Cancelling and rescheduling

1. How to move or cancel a booking

Every booking confirmation from the scheduler carries a link to cancel the appointment and a link to move it to another time. Using either of them updates the calendar at the ranch straight away, which is why it is the route we would rather people took.

If the confirmation has gone missing, or the change is one the scheduler cannot make, writing to hello@equinetherapymalibu.com or calling (310) 709-8618 reaches the same place. A message left out of hours is picked up the next working day, so a change that is close to the session is better made by phone.

2. Equine therapy sessions

This covers the one to one sessions, the couple sessions, the children’s sessions and the smaller group and family sessions, all of which are booked through the scheduler and paid for at the time of booking.

A session is paid for when it is booked, and the payment is not returned. The time is held for you, the horses and a facilitator are set aside for it, and a cancelled hour in this canyon does not go to somebody else at short notice.

More than 48 hours before the session, you can move it. Use the link in your confirmation or write to us, and we will find another date where we can. There is no charge for moving a session, and the payment moves with it.

Within 48 hours of the session, it cannot be moved and it is not refunded. The session stands as booked, and coming to another date means booking and paying for it. This is the whole of the rule: the horses and a facilitator are committed to your hour by then, and that hour cannot be given to anybody else.

A session you do not arrive for is used. A session that starts late finishes at the time it was always going to finish, because the horses and the facilitator have the rest of the day behind it. We can end a session early if a person or a horse is not safe, and that session is used too.

3. Level 1, the course

Level 1 runs in two forms, a live half day on Zoom and a live half day at the ranch, each with self paced lessons alongside it. Both are sold and paid for on the site of the provider who runs the enrollment, not on ours.

That means the cancellation and refund terms that apply to a Level 1 place are that provider’s terms, given at checkout and in the confirmation email, and a request to cancel or move a place goes to them. We can help find the right person, and we cannot refund a payment that was never taken by us.

The day at the ranch is part of that same enrollment, so it carries the same terms, and a place that is not taken up on the day is used.

4. Level 2, the certification

Level 2 runs across four months of monthly weekends at the ranch and it is enrolled and paid for on this site. Tuition is $5,355, or $5,200 if you pay by bank transfer rather than by card, or four monthly payments of $1,338.75, which comes to the same $5,355. Paying takes your place in the cohort, and on the payment plan that means the first payment, not the last.

Tuition is not returned once the cohort has begun. Leaving partway through does not release what has been paid, and does not release what is still owed for the part of the program already delivered. If something changes before the cohort begins, tell us as early as you can and we will do what we can, which is usually to move you to the next one.

A payment plan does not change any of that. The remaining payments are still owed and still come off on their dates, and leaving partway through does not stop them. If one does not go through we write to you with a link from Stripe to settle it, and Stripe tries again over the following few days; a payment that has not landed yet is not on its own the loss of your place.

If you enroll and it turns out you have not finished Level 1, that is not a cancellation and nothing is lost: tell us, and we will hold your place until you have.

Attendance is mandatory. The certification is the weekends, and certifying somebody who was not at them would make it worth less for everyone who was. Every scheduled weekend has to be attended in full, on the dates the cohort runs, for the certificate to be awarded.

A weekend cannot be rescheduled, except for a genuine emergency, and then at most one. That one is made up in a way we arrange, which may mean joining the next cohort for it, and whether the situation is an emergency is our judgement. Miss more than that and the certificate is not awarded, and the tuition is not returned.

If an emergency takes somebody out of a cohort altogether, we will, where we can, hold their place for the next one rather than refund it, once and at our discretion. Ask us, early.

A cohort is small and a place held is a place another applicant was not offered, which is the reason these terms exist at all rather than a threat about them.

5. Corporate and group bookings

Corporate days, institutional groups, clinician trainings and anything else arranged for a team are quoted and scheduled directly with us rather than through the public scheduler, because each one is built around what the group is bringing. The terms for a specific booking are the ones in the proposal and the confirmation for it, and where those differ from this page, they govern.

The deposit in the proposal holds the date and is not returned. A date can be moved with enough notice for us to reuse it, which we will say in the proposal; a booking cancelled rather than moved is paid in full. An emergency on your side moves the date rather than refunding it.

Numbers can change until the date in the proposal, and the price moves with them if the proposal says it does. Telling us early helps more than it sounds like it should: how many people are coming decides how many horses and how many facilitators the day needs, and those are arranged well before anybody drives up the canyon.

6. When we call a date off

Sometimes the ranch cancels, and in this canyon that is not rare. Sessions happen outdoors on open ground in the Santa Monica Mountains, and a date can be called off for heavy rain, for high wind, for heat, for fire or the risk of it, for smoke and air quality, or because the road in is closed. Fire closures in particular can shut a canyon road or Pacific Coast Highway with very little notice, and when the road is shut, nobody is driving to the ranch.

A date can also come off for the herd. Horses get sick, get hurt, and occasionally have a week where the work is not fair to ask of them. They are partners in this rather than equipment, so when one of them is not right, the session moves.

We make the call as early as the forecast and the road allow, and we reach you by phone and by email, so please give us both when you book.

When we call a date off, your booking moves to another date at no cost, and your payment stays with it. If we cannot offer you a date that works within a reasonable time, we refund what you paid for that booking. That is the one case in which a payment comes back, and it is ours to cause rather than yours.

None of that applies to travel. Flights, hotels and the drive are arranged by whoever is coming, and a cancelled date does not carry them, which is worth knowing before booking anything expensive around a session.

7. Payment and refunds

Sessions are paid at the time of booking through the scheduler, which takes the payment; corporate and Level 2 payments are arranged with us directly, as the proposal or the offer of a place sets out. The Members Day membership is paid monthly on a page Stripe hosts. Nothing on this website itself asks for or handles a card.

The Members Day membership can be cancelled at any time by writing to us, and we end it the same day. The month already paid for stands until it ends and is not refunded, and nothing is charged after it. When weather, fire, smoke or the road takes a first Sunday, that Sunday moves to another Sunday rather than being lost, and no month is refunded for the move.

Because the time, the horses and the people are reserved for you,payments are not refundable once made, for any booking on this page, except in the one case above where we call a date off and cannot offer another, and except where the law requires otherwise. Where something has to change, what we offer is another date rather than money back, and for an equine therapy session that is possible only more than 48 hours ahead. Where a proposal or a confirmation states different terms for a specific booking, those govern.

8. Reaching us

Anything on this page can be asked about at hello@equinetherapymalibu.com or (310) 709-8618. Equine Therapy Malibu at Shakti Ranch, Santa Monica Mountains, Malibu, California.