Please read carefully. Thank you for the privilege of teaching your rider and the chance to be a part of your family’s journey. We realize you put a lot of trust in us and we do not take this lightly. We are committed to harnessing the healing power of the horse each day at HorsePower and take this opportunity seriously.
In return, we ask that our families kindly be reminded of our outlook on attendance and communication of absences. HorsePower has the expectation that participants will commit to their lesson time and not cancel/reschedule more than once every 4-6 weeks. We almost always have a waitlist and the timeslot you have is something others are patiently waiting for. If cancellations are excessive or last-minute, the participant's reserved lesson time may be given away to someone on the waitlist.
Please text immediately when a lesson cancelation is needed….do not email short-notice cancellations. Do not solely cancel verbally at the barn with your instructor. All cancellations and schedule changes must be made through myself as the director, and preferably with a text or by calling us at 815-508-0804, Option 2. Participants who “no show” or cancel with less than 24hrs notice (for any reason) will be charged for the lesson if we cannot fill the timeslot.
Please do not bring riders who are sick. Riding is strenuous, and our volunteers and staff should not be exposed to contagious riders. Please keep riders home if they have experienced a fever, vomiting, diarrhea in 24hrs before the lesson.
Riders who receive scholarship funding will be charged the full price of their lesson for last-minute cancellations, not just the copay, as our donors are not happy to have their funds spent on lessons that did not take place. When riders are late, horses will be untacked after 15min and returned to their stalls or paddock. A large crew is assembled, and great care and planning are put into providing services for your rider.
Please be respectful of everyone’s time and our need to run HorsePower as a financially responsible non-profit organization. Thank you for your assistance in ensuring HorsePower runs smoothly and has a solid future so that we may provide lessons for years to come for our riders whom we love so dearly.
Sincerely, Barb O'Neil HorsePower Executive Director
