Professional Training is a Wise Investment in Your Safety and Future
Before you buy horses, equipment, and harness; and before you attempt to drive your horses – PLEASE seek professional assistance. Learn to drive safely and responsibly before you risk yourself, your family, and your horses. Many of our students have come to us with a horse, harness, or vehicle only to learn that nothing fits right or that they bought something not suitable. Learn about the sport of driving before you invest your money! Let us help you get it right the first time.
♦ Lessons ♦
Lessons vary with each student, all lessons are private one-on-one unless you are taking a clinic. Everyone has different interests and levels of ability, so we prefer to work with each individual to offer what they need the most. We teach driving with contact; this is the safest and most responsive way to drive one or multiple horses. We will cover harnessing, but we focus mostly on hands-on driving. We are very flexible in the lessons and we try to accommodate your individual goals and requirements. Lesson horses and vehicles are provided by the School, but you are welcome to bring your horses if they are well trained to drive.
A $150 deposit is required to save your dates whether it is for a week or a weekend.
♦ Rates ♦
Basic Training: $95 per hour. Our classes are usually two to three hours per day hands-on harnessing, hitching, and driving a single or a pair of horses. There is usually at least an hour of informal classroom per day to include question and answer time. This is about as much as most people want to absorb in a day. There is a lot to learn! One week is estimated to cost $1425.00.
Advanced Training: $85 per hour for students who have completed our Basic Training and want to continue developing their skills. This level of training does not require a minimum number of hours. Most people will be able to determine their level of comfort and may come back to us anytime for more experience and to continue learning more. We can’t possibly teach everything you will need to know in a week or even in two weeks. Many of our students come back, especially in the spring, for a tune-up on their driving skills and to correct any bad habits that they may have developed at home.
NOTE: Students who have already been with us for several years will still receive the lowest rate we offered from the beginning of their training.
Commercial Drivers: For people who would like to start a commercial carriage, wagon, or sleigh ride business, we suggest they take the Basic Course and a week of Advanced training before taking the Commercial Course. You need to be the best you can be before you risk the lives of the trusting public. At the end of your Commercial training, you will be expected to pass our evaluation, at which time we will issue you a certificate of completion. We hope in the future the insurance companies will expect this level of training before they insure any commercial horse-drawn rides.
The cost for the Commercial Driver Training is subject to each individual’s ability.
The Experience: $150 per hour for one or two hours of driving horses. This is for the people who just want to experience driving horses but have no intention of going further with their training. Let’s go have some fun!
Partner Rates: $30 per hour for a spouse, family member, or friend who will share the lesson time. The first person pays the full rate and the second person pays $30 per hour of shared time.
Winter Group Lessons in Indoor Arena
♦ Clinics ♦
Host a private clinic at Mountain View Arena or in your town. This is for people who want to spend the entire day learning as much as they can about harnessing, hitching, and driving horses. This will include lots of hands-on driving experience; how to get a better response from the driven horse; question and answer time; harness choices; vehicle selection; safety considerations; horse types and abilities; the horse’s way of thinking and responding; what the horse needs from the driver.
You may set up the clinic however you choose. We suggest five to six people with a maximum of ten people to participate in the clinic at your facilities. You may want to allow auditors – these are people who want to watch and listen to the instructions but will not have any hands-on experience. There is no limit on the number of auditors you allow to attend but they should each pay a nominal fee. A clinic day will include approximately eight hours plus an hour lunch break.
$750 per day plus Expenses for clinics away from home.
Expenses for off-site clinics:
- $1.00 per mile to and from our place to your location if Alex drives his truck, OR the cost for airfare and parking at the airport
- Food and lodging for the time Alex is away from home
- $250 each day of travel time if the clinic is less than five days. If the clinic is five days or more there will not be an extra charge for travel time. If the location is three hours or less away from home, there will be no additional fee.
- Additional fee if we have to haul horses and/or carriages for lessons
♦ Winter Clinics at Fraser School of Driving ♦
We host a series of winter weekend group lessons each year from November to June. The cost is $150 for Saturday/Sunday which includes Saturday night dinner. Stalls for horses are $10 per stall per night.
Winter Series
Send us an email if you’d like to get on our notification list. We offer a clinic once a month during the winter months subject to weather. Only way to get the updates is to get on the email list for Clinics.
Summer Field Derby – We are offering these when we can as long as the weather is nice. Cost is $150 for the weekend, per person, plus $10 board per horse, per night.
♦ Horse Training ♦
We do not train horses to drive anymore – we would rather focus on training people to drive horses as safely as possible, but we can recommend some of the trainers we use. We suggest a horse be no older than five years old to be trained to drive, with a few exceptions of course.
Many people have asked us to teach them how to train their horses to drive, but we caution people that to be a trainer of horses you have to first know what you are doing and you have to understand how horses respond to something so new and different as pulling a noisy monster on wheels behind them. Unless you are already a trainer, it is not as easy as you may think. You not only have to know what to do if things go bad, but how to be supportive of your horse so he or she doesn’t panic, and what to do if they do panic. If your mind is made up to train your horse we would suggest you take at least our Basic Training so you can learn something about what to teach your horses. Without proper training for yourself, it may be compared to taking flying lessons from someone who doesn’t have more than a few hours of flight time themselves!