We are located in the heart of the Interlake of Manitoba, in Fraserwood, Manitoba. We’ve been at this location for 18 years and prior to that we were known as Dusty Trails in Winnipeg Beach for over 20 years.
Currently the ranch boasts over 320 acres of forests, meadows, creeks and a scenic prairie landscape that offers a nice variety of nature to explore out on the trails on the back of a horse. Having operated our popular trail rides for over 35 years and deciding to instead focus on giving lessons to students interested in furthering their horsemanship abilities, our trail rides are now simply a pleasure and a welcome mental stimulus for our horses and clients of varying riding skills.
Our trails are not open to the public so there is no chance of off-road vehicle encounters. although several encounters with wildlife should be certainly be expected. There are amenities like our playground on site, fully serviced washrooms, heated tack room, indoor 50'round pen, outdoor 100x200’ sand arena, stalls available and security features installed.
The ranch is designed to be very family-friendly with a laid back atmosphere, friendly and very knowledgable wranglers, apprentices and owners. We operated our popular summer camp program for 9 years offering overnight sleep-away camp for girls aged 10-17 and our Cowboy Camp for the littles aged 5-10 for many years. These incredibly valuable experiences offered us so many equestrian relationships that we still maintain to this day with our campers. So many of “our young ladies” have grown up to become horse specialists themselves in the training, showing, horse-owning, farriering and veterinary professionals. Needless to say, their time spent with us on the ranch positively influenced both them and our team in exponentially valuable ways that now our former campers and students have become the teachers. What a wonderful thing to experience!
Amber and Tara both grew up in St.Andrews on a hobby farm with both ponies and horses of all kinds. Our parents were able to provide us with riding lessons and horsemanship experiences from our toddler years and we were lucky enough to participate in local horse shows, parades and watch our mom interact with her boarders. We learned from an early start how to provide essential care to client horses and well as our own. Amber started Dusty Trails with our brother as a very young adult offering trail rides to the public, boarding and lessons and training. We have guided hundreds of trail rides over 40 years and we have encountered so many experiences in our adventures together creating a strong read in our riders and our horses and their combined abilities. This decades experience, (the great and the bad) have made both Amber and Tara valuable instructors and horsewomen and although we do teach all ages of riders we can confidently say we are experts in teaching children how to be around and ride our horses.
That being said we are winding down our operations toward retirement and less horse chores one day as we are grandparents now.
The People of the Ranch :
Tara Tyndale is the Ranch Manager alongside Husband David. After completing his 26 year carreer with The City Of Winnipeg, David is now a constant presence and is able to assist in all things ranching. We are the ones to speak with regarding Boarding and ranch day to day maintenance. As the Owners they are out there every day communing with the horses checking their well-being, feeding, monitoring and checking to see that everything is ship shape. Tara is Certified through CHA and is qualified in Western (Level3), English Flat (Level 2).
Amber Smarz is currently both Wrangler and Instructor here at the ranch. Over 45 years of riding and horsemanship experience she is also Certified through CHA and is qualified in Western (Level 2) and English (Level 2)
