Equestrian Tea Time
Emma Jenkinson and Isabeau Solace discuss the state of the equine industry with guests.
Equestrian Tea Time
From Lesson Horses To Life Lessons With A New Hampshire Instructor
https://www.facebook.com/millsproequine?
A small lesson barn can carry big ideas. We sit down with New Hampshire instructor and PEMF provider Shauna Mills to explore how a hands-on program turns nervous riders into steady partners, why a feeder-barn model is a strength and not a step down, and how respectful boundaries create safer, happier lessons for everyone involved.
We start with the backbone of her curriculum—weekly horsemanship units taught in the aisle, not just the arena. Students learn hoof care, thrush treatment, wrapping techniques, and lameness spotting alongside riding skills. Shauna shares how she markets locally without spamming, then walks us through her proud niche: welcoming beginners, building fundamentals, and celebrating the moment a rider graduates to a more specialized program. We dig into quarterly check-ins that prevent stagnation and the art of honest conversations when goals change.
Barn life isn’t all ribbons. Shauna explains how she repurposes aging or unsound school horses into groundwork and driving stars, keeping them engaged and useful without pushing beyond their bodies. She also faces the hardest task—telling young riders that a beloved lesson horse has died—with compassion and clarity. From kids who cling to one favorite horse to teens avoiding the canter, we talk about strategies grounded in curiosity, firm assignments, and step-by-step wins. A recent canter breakthrough shows how a single well-coached transition can flip a rider’s story.
We round out with practical motivation: online horse shows as low-pressure entries to competition, plus winter adaptations that keep learning alive through groundwork, sled driving, and creative sessions in cold weather. If you care about lesson programs, equine welfare, rider confidence, and smart coaching, this conversation offers field-tested tactics you can use tomorrow.
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emmajenkinsondressage@gmail.com
https://youtube.com/@emmajenkinsondressage?si=Zt9ma9vtpMK2iZV7
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Equestrian Tea Time. My name is Isabel Solace. I am your host. My co-host is Emma Jenkinson. And in this episode of the podcast, we spoke with Shauna Mills of Mills Professional Services. Shauna is in my neck of the woods in New Hampshire. Shauna runs a lesson program and she is a PEMF service provider. We were talking today as part of our uh riding instructor interview series, where we're going to talk to several different riding instructors, hear about um their great ideas for solving the issues in their programs, how they deal with unhappy clients, school horses that either don't want to cooperate or can't participate in it anymore, and all of the uh joys and agony, trials and tribulations of running lessened horse programs. So uh thank you everybody for listening. So, Shauna, you and I are both in. Um, I see your ads up uh around on Facebook. It looks like you've got some draft and draft cross horses, but uh I'm not sure what you do with them exactly. So why don't you tell us about your business and what you do?
SPEAKER_01:Um so primarily we do a lot of just general horsemanship, natural horsemanship, uh a lot of rehab, uh rehome. Um, primarily our program right now is a lot of um what we would call barn mice, where I have a lot of you know lower income students, um upper income students. I have a little bit of everything here. They come in, they help out, and then we do different units every week. Uh last week we actually just did hoof care. Um my assistant manager who's going through farrier school right now, just did a whole unit with them on poulticing and different muds you can put in there, thrush care, um how to wrap feet. So, like right now, Phil is in double front wraps because he's got really bad thrush at the moment after that rain we just had, and quite a few of them got hit pretty hard with it. So he's enjoying a well-deserved vacation from being the lesson horse at the moment. So they got to learn how to take care of him and how to spot lameness.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, cool. And is this so? Is this did you purchase a program from outside? I know a lot of people have programs now that you can just buy and follow along, or do you make a when you set a unit, this is a curriculum made up or one that you're getting from someplace?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, this is a curriculum that I've come up with on my own. Um the various bits and pieces of all these different things that I've done in the industry since I started 14 years ago.
SPEAKER_00:Alrighty, cool. Um, so uh when you get new students in, a lot of times I spend I'm single and I don't own a farm. I'm a barn manager for a small farm in the area. So um I don't have to worry about paying the mortgage. Not married, I don't have kids. I have a lot of free time, too much time on the online. Um, so I spent a lot of time chatting with other barn owners and lesson in instructors. And um, you know, it's either a feast or famine thing. People are either desperate to get students or they're overwhelmed with what they've got and they can't cope with everybody coming at them at one time. Uh, do you have any what are your techniques or ideas for when instructors are looking to get business and they're they're having a hard time?
SPEAKER_01:Uh mostly it's the networking, the places that you can advertise in and the way you advertise is your biggest tool when it comes down to increasing or building on your program. Yes. So especially like your local pages, like your local pound pages. I hit those pretty hot and heavy. And now most of them are very like you can only do it on Monday and Fridays, or only on Wednesdays. So you have to also have that added layer of making sure that you're following those rules, or else you end up either your ads getting bumped, or you're being suspended from the page for breaking the rules, or just straight up banned, and then you lose that resource.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, no, it just is hard. All the Facebook pages have different rules. So I find myself, I'll get in trouble. I didn't follow the rules, and I'll just leave the group. I'm like, I can't keep track of all the rules. Oh, the different pages, different pages and different rules hard. Are you teaching mostly kids or adults, or is it a mix?
SPEAKER_01:I have a mix. I have a lot of like I like I kind of think of myself a little bit as like a feeder barn. So I have a lot of beginners who then I take up through the levels, and then they do usually get to a point where it's like, well, if you want to do NBHA or if you want to get into rodeo, here's where you want to be. I'm not it, but I get you started so that when you move up to these upper level professionals, that they've already got a pretty good handle on what they need to do. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Well, that's great because that is definitely, I mean, um, having a niche that you can fill of, you know, a lot of instructors are so terribly devastated when students leave. Um, you know, they get especially if they're a good client or they're a talented kid or they have a nice horse, it can be really hard when they walk out a door. You know, it's very, very tricky thing. So, uh, how do you have that when you have that conversation with clients? How do you do you sit down with them, or is it something you an idea you start feeding them over time?
SPEAKER_01:Um, I mean, every client is different. And it in top of that, too, you also have to be careful on how you approach things with some people, because if you say, like, hey, I really think you're doing well, but I think that you would be better off in a program that's a little more tailored to where you're trying to get to. But most of the times we cut, we like we just talk about it, we chat about it all the time, whether we're just hanging out in the barn or if we're during a lesson, and I'll ask them, Hey, do you feel like you're kind of stagnant at the moment? Do you feel like I am giving you enough instruction? Do you feel like I'm meeting your needs? And we check in almost quarterly, if not every lesson, and just say, Hey, what what do you want to do? What do you where do you want to be?
SPEAKER_00:That is a really good suggestion for instructors checking out on a regular basis, quarterly and good. I know so many people are overwhelmed. That might be uh sound like it's way more often than they can possibly uh get to, but that is one of the tricky problems is people trying to um survive in overwhelm mode. You know, people just get keeping up on the horses and the clients and everything. And before they know it, everybody's just constantly under water or under the load of too much stuff going on, and they don't have time to do that kind of business management stuff. Another problem that people have is when they get the lesson horse, that was the great lesson horse, but then they eventually are just not sound enough to work in the program. How do you handle that kind of situation?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I actually have one in the program right now that's kind of in that boat. Um, for him, he he's elderly, he's been through it most of his life. He was a stallion for his entire life until about I think it's two years ago now, because we're coming up on a year now. Um and he just does not stay sound enough to really do any lessons in the ring. He doesn't do anything wrong, but he will just park in the middle of the ring and refuse to move, and that's his goal. So we kind of shifted him over to like groundwork lessons and um confidence on the ground. Um, we've kind of taken away a lot of his ridden load. This horse loves to drive, he will drive all day long and he's just sprightly and he's happy to go. So I've been actually transferring him more to like my driver lessons because he's a phenomenal beginner's driver's horse.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, nice. Another problem people run into is the when the lesson horse actually either has to be put down or or dies or something. Have you had to deal with any of those type of situations where you gotta have to call up the parents and say every kid's favorite pony you had to put down yesterday?
SPEAKER_01:Funny timing of that question. That actually just happened this past week.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, really?
SPEAKER_01:I need to have the sit down with the kids and be like, listen, this is what's happened. Um, he's in a better place now. Um this weekend's gonna be rough when I break the news to them. But um it and it's just you have to find that fine line of um, you know, circle of life, but also they're farm kids, they're usually already pretty desensitized to these kinds of things, but it's hard for everybody, and it's a hard discussion to have, especially with young kids. And most of my students are on the younger side, so I have like a saddle club, so they they come in every weekend, and um, I didn't own the horse, but he was part of a lesson program, and he was one of my main hitters. So that one that one's gonna be tough to break that one to him. But we're just gonna get together, we're all gonna powwow in the barn aisle and tell the kind of like let them know what happened in a way that's respectful to both him and his owner because she doesn't she doesn't want it you know widespread, but I do also feel that the kids should know.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, yeah, sure. Oh right. Well, okay, good good luck with that. We'll have to check back with you and find out how it goes. Um, kind of sort of in the same vein is a problem with you get uh a lesson student who will have a favorite horse that they then won't want to ride any other horse. Um, you know, I remember working in camp 20 or 30 years ago, too many years ago now, and getting notes from parents saying, you know, Johnny or Susie doesn't want to ride this horse anymore and only wants to ride the other horse. And please make sure that they can only ride the other horse. Um, so parents were definitely not backing us up. Yeah, how do you handle it when you get kids who they really get attached to one horse or they feel safe with one horse, or this is the only horse that they can canter on, or those kinds of things. And then you know, the world just comes to an end when you try to get them to get on something else.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we're actually just dealt with this. Um, so thankfully, knock on wood, I've never had the issue of the parent pushing it. I have had in the past a parent in particular where the student reached out to me and said, Hey, um I don't know if you were planning on using so-and-so for games night, but is it possible since she's showing for the weekend if she can just not be used? And I was like, Well, I wasn't planning on using her anyway, but it's not really up to you. It's up to me. Um, but it I mean the horse wasn't getting used anyway, but it was it. I have had that, but I've never had a parent say, oh, so and so doesn't want to ride this horse because their confidence is shattered or whatever. Um the other hand of that, the students that come to me pretty often, oh I don't want to ride, I don't want to ride Nate because he scares me, or I don't want to ride uh Nate because I don't feel comfortable cantering him because I can't get him to canter, or I don't like riding so-and-so on the track because I don't feel like I have control. So I said, All right, well, why do you feel like you don't have control? Why do you feel like you can't canner him? Why do you feel the way that you feel? And she knows they'll tell me and um we'll have a pow-wow discussion about it. And I I will straight up tell them that's not how that works. You don't get to tell me who you're gonna ride because what's gonna happen is you're gonna be groundwork with whoever I put you with until you decide that that's not how we're gonna avoid the problem. And so far, so good. Every time that it's ever come up, they have gone right on that same, like usually that same day or the following lesson on the horse that they didn't want to be on and having a good time. And it's just um when they come to me with those kinds of things, I approach it with curiosity. I don't, I don't try to approach it with, well, why do you think that you have the right? Um so why do you feel that way? Tell me, explain to me why that scares you, and let's problem solve.
SPEAKER_00:That is awesome. Another good, another good, excellent general thing, way to approach things, another good, excellent framework, approach with a curiosity. That's a really good one. We had a chat the other day with a lady named Stephanie Bowers, who's running a bunch of online shows. Uh Kensington Farm online horse shows.
SPEAKER_01:Um, I've done a couple of online horse shows, and I know I definitely want to do some more of them. All right, especially like upcoming this winter, because I know a few people will do virtual at-home online winter series, like the um, oh, what's it called? Winter series, especially. There's there's one circulating right now on Southern New Hampshire Equestrian, and they do it like every season.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, okay. So you like the winter idea, especially. Uh, what kind of classes did you enter it, or did you have your your students?
SPEAKER_01:Um, that was actually Svetlana's first touch into showing. I did it in, you know, the online classes. Um, the first one I did was the ride for Olivia. And unfortunately, I can't remember what her backstory was, but I can look it up. It was a girl that shows in the paint circuit, I believe, that got injured. Okay. Um and it was a mix of walk, trot, pattern classes. So, like you would um trot in straight, trot circle, leave the circle, walk, freehand, like stuff like that. Not quite dressage, but in the same family, in a way, where you had a set pattern that you had to do in a certain order in for that class to be judged. Um, and I've also done the pleasure and equitation ones where um they tell you beforehand um what they want you to do and at what point in the ring to do it. Um, and those were pretty cool.
SPEAKER_00:They were cool. All right. So they worked, were they easy to enter? Everything was easy to understand.
SPEAKER_01:Yep. They would um have your class description with your pattern to like visually see where at what point you needed to be doing what gate, et cetera, et cetera. And then most of them have all been upload to YouTube and submit to this email.
SPEAKER_00:Gotcha. All right, cool. And how did your uh so your student who entered, they were happy with it? It went well.
SPEAKER_01:Yep, yep. That one was a fun one for her to kind of dip her toe into it without actually having to go anywhere. So she had the comfort, like the comfortability of being at home with a horse that she knew, with her trainer that she knew, and a ring that she knew, and yeah, I think they they got third or fourth in their class again. So I think it was like 50 entries, it was pretty neat.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, no, I remember when online horse shows first came out and people were thinking, but you could just keep refilming until it becomes good. You don't generally ride all that much better at home than you do at a show. Like if your horse doesn't do a flying lead change, I mean, usually you'll try videoing seven or ten times, and then it'll be like, I yeah, I mean, people it becomes obvious that you can't make it happen at home if it doesn't happen.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. My my submission for Svetl Svetlana's walk trot class. I think I I it took me a span of like four days and ten attempts because it was either my pivot wasn't working right, or the she wouldn't do what I was asking her to do, or she got stressed out and we had to stop the test.
SPEAKER_00:Oh boy, okay, so that's lots of good practice. Well, that's awesome. That's good to hear that you guys went to an online show and it was uh working out. I have a lot of hopes for people doing um on the education side and I'm always signed up to educational programs online. Right now I'm in uh Warwick Schiller's online program and I'm in um Derek and Joe Clark's French classical program. But a lot of people just do not find that rewarding. You know, the educational programs are just like, okay, that is good enough. Now here's 10 million more things we need to get good at. It's not, it's and if you like learning about stuff, then that's great. But for clients, it's uh I haven't found people to be, I've been surprised at how considering how much I like them, how other people are not as motivated. You know, when you have a horse show and you dangle the carrot, you get that ribbon there, it really helps.
SPEAKER_01:Right. And the one that we did, we did get a ribbon mailed to us for our play things.
SPEAKER_00:Nice, yes, and I'm sure the kids just love that. How old is this kid?
SPEAKER_01:Uh, this particular one was 15.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, okay, great. Even yeah, I mean, they can draw uh very uh nervous age and can be very difficult to go out in public and do things. Um I'm currently furiously trail riding, knowing that we're gonna be locked up in the end of starting starting sometime. Do you keep um do you keep teaching? Does your lesson program keep going through when winter gets when it gets really cold? I mean, I remember teaching in my 20s, and parents would send kids with like no gloves. Oh, I know.
SPEAKER_01:Um, we do still go through the winter, but we slow down a little bit more. We focus a little more on the horsemanship side, so we'll do a lot of groundwork. Um, we start doing like more fun stuff, like the sledding. Um, I'll do driving with the sled and pulling and other stuff just to kind of break up that monotony because nobody wants to ride when it's sub-zero. Yes. Um, I I have an outdoor arena that I maintain year-round. Um, and we do also now I haven't had to use utilize it yet, but we do have the pony farm. Well, not the pony farm, sorry, the touchstone next door where they have the indoor, and we've discussed a few times about renting out arena time over there. So we'll probably utilize that this year if that's still an option. Yeah. And then we'll be able to just truck over because it's not even five minutes away. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Well, it's cool that you get the driving horses and you could do uh sledding and stuff because that's definitely something that the kids would be motivated by and think think was fun. Definitely a lot more fun. Yes, a lot more fun than doing trot poles in the indoor in winter when their fingers are freeze for freezing off. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01:All right, well then forget when you're yeah, you're freezing cold when you're zooming around the track at furry.
SPEAKER_00:When you're zooming around the track and doing sled. All right, all right. So, from my end, I think that's all that I've got. Is there anything, any stories or anything you want to tell or talk about? Uh giving advice to other instructors, or if you have a fun story or an inspirational story about a lesson student or anything like that?
SPEAKER_01:Actually, I uh I do. We had a breakthrough lesson a couple weeks back. Moved her current horse here. Was it this spring? Yeah, this spring. So she completely avoided the canner. Every opportunity that she had to caner, she would not do it. Which, as you and I know as instructors, breeds the well, I haven't done it in so long, so now I'm afraid of it because of every time that happens, something's bad. Something bad has gone wrong. So we were in actually a group lesson. Um, and I had one of my students run into the middle, and I said, All right, well, why don't you and Ben work on some trot poles for a minute? Um, let's pick up this horse and ride her at a canner. So um she didn't tell me right off that something had happened. Um, she told me after that first lap around where they go into the canner and it was, you know, it started off a little choppy because they were both anticipating something bad happening. Um head straight up in the air, refusing to go forward, she immediately into the fetal position. So I had her come back down to the walk and I said, All right, so what's that? And then she told me what had happened the last time she had cantered the horse, and I said, All right, well, this is how we're gonna handle it. Told her how I wanted to do it, how I wanted to set her up. She comes back around, picks it right up, drop your hands, swing, swing, swing, perfect caner transition. And then she comes back in and she goes, That was amazing. And I don't know why I've been avoiding it for so long. Aww, that's sweet. Okay, yeah, but we definitely had to get through that mental block of I'm afraid of something going bad, but I really need to do this because if I don't, I never will. I mean, they've been fine now every lesson since we've done canner both ways. She's picked it right up. We're not into the fetal position anymore. I if anything, I just have to tell her to put her hands out because it's just an automatic default out of protection. And I've been there because I did it for two years where I just didn't can her because my horse physically couldn't can her. And then I was like, huh, that's weird. Why am I scared to caner all of a sudden?
SPEAKER_00:So um, I will put a link to like your lesson bar and stuff in the show notes if that's what you want me to uh do. You want me to link your Facebook page and your um that would be great website? All right, cool. Uh, is there anything else you want to say about your business before we uh let Lil let you go?
SPEAKER_01:Um, yeah, we're just uh we're not boutique, we're not fancy, we're just here to enjoy our horses and learn about all the things in and out about behavioral, the moral compasses, the physical things, bod. We're huge on bodies. And we just we're out here having a good time, and we're always happy to have more people join us, whether it's for a one-time thing or for one of our games nights, or if they're they want to come and stay. We have room for everybody.
SPEAKER_00:That's cool. All right, great. Well, thank you for joining me. I really have appreciated. If you want to join in on any of our future calls, we have some people who just love to chat and talk. Yeah, um, I'm happy to send you a Zoom link when we do uh you know, record podcasts if you want to hop on. Some of the folks we've talked to have made some nice connections, just meeting other people that we've interviewed on the podcast. So Emily and I are happy to do that to connect folks. I will let you go then. And thank you so much for coming on. I uh really appreciate it. And what I'll do is when we get this edited, we will send you out a copy. Um, just so you can listen to it if you want to before I I usually upload it, but it's not live until I hit the button and say say to it's live. Um, does that sound good? Yeah, that works for me. All right, cool. I will let everybody go then. Thank you, Emma, and uh thank thank you, Shauna. Take care, have a good day, everybody. Thank you, you too. Okay, bye bye.
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