A Meaningful Connection is Just Minutes Away

Founded by Karin Schmidt, Karin’s Horse Connection and Legacy Stables is located on 28 beautiful acres just 15 minutes from downtown Grand Rapids.  In 2022 Karin sold Legacy Stables to her daughter, Leoni Baier, and long time employee, Grace Peterson.

We offer horse lovers a full range of equestrian activities in a safe, relaxing, and family-friendly environment. While we cater primarily to new and inexperienced riders, we serve all ages, skill levels, and disciplines.  Open year-round, our highly qualified staff works with 30 gentle and well-trained horses and ponies to provide a wide variety of riding programs, equestrian vaulting, and therapeutic programs.

Our focus is to offer riders a calm, relaxing environment in which to enjoy time with horses. Life is stressful enough, time at the barn should not be.

With over 20 horses we have something for everyone!

We offer a full range of equestrian activities and services including:

  • Quality riding lessons (English and Western)
  • Young Children KinderPony Program
  • Equestrian Vaulting
  • Therapeutic Riding/Adaptive Vaulting
  • One-Time Rides: Guided Riding In Open Terrain
  • Birthday Parties
  • Field Trips
  • Groups
  • ‘Own-A-Horse’ Camp
  • Amazing Graze
Core Values
We Care 
  • About people.  We want them to feel loved and improve their quality of life through more smiles, better physical fitness, a balanced mind, healthy self-esteem, and good social skills. 
  • About horses. We want them to “be a horse” and enjoy a purposeful life being loved by many.
We Share
  • Our passion, our horses, our place, our skills/knowledge/experience, our peaceful atmosphere and laid back, positive attitude. 
We are Inclusive
  • We do not make a difference, everyone is treated with the same respect and dignity. 
We are Professional
  • We have an emphasis on all aspects of safety.
  • We are honest and transparent.  Lines of communication between leadership, management, staff, and customers are kept open.  
  • We work timely and efficiently.
  • We work as a team:  Everyone knows their own responsibilities, yet is willing to help when others need a hand.  No job is “beneath” anyone – everyone pitches in to keep things running like a well-oiled machine.
  • Staff seeks to continue to improve their riding skills and education. And the business works to provide such opportunities.
We are Laidback and Positive 
  • Gossip, bad language, and drama are discouraged. 
  • We are grateful and do not take things for granted

Name Explanation

Over the years we have grown, offered new services, and with this growth came name changes. When we first started our business, we were called “A Vaulting Connection, LLC” because we founded our vaulting club at the same time.  We had one horse we used for both vaulting and therapeutic riding. A Vaulting Connection, LLC was confusing for our clients with special needs because they didn’t vault.  A couple of years later, we applied for nonprofit status and changed the name to Therapeutic Horse Connection to better represent the nonprofit’s core mission. While this was occurring, we had some highly competitive vaulters competing at national level, and wanted to ensure the judges knew they weren’t therapeutic competitors. So neither Therapeutic Horse Connection nor A Vaulting Connection really worked for us as a name.

At that time, I did not have my own stable, and so we chose Karin’s Horse Connection for our business and left Therapeutic Horse Connection/A Vaulting Connection for our nonprofit.

In 2012 we bought our property, a farm with the land. We built pastures, stalls, an indoor arena, and live here now with 25 horses. We called it Legacy Stables. The next logical step was to change the name for the business to Legacy Stables LLC. This freed up the name Karin’s Horse Connection, which we then used as DBA for Therapeutic Horse Connection. This way, our special needs clients, as well as our competing vaulters, can feel good to be under the same roof.

Our Staff
Karin Schmidt
Karin Schmidt
Founder
Karin Schmidt is the owner of Legacy Stables and founder and executive director of Karin’s Horse Connection. With her vaulting club A...
Grace Peterson
Grace Peterson
Owner & Program Director
Grace Peterson Owner & Program Director Grace started working for Karin as a Riding Instructor in the fall of 2014.  In the spring of 2016 she...
Leoni Baier
Leoni Baier
Owner & Administrative Director
Leoni Baier Owner & Administrative Director Leoni inherited the love of horses from her mom, Karin. Growing up, she tagged along to the stables...
Check out life around the stables

Our focus is to offer riders a calm, relaxing environment in which to enjoy time with horses. Life is stressful enough, time at the barn should not be. Click on a photo to see more.