6 - 8, May 13 - 15, and May 20 - 22. The registration information should be up on our website soon!

On October 23 - 25, we have our Horse Lover's Weekend for girls ages 8 - 15. It's a fun way to enjoy camp in the off season, with riding lessons, horse care classes, mounted games, trail rides (weather permitting), and lots of other fun activities.

We have a Horse Lover's Day for girls ages 7 - 13 on October 31. Campers will have riding lessons, horse care classes, grooming, arts and crafts, a costume contest, and lots of other activities. There is bus service provided from two locations and the program ends in time for campers to be home to go trick - or - treating in the evening!

Pippa is hosting our annual Christmas Party this year! The date is December 12 and the program is for boys ages 7 - 9 and girls ages 7 - 13. There will be riding lessons, horse care classes, a candy cane hunt, Christmas crafts, and sledding if we have enough snow! Bus transportation is available from two locations. We are working on the registration for this program and it should be up on our website in a couple of weeks.

Our Christmas Camp is December 28 - January 1, this year. Girls ages 8 - 16 can come enjoy riding lessons, bareback riding, horse science, sledding (weather permitting), a trip to a water park, a New Year's Eve party, plus lots more!

Check the website for early bird registration for 2016. It will be ready in the next couple of months!

We hope you have a great school year and hope to see everyone back at Hoofbeat soon!

-Ted, Mary, and all of the Hoofbeat staff, horses, and Whoopi the barn cat

Adopt-A-Horse Week 4

Hello there!

This week at day camp is Adopt-A-Horse! This means that all the groups get to adopt a horse for the week, and focus on grooming, saddling, and taking care of their horse. The campers learn all about how to buy a horse, and all that's needed to make sure it's happy and healthy. The past few days the campers have been getting to know their adopted horse, and have had the chance to groom them, learn to saddle, and they've even done some leading! A big highlight so far was getting their group picture with the adopted horse, and all of the campers even got individual pictures taken to put in the frames they made during arts and crafts.

The campers have also enjoyed their down the hill activities! The girls really seem to enjoy playing the water bottle game during sports, and are looking forward to water games tomorrow! The girls have also really enjoyed arts and crafts. So far they have made picture frames, superhero puppets, and posters for the groups adopted horse. The creativity is amazing! Nature has also been a blast, playing different games learning about predators and prey.

We are all loving the weather this week, and looking forward to more fun activities to finish of the week including; trail rides, tie dye, the trading post, water games, superhero theme Friday, and our grooming contest! So much fun still left to be had! For now, enjoy the group pictures! Check back for more later this week!

Mother/Daughter Weekends at Hoofbeat

Hello from Hoofbeat!
We've just had our first Mother/Daughter Weekend of the year! We had a great group of moms and daughters join us for riding lessons, trail rides, horse science lessons, arts and crafts, and a hayride. It was a busy weekend with great weather for riding! Here are a few pictures we took.

Thanks to everyone that joined us for the weekend. 

There is still time to sign up for Day Camp. Several weeks have filled, but we do have some openings at this point. We hope to see you at Hoofbeat this summer!

Hello from Hoofbeat!
We hope everyone is enjoying spring - it will be even better when the snow disappears!
We got about 5 inches on Sunday night, but it is starting to melt.
We've had about 5 wild turkeys hanging around the horse pastures, looking for left over corn. In the off-season we feed the horses earn corn and the turkeys have figured out that there are kernels left on the ground after the horses get done eating. Most of the horses don't mind the turkeys - with the exception of Scout and Prince. We watched them trot down the hill the other day, chasing the turkeys out of the main herd pasture. It was pretty funny to watch!
At this point, all of the Day Camp sessions have openings, but sign up soon to get your first choice. Some sessions are getting close to being full.
We are looking forward to another fun filled summer at Day Camp! Many of our staff are returning from last year and we've hired a few new staff too.
We look forward to seeing everyone at camp soon!
Take care!
-Ted, Mary, and the Hoofbeat Staff