Terms of Service

1. Your account

Some parts of the site require an account. Accounts are created and secured through Clerk, our authentication provider. You are responsible for keeping your login credentials private and for everything that happens under your account.

You must be at least 18 years old to buy a subscription. If you are between 13 and 18, you may use the free parts of the site with a parent or guardian’s permission. The site is not intended for children under 13.

One account is one rider. Sharing an account, or your lesson audio, with people who have not subscribed is the one thing that genuinely undermines a library this small — see section 5.

2. The Ride Along subscription

Ride Along is a recurring subscription that gives you access to the audio lesson library for as long as the subscription is active. It is offered $39/month or $290/year, in US dollars, plus any tax we are required to collect.

Billing and renewal

Payment is taken at checkout and then automatically on each renewal — monthly or annually, matching the plan you chose — using the payment method on file, until you cancel. Payments are processed by Stripe; we never see or store your card number.

Cancelling

You can cancel at any time from your account settings. Cancelling stops the next renewal. Your access continues to the end of the period you have already paid for. There is no contract, minimum term, or cancellation fee.

Refunds

First-time subscribers can request a full refund within 14 days of their first charge. The full terms, including what is not refundable, are on the Refund & Cancellation Policy page, which forms part of these Terms.

Price changes and the founding rate

We may change the price of a subscription. If we do, the new price applies to new subscribers immediately, and to your renewals only after we have given you at least 30 days’ notice by email — so you always have a full billing period to cancel before a higher price is charged.

Founding members are an exception. If you subscribe during an advertised founding-price window, we will keep charging you that rate on every renewal for as long as your subscription stays active and unchanged, even after the published price rises. If you cancel and later resubscribe, or switch plans, you join at the price current at that time.

3. What we promise, and what we don't

We publish new lessons on a regular cadence and say so on the site. That cadence is a good-faith commitment, not a guaranteed delivery schedule: illness, weather, a lame horse, or a failed recording can move a release. What your subscription entitles you to is access to the library as it exists during your subscription, plus whatever we add while it is active.

We may add, change, or retire individual lessons. If we ever retire a substantial part of the library, we will tell subscribers by email first.

4. Riding safety — please read this one

Horses are dangerous, and audio coaching does not change that. You ride at your own risk.

The lessons are recorded in advance. Sam cannot see you, your horse, your footing, or your surroundings, and cannot react to anything that happens while you listen. You — and only you — are responsible for judging whether a given exercise is safe for your horse, your ability, and your conditions on that day, and for stopping when it is not.

• Use one earbud, or a bone-conduction headset, so you can always hear your horse and your surroundings. Never ride with both ears covered.
• Wear a properly fitted helmet and appropriate footwear.
• Do not handle your phone while mounted. Start playback before you get on.
• Ride in an enclosed, appropriate space, and have someone within earshot where you can.

The lessons are general educational content, not veterinary, medical, or professional training advice for your specific horse. They are not a substitute for in-person instruction, a veterinarian, a farrier, or a physician. Consult a veterinarian before working a horse you have any concern about, and a physician before starting physical activity if you have reason to.

To the fullest extent the law allows, you assume all risk of injury, loss, or damage to yourself, your horse, and your property arising from riding, handling horses, or performing any exercise described in our content.

5. What you may and may not do with the lessons

All content on this site — audio lessons, transcripts, written posts, images, designs, and the name The Elevated Equestrian — belongs to us or our licensors and is protected by copyright.

Your subscription buys a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to stream and download the lessons for your own riding. Downloads are for offline listening by you; the licence ends when your subscription does.

You may not:

• share, upload, resell, or otherwise redistribute lesson audio, transcripts, or downloads — including to a barn group chat, a shared drive, or a training group;
• play the lessons in a commercial teaching setting or clinic without our written permission;
• use the content to train a machine-learning model, or scrape the site in bulk;
• remove copyright notices, or circumvent the preview limits and paywall.

Quoting a short passage with credit and a link back is welcome. If you want to use something more substantially, email hello@samanthabaer.com and ask — the answer is often yes.

We may suspend or terminate an account that breaches this section, without a refund.

6. Acceptable use

Do not use the site to break the law, to interfere with its operation or security, to access another person’s account, or to submit false information through our forms. Do not attempt to gain access to paid content you have not paid for.

7. Email and the free lessons

The free audio lessons are given in exchange for an email address. Signing up adds you to our newsletter; every email includes a one-click unsubscribe, and unsubscribing does not take the free lessons away. How we handle your address is covered in the Privacy Policy.

8. Third-party services and links

We rely on third parties to run the site — Stripe for payments, Clerk for accounts, Resend for email, Vercel for hosting, and others listed in the Privacy Policy. Their own terms govern their services.

Some posts contain affiliate links, and we may earn a commission when you buy through one. This never changes what a product costs you, and we only link to things we would recommend anyway. We are not responsible for the content or practices of any site we link to.

9. Disclaimers and limitation of liability

The site and the content are provided “as is,” without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. We do not warrant that the site will be uninterrupted or error-free, or that any particular result — competitive, training, or otherwise — will follow from using it.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, our total liability to you for any claim relating to the site or the content is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose. We are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits or lost data.

Nothing in these Terms excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded — including liability for fraud, or for death or personal injury caused by our negligence. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain exclusions, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

10. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. The effective date at the top of this page always shows the current version. If a change materially reduces your rights, we will email active subscribers before it takes effect. Continuing to use the site after that means you accept the updated Terms.

11. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of South Carolina, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute will be brought in the state or federal courts located in South Carolina, and you consent to their jurisdiction. If a provision of these Terms is found unenforceable, the rest stays in force.

12. Contact

Questions about these Terms: