Perched on a hilltop just off of VES Road is the home of a dream of two young horse lovers. When the opportunity arose, Kristen Nelson and Codi Lambert, 2007 graduates of Randolph College and heavily involved in the school’s riding program, grasped their dreams and opened Mane Top Stables.
Nestled between the Presbyterian Homes and Westminster Cantebury, the horse barns and pastures are home to 14 of their own horses. The stables also offer boarding, sales, training and riding lessons which lead to horse show competitions.
“It’s a place where we try to teach kids about how important it is to take care of your horse really well and the beauty of working with an animal,” says Nelson.
Every day, young kids, mostly girls between the ages of 11-16, show up at the stables, eager to saddle up a horse, but not without performing the work that it takes to care for a horse, or 14 for that matter. Morning and evening feedings, mucking stalls, scrubbing buckets, washing and grooming horses, caring for the tack, are all part of the daily chores the young riders go through on a daily basis, checking off each task once completed.
“We try to influence the kids to remember that it isn’t all about getting points and it is about building relationships with the animal and with the people around you and learning responsibility and all of those things wrapped into one,” says Lambert.
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