Speaker 1: It's the end of June and if you're still desperately looking for something for your kids to do, here's a helpful tip courtesy of Emily Flake and Sarah Hutto.
[music]
Speaker 2: Are you sick of going to camp without horses? Are you tired of experiencing a horse free summer doing horseless activities? What if we told you that your days could be horse filled?
Speaker 3: I love horses.
Speaker 2: Then come to horse camp. Here at horse camp you'll start off every day in our communal horse tent, where we open our morning with a meditation next to horses.
Speaker 3: That sounds cool. Then we go horseback riding?
Speaker 2: After our horse side meditation, we enjoy a fun-filled morning of arts and horse crafts.
Speaker 3: We'd make crafts having to do with horses?
Speaker 2: No, we set up craft tables for campers adjacent to a craft table for the horses.
Speaker 3: Are you saying the horses actually do the crafts?
Speaker 2: Not at all. Mostly they just eat the paste and knock the table over.
Speaker 3: Then do we ride the horses?
Speaker 2: After that, we go on a nature walk in the woods.
Speaker 3: On the horses? We ride the horses in the woods right?
Speaker 2: We lure the horses into the woods with peanut butter, and then we just let them roam around and trample the foliage.
Speaker 3: When do we ride them though?
Speaker 2: Once one of our staffers did try to ride a horse, but they got kicked in the skull. Now we just hang out near the horses without mounting them.
Speaker 3: Wait, what? What kind of horses are these?
Speaker 2: These are non riding horses, feral horses that are hostile to human touch, but they are mostly tolerant of us being 20 feet or so away from them. No one has been fatally injured so far.
Speaker 3: How did you even get these horses?
Speaker 2: The horses do not belong to us. Our camp is located nearby to, but definitely legally not on,, the county's only dedicated wild horse preserve.
Speaker 3: I really want to ride and groom the horses.
Speaker 2: Next up archery, witness the majesty of the kind of stampede that only the use of flaming arrows can spark.
Speaker 3: That sounds like animal abuse.
Speaker 2: Then it's time for music hour. You've heard that music soothes the savage beast. Turns out it doesn't work on horses, but our stunning rendition of Wildfire does seem to lift human spirits.
Speaker 3: Doesn't the horse and that song die?
Speaker 2: Then a pony ride.
Speaker 3: Wait, what?
Speaker 2: We contracted with a local riding stable for the use of one of their domesticated ponies. By contracted with, we mean their staff goes home at the end of the day and the ponies are left unattended.
Speaker 3: Won't the ponies be sleeping?
Speaker 2: They're surprisingly easy to waken.
Speaker 3: That seems like it will put them in a pretty bad mood.
Speaker 2: What better time to bond with a horse than under the cloak of night?
Speaker 3: Horses aren't nocturnal.
Speaker 2: They do sleep standing up. Plus these are Shetlands, easy to mount.
Speaker 3: You can't ride a Shetland.
Speaker 2: Not for long, no. Horse camp, camp but for doing stuff near horses.
