🍂 October at Cheyne Ranch! 🐴💚
Hello Cheyne Ranch families! 👋💚
October has been BUSY at Cheyne Ranch!
We've wrapped up Fall 1, celebrated with our community, welcomed some wonderful new friends, and have some really exciting things on the horizon!
Our entire instructional team is preparing for an AMAZING training adventure in Arizona, and we're looking forward to everything we'll bring home to our students and horses.
We also have some important Fall 2 schedule updates, so please take a few minutes to catch up on what's happening around the ranch!
🌵 Our Team Is Heading to Arizona! 🐴
We have an AMAZING opportunity coming up!
All four of our instructors, Sally, Anna, Katie, and Erin, are heading to Arizona in November for an intensive four-day adaptive horsemanship and riding instructor clinic with Hoof Falls & Footfalls!
This is a special opportunity for our entire team to learn from experienced professionals, explore new teaching techniques, and bring fresh ideas back to Cheyne Ranch.
And it's about more than just training! We're spending several days together as a team, learning, sharing ideas, and strengthening the relationships that make our programs work so well.
We're investing in our instructors because we're investing in our students, our horses, and the future of Cheyne Ranch! 💚
We're incredibly excited and grateful for this opportunity!
📅 IMPORTANT! Fall 2 Schedule & Tuition
Fall 2 begins October 19 and ends December 19!
For the first time in six years, we're adjusting our usual eight-week schedule to accommodate our team's training trip.
🚫 NO REGULAR LESSONS THESE TWO WEEKS:
🌵 November 2–8: Our instructors are in Arizona for training.
🦃 November 23–29: Thanksgiving Break.
✅ FALL 2 INCLUDES 7 LESSONS, NOT 8!
💰 Tuition is $420 for 7 lessons instead of our usual $480 for 8 lessons.
Your regular lesson day and time will stay the same, except during the two break weeks.
🐴 WANT AN 8TH LESSON?
We can arrange an additional lesson during Thanksgiving week, subject to availability. That optional eighth lesson is $60 extra, bringing your total to $480.
You do NOT need to schedule or pay for an eighth lesson unless you want one!
Thank you for being flexible as our team continues learning, growing, and bringing new skills back to Cheyne Ranch! 💚🐴
💻👑 Our Airtable Empire
I've been working hard behind the scenes to improve our computer systems, and it's paying off!
My ever-growing Airtable Empire is making it easier than ever to keep up with registrations, invoices, payments, and account balances.
🎉 ALL Fall 2 invoices are ready NOW!
If you've been with Cheyne Ranch for a while, you might be used to invoices arriving a bit later. Not anymore! 😁
💰 If you haven't paid for Fall 2 yet, please take care of your invoice.
As always, if your family needs a payment plan, extra time, or other arrangements, that's absolutely fine! Just communicate with me so we can make a plan that works.
Otherwise, please pay promptly! Keeping payments current helps us pay our staff, care for our animals, and keep our programs running smoothly.
💚 Payment options: chra.us/pay
Thank you for helping us keep Cheyne Ranch running better and better! 🐴💚
🎃 Cheyne Ranch Halloween Parade! 🐴🍬
What a FUN evening!
On October 11, Cheyne Ranch joined the Songbirds Spooktacular Halloween Parade right here in Oviedo, and we had such a wonderful time!
Our horses, students, families, and volunteers came together for an evening of costumes, candy, laughter, and community fun! ❤️
One of my favorite things about Cheyne Ranch is seeing our students and families enjoying time together OUTSIDE of lessons. We're building more than riding skills here. We're building friendships, connections, and a community where everyone belongs. 💚
A HUGE thank you to everyone who walked with us, brought wagons, donated candy, helped with the horses, or cheered us on along the route!
And thank you to Songbirds Music Academy for organizing such a fun community event!
We can't wait to do it again next year! 🎃🐴
👕 There's Still Time to Grab a Halloween Shirt! 🎃
Missed out on our Cheyne Ranch Halloween shirts? You can still order one!
They're available in our online merch shop, and shipping usually takes about a week, so order soon if you'd like yours before Halloween!
🎃🐴 Shop Cheyne Ranch Halloween Shirts!
Every purchase helps support Cheyne Ranch and our programs! 💚
🐴 Have You Seen Our HUGE New Mounting Platform?! 🔨💚
We're so excited about our beautiful new mounting platform!
This spacious new platform gives our students, instructors, and volunteers more room to work together, making mounting and dismounting easier, safer, and more accessible.
🧡 Another BIG thank you to The Home Depot and Team Depot!
Remember the $5,000 grant that provided all the materials for our new arena fencing? Well, that generous grant stretched even further! It also covered more than half the materials for our new mounting platform! 🎉
Cheyne Ranch purchased the remaining materials and paid for the labor.
🔨 A special thank you to our friend Zinn Schwartz, owner of Hamilton and Carter Garage Makeovers Plus, for his work completing the platform!
We're so grateful for the people and businesses who help us continue improving Cheyne Ranch for our students and horses! 🐴💚
💚 New Friends, New Opportunities! Welcome, Kairos Adventures! 🐴
We're SO excited to welcome our new friends from Kairos Adventures to Cheyne Ranch!
On October 14, we hosted our first group of Kairos artists, and what a wonderful morning it was! 💚
Kairos Adventures supports young adults with different abilities, and we're thrilled to be partnering with them to provide hands-on opportunities to work with our animals and contribute to the ranch.
And this is something we're especially passionate about at Cheyne Ranch!
There's something wonderful about people working side by side, caring for animals, helping each other, and learning from one another.
The conversations that happen while we're working. The pride in a job well done. The joy of connecting with an animal. And the friendships that grow along the way.
At Cheyne Ranch, we believe everyone has something valuable to contribute. 💚
We're looking forward to welcoming more Kairos groups in the coming weeks and growing this wonderful partnership!
Welcome to the Cheyne Ranch family, Kairos Adventures! 🐴💚
🦅 Coming in January: FALCONRY at Cheyne Ranch!
We're planning something REALLY exciting for January!
A falconry expert is coming to Cheyne Ranch! 🦅
We'll have a special opportunity to learn about birds of prey, discover what makes these incredible animals so fascinating, and experience something a little different from our usual ranch activities!
And this event will be open to Cheyne Ranch families! 💚
We're still working out the details, including the date, cost, and registration information, so stay tuned!
We love finding new ways to connect our students and families with animals and the natural world, and we're really looking forward to this one! 🦅🐴
🍯 Honey Is Feeling SO Much Better! 💚
If you've been following Honey's recovery, you know she developed a very serious case of laminitis this summer. It was incredibly painful, and we were so worried about her. ❤️
But I'm SO happy to report that Honey is feeling MUCH better! 🎉
Between her special shoes, carefully managed diet, and medication designed to help horses with her condition, she's so much more comfortable!
I am SO thankful to live in a time when veterinary medicine gives us treatment options like these! It's amazing what we can do to help horses who are struggling.
Honey still has some healing to do, but seeing her comfortable and happy again means everything! 💚🐴
And remember, NO TREATS FOR HONEY! Even if she tells you she's starving! 😂
👑 Princess Is Feeling So Much Better, Too! 💚
Princess is also doing really well! Her new therapeutic shoes have made such a difference in how comfortably she's moving.
Both Princess and Honey are getting their second sets of shoes next week. At $300 per horse every five weeks, this is a BIG expense for Cheyne Ranch!
But it's so nice to see both girls feeling better. We're really happy with their progress! ❤️🐴
💚 Celebrating Our Cheyne Ranch Crew! 🎉
🌟 Our Amazing Weekly Volunteers!
I don't think I say this nearly enough, but we have some pretty AMAZING volunteers at Cheyne Ranch!
Abby, Katelynn, Kaitlyn, Kayla, Eva, and Emily each give more than SIX HOURS of their time every week helping care for our animals, support our programs, and keep this place running! 💚
That's more than 36 hours of volunteer work every single week, just from these six wonderful people!
And it's not all cuddling bunnies and brushing horses! 😂 There's feeding, cleaning, hauling, scrubbing, scooping poop, and about a thousand other jobs that need to happen every day.
They show up week after week, learn new skills, take on real responsibilities, and make a difference here.
I am SO grateful for each of them!
And to ALL of our volunteers who give their time throughout the year, whether it's a few hours at an event or several hours every week, THANK YOU! Every contribution matters, and we appreciate you! 💚🐴
💚 Even During Break Week!
Last week was our break from lessons, but Abby, Katelynn, and Kaitlyn still showed up Friday evening to take care of the animals!
They handled all the evening chores, including cleaning stalls, feeding everyone, refilling hay, and rinsing Pearl and Lujen.
And since we didn't have any students that night, we decided to go out to dinner afterward! 😂
I love that these girls show up, work hard, and genuinely enjoy spending time together. 💚
🎂 SO Many Birthdays!
September and October are birthday season for our Cheyne Ranch crew! 😂🎉
🍂 September Birthdays
🎂 Christopher G.
🎂 Emily McAdam
🎂 Katelynn Hadley
🎂 Nora Skiles
🎃 October Birthdays
🎂 Abby Fisher
🎂 Abby Adamson
HAPPY BIRTHDAY to all six of you! 💚
And we can't forget our four-legged birthday girls!
👑 Princess Buttercup (now 22!) and 🐶 Luna Lovegood Cheyne (Grace's Cavapoo) share a birthday on September 14!
Most baby farm animals arrive in the spring, but these two decided September was a perfectly good time to be born! 😂
Happy birthday to our whole crew, two-legged and four-legged alike! 💚🐴🐾
💚 A Special Sweet 16!
And a special birthday shout-out to Abby, who turns 16 on October 19!
Abby has been coming to Cheyne Ranch since March 2021. She was just 10 years old when she started!
It's pretty amazing to realize she's been growing up here for more than five years. We've watched her learn, take on more responsibilities, and become such an important part of our weekly routine.
Happy Sweet 16, Abby! We're so glad you're part of Cheyne Ranch! 💚🐴
📅 Mark Your Calendars!
Here's what's coming up at Cheyne Ranch!
🐴 October 19: Fall 2 begins!
🌵 November 2–8: NO LESSONS! Our instructors are away for training in Arizona.
🦃 November 23–29: Thanksgiving Break! No regular lessons.
🎄 December 19: Fall 2 ends!
🦅 January: Special falconry experience! Details coming soon!
💚 Reminder: Fall 2 includes 7 regular lessons, not 8. Tuition is $420 for seven lessons.
You can always check our calendar here: chra.us/p
💚 Want to Help Support Cheyne Ranch?
As a nonprofit, we're incredibly grateful for the people who help us do what we do.
There's a lot that goes into caring for our animals, maintaining the ranch, and making our programs accessible to people of all abilities.
We're especially proud to offer free community programs for groups like Kairos Adventures and Maple22, where participants can work with our animals, learn new skills, and experience the joy of contributing.
These programs are free to our guests, but they still require staff, time, animals, and resources to provide.
Our lesson tuition help support Cheyne Ranch, but they don't cover everything.
If you're in a position to make a donation, we'd be so grateful! Every gift helps us care for our animals and continue sharing what we have with our community.
💚 Make a Donation to Cheyne Ranch
And whether you support us financially, volunteer your time, or simply tell someone about Cheyne Ranch, thank you. It all means a lot to us! 💚🐴
🐴 CHEYNE RANCH, INC. 🌟
Teaching Animal Care & Connection
📬 1963 Genova Drive, Oviedo, FL 32765
📞 Call/Text: (407) 205-7744 | 📧 Email | 🌐 Website | 📘Facebook | 📸 Instagram
💙 Cheyne Ranch is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Consider donating: chra.us/give
Our mission: We teach animal care and connection in a safe, inclusive, and accessible community where people of all abilities grow in confidence, develop life skills, and form meaningful relationships.
