What 18 Years of Running Summer Camp in Sonoma County Taught Me About Kids (That No Classroom Ever Could)

I have been watching kids arrive at this barn every June for 18 years now.

And if there is one thing I know — one thing I would stake every summer we have ever run on — it is this: the kid who walks through our gate on Monday morning is never quite the same kid who leaves on Friday afternoon.

That sounds like a marketing line. I know it does. But stay with me, because what I have watched happen over nearly two decades of summer camp in Sonoma County is something I am still, genuinely, trying to wrap my head around.

Why Horses Create a Different Kind of Learning

There is something that happens between a child and a horse that is genuinely hard to put into words.

Horses do not carry any expectations of your child. They do not know what kind of week they had at school or what mood they arrived in.

What horses respond to is energy, patience, and presence. A nervous kid who yanks at the reins gets immediate, honest feedback — not in a punishing way, but in an unmistakable one. A kid who slows down, breathes, and softens their hands gets a completely different response.

This is, in the most literal sense, real-time cause and effect. And for kids who have been struggling to connect their actions to outcomes — whether at school, at home, or socially — this kind of clear, immediate, non-judgmental feedback is extraordinary.

I have watched kids arrive on Monday morning barely able to look us in the eye, and leave on Friday standing a little taller. I have watched kids who came in unsure of themselves discover — through a quiet moment with a horse — that they are actually really capable. That kind of confidence is not something we hand to them. They find it themselves.

That is what keeps me doing this after 18 years.

Camp Is Coming to More of Sonoma County This Year

This summer, we are running camp in both Petaluma and Santa Rosa. If you are a family in Santa Rosa, Windsor, Healdsburg, Rohnert Park, or anywhere in northern Sonoma County — this summer, camp is closer than ever.

The Thing About Community That Nobody Tells You

When parents ask me what their kids will "get" from a week at camp, I usually talk about confidence. I talk about the riding skills, the horsemanship, the outdoor time. Those things are all real and they all matter.

But the thing I do not always manage to articulate in a quick conversation at drop-off is the community piece. And I think it might actually be the most important thing.

Here is what I mean.

We live in a time when most of kids' social interaction happens on screens, in structured classroom settings, or in highly organized team sports. Those things are fine. But there is a kind of friendship that forms when you are grooming a horse side by side with someone you met three days ago, when you are cheering each other through a trot exercise, when you are eating your lunch in the shade of the barn and someone makes a joke that gets everyone laughing — that kind of friendship is different.

It is the kind that forms quickly and lands deeply.

Every summer, I watch kids who arrived as strangers exchange numbers at pickup on Friday like they have known each other for years. I watch kids who spent the first morning too shy to speak up become the loudest cheerleaders in the arena by Wednesday. I watch groups form a kind of shorthand — inside jokes, a shared language built entirely around one week of horses and summer and being exactly their age in exactly this place.

Some of those friendships are still going. Kids who met at Strides camp years ago are now teenagers who still text each other. A few of them came back as junior counselors.

That is not something I planned. It is just what happens when you put kids in an environment where they feel safe, seen, and genuinely included.

What I Hope Your Child Takes Home

Here is what I want you to know, from the perspective of someone who has been doing this for 18 years: the weeks I think about most are not always the ones with the biggest breakthroughs in the arena. They are the quiet ones — the kid who finally laughed on Wednesday, the two campers who arrived as strangers and left as friends, the one who rode independently for the first time and looked back over their shoulder to see if anyone noticed.

We noticed. We always notice.

We are not a camp that promises transformation. I am too honest for that. But we do create the conditions for it — the warmth, the patient counselors, the horses who have been doing this long enough to know exactly what a nervous kid needs — and then we step back and let your child figure out what they are capable of.

That part never gets old. Not after 18 years. Not even a little bit.

⚠️ Heads up: Some weeks are already full and it's early in the year. If you have a specific week in mind, now is the time to lock it in.

→ Register for Summer Camp 2026