For four years now, Pamela Wagner and her daughter Nina Lonsberry, have been organizing one of the most popular camps for kids in the area. At least for girls anyway.
Young girls love horses. Generally all kids love horses, said Lonsberry, but she has noted a particular interest from girls for the week-long camp hosted each summer at the farm just south of Bienfait. With games like Survivor and Manhunter, there is lots fun to be had, and the competition tends to get a little cutthroat.
She gives this group of attendees high praise, as they were able to go out and do some trail riding.
"It's a good group of kids," said Lonsberry. "We didn't have to entertain them as much (as previous years). They are much better riders and can handle the younger (horses)."
Because the group was so good on the horses they were able to venture out into the endless freedom of a trail ride, and that comes with a unique difficulty.
"You can't control them (on the trail). If the horse is outside, it can run away."
The Survivor game splits the group into two teams, team red and team blue, with Wagner and Lonsberry each leading one side.
Does it get competitive?
"Oh yeah, it's competitive. There is some big competition," said Lonsberry.
But Mantracker takes the cake among the attendees favourite games.
"Mantracker, they can't wait for it."
That game, based on the television show, sends that riders out on their horses, and Wagner rides out to find and wrangle them back in, before they make it back to the barn. Anybody who gets back safely gets some serious bragging rights.
With the program now into its fourth year, the mother-daughter duo had lots of different things planned, but because it was so busy they weren't able to get around to some of the activities.
The popular camp can be difficult to get into, as Lonsberry noted there is already a waiting list for next year's. One girl at the camp this year has been to each previous camp.
Lonsberry is a teacher at Weldon School in Bienfait, and Wagner has been a western Canada coach for 30 years, and she continues to teach four days a week.
The camp has evolved quickly after the maiden camp fours ago. Lonsberry said they hadn't done it before and weren't entirely sure what to expect. The second year though, they added some crowd-pleasing games like Survivor and Manhunter.
They don't teach a lot of training during the camp, but Lonsberry said some of that knowledge gets passed on to the students naturally. As they ride the horses more, and become more comfortable on them, they learn some aspects of training just by riding.
"To learn to ride, you learn about training."
But that's not the focus, said Lonsberry.
She noted that some of the girls, after going through the horse camp, get their own horses. Often their parents don't quite know how to take care of a horse.
"Some don't know how to keep them properly," she said, adding that she or Wagner will show them the things they'll need to know. Sometimes that family's horse will be kept in the barns at Lonsberry's.
One girl at the camp this year was riding her own pony, but the others rode horses supplied by Lonsberry and Wagner. That's what keeps their numbers from swelling too much, because they just run out of horses to distribute. The horses at the camp are also fairly experienced, so it's pretty easy for the girls to get on and start moving. They don't have to train the horses.
The camp closed with families attending the barns to see what the girls had learned that week. Individually each participant showed off her barrel-racing skills through a three-barrel course.
