Music City Riding Academy

I was alerted to the post about camp. I was at the camp when the child that was dismissed was there having his meltdowns, etc. My daughter was in the camp and she told me how awful the child behaved and how his ""fits"" made the other campers very upset. Thank goodness Ms. Rebecca was able to keep the other 5 campers going while dealing with this other child. He should have been dismissed from camp on Wed. Ms. Rebecca runs a great camp and the kids learn much more than just how to ride a horse. Kudos for her. And ""boo"" to you the parent for not paying attention to the problem when it was happening because I know she spoke with you every day about his behavior. Ms. Rebecca told me that this was the first child ever dismissed from camp in 20+ yrs. more

I have boarded my horse at MCRA for over 2 yrs and it is excellent there. My horse is happy, mellow and healthy. There are no bad fences. It is mostly electric fencing. I think you 2 (or 1) that wrote this stuff are just doing it to hurt the facility. If you did indeed come there in the rain, you need to come there when the sun is out and it is nice. Every facility has mud. more

I bought the Groupon for a 90 minute horseback riding lesson for 2 at Music City Riding Academy. I surprised my 11 year old sister and 14 year old brother who live in Knoxville (3 hours away) by taking them when they were in town this weekend. They were very excited until we got there. The owner, Ms. Rebecca was very rude from the beginning. We arrived 30 minutes before our appointment because we wanted to be sure we could find the place. We were perfectly happy to wait until 12 but she made sure we knew she was not pleased to see us. As soon as the lesson started she was yelling at my siblings every time they did not know the answer to something or didn't hold the reins correctly etc. (We had told her before hand they had never been on horses and she assured us this would not be a problem.) The worst was when she told my little sister to get on the horse. She did not swing her leg correctly and was trying to lift her leg over the horse. Ms. Rebecca yelled at her and told her to get down and do it again. She did the same thing and once again she pulled her down and yelled at her. (I could understand if what my sister was doing was hurting the horse but she wasn't touching it with her leg, she couldn't even get her leg over!) My sister was almost in tears but was afraid to get off for fear of being yelled at yet again. About 25-30 minutes into the lesson it started raining she took the horses back to the barn and said they were rained out for the day, give her a call when they were back in town. I said they wouldn't be, she said ""Oh, I'm sure they'll be back for the holidays."" I said, ""No, this is the first time they've been here in three years."" She said, ""Well, call me next time they're back in town."" She wouldn't even allow myself and someone else to use the rest of the lesson since my family was from out of town. I did complain to Groupon and they were wonderful and fully refunded the lesson. This woman is horrible and has no right to work with children. All she did was tear them down and make them afraid of doing something wrong. I DO NOT RECOMMEND GOING HERE UNLESS YOU'RE PREPARED FOR AN UNPLEASANT EXPERIENCE!!!! more

Keep away. The owner offers a summer camp and claims to cater to and have experience with ages 4 and older. The owner Rebekah is extremely rude and insulting and does not have patience with children or a general sense of how one runs a good business. She will arbitrarily send campers home if they are frightened of the horse rather than work with them to give the camper a comfort level. She will not allow the camper to return for the remainder of the session and she won't offer any prorated refund and simply states all camp fees are non-refundable. The camp sessions are designed with more cleaning and care of the horses and her farm rather than riding. The campers are required to clean horse stalls and farm work rather than spend the day riding the horse. If you plan to send your child here be prepared for a huge disappointment and insulting words and a negative demeanor from the owner. more

I saw the same as the previous reviewer, KJohnson. I visited MCRA thinking to board my horse here. When we pulled up a bunch of filthy, matted dogs ran up to bark. Barn was on a muddy slope, turn out areas had no footing. Way too many horses were in one small paddock with filthy water trough (pasture was overgrazed), they stood with hooves sunk down in the mud. Not a well run barn that just had a lot of rain, this barn was not kept up. It didn't look like the kind of place my horse would be happy in or that I would want to come ride. more

I considered boarding my horse here because of the great location... but was appalled at the horrible facility (should have listened to those who told me it wasn't worth my time). The grounds are full of junk (there was a pit of indiscernible objects that looked as if it had tried to have been burned at some point, but metal objects remain in places where horses actively graze), unsafe and falling apart fencing, soggy rotting hay, and weed-ridden pasture. The ""paddocks"" are mud pits held together by boards with nails sticking out, and there is only one dirty trough for some 25 pasture horses. The stalls in the barn asileway are actually decent for old stalls, but they are not cleaned out well, and several were ankle deep in mud. Other stalls had chainlink fencing (dangerous for any horse, especially those with shoes!), plywood, and boards falling apart. Roundpens are mud pits and ""arena"" was a joke: just boards poorly nailed together to separate an area with no type of footing what-so-ever (the area outside of the ""arena"" had better footing!). If you care about your horse's well being you won't go here. Pros: location Cons: dangerous fencing, junk in pasture, soggy hay, dirty water more