Ron Chlasta, Owner

R&M Stables is celebrating 10 years of serving riders from throughout Middle Tennessee offering camps, lessons, clinics, and trail competitions. As the owner, Ron Chlasta is dedicated to teaching horsemanship from the ground up. With a carefully planned curriculum, Ron’s overarching goals are to enable the horse and rider to achieve a working partnership regardless of the style or discipline of riding.
While there are many different points of entry into the equine world, Ron’s focus is on balanced and centered riding. It is important to him that the rider is not simply a ‘passenger’ on the horse, but a rider who can refine and improve their skills with an ability to partner and communicate with their horse. 
Ron gains the most satisfaction from seeing a rider discover that they are capable of exhilarating and amazing breakthroughs in their abilities to perform on the horse. A huge fan of obstacle training, he feels that it is important to have a horse that can be used beyond the show ring and versatile enough to be solid on the trail and for everyday work as simple as riding to the mailbox to check for the mail.
Always looking for innovative ways to inspire the next generation of riders, Ron has developed a unique program for year-round students who ride at R&M known as Junior Wranglers. ‘Leadership through horsemanship’ is the mission of this program and next generation leaders who are selected as junior wranglers are exposed to everything that is involved in operating a working horse ranch. With a focus on business, facility, and equine, these young students gain confident leadership skills that will enable them to serve in the local community currently and in many years to come.
As a rider, Ron is a member of the County Mounties, a search and rescue program that has units throughout the US. While not a sworn police officer he also rides as a member of the Tennessee Mounted Officers unit. As a certified rider, Ron has competed in the National Police Colloquium at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, KY. In 2021, he and his horse Trooper placed first in equitation, second in individual obstacles, second in combined obstacle and equitation and first in the department award (obstacle & equitation scores). In 2017, Ron had two horses in the tandem obstacle competition, winning the event with Ron riding Trooper and Jason Parizek riding Geronimo.

In Middle Tennessee, Ron’s horses have won the WHOA (Walking Horse Owners Association) championships in both individual and tandem obstacles. In 2017, his horse was the overall WHOA champion at the Miller Coliseum in Murfreesboro service horse division international championships.

While the competitions are fun, Ron enjoys the day to day routine at R&M Stables, observing interactions of students and horses and finding great joy in seeing what the horse does for people in their own personal development.

Brian Felts:
Teacher

Brian Felts started in the saddle at the ‘ripe old age’ of 3 years old. Both of his grandfathers were accomplished cowboys working their respective ranches in west Texas where all of the work with cattle was done from horse back. 

Because of this exposure to horses and ranch work, Brian decided to follow in his grandfather’s boots pursuing horsemanship goals during his early formative years. While his grandfather was a world champion team roper and calf roper being exposed to the rodeo early on had a huge impact on Brian’s life. In high school he was a member of his school’s rodeo team competing in calf roping, team roping and eventually began to ride bulls. 

Two of his favorite mentors were Marty Simpler and Clinton Anderson, both of whom Brian had the privilege of taking lessons from. Because of his interactions with these men, Brian has developed an innate ability in assessing how pain can cause a horse to move or even behave badly. He has an innate sense of reading the horse’s body language to determine what the horse is trying to tell us about where they are experiencing pain. 

He has developed his own method of trigger point therapy that helps to destress the horse. He has done amazing work with the horses at R&M Stables to keep them moving and pain free as they are working and teaching lessons on a weekly basis.

We are excited to have Brian join our team as a clinician and teacher. He has many innovative ideas to expand our curriculum to include ranch work/riding and teaching both youth and adults new skills in working cows in his large animal movement clinics.