About
Moon River Training is a Hunter Jumper equestrian program at Ardenwood Farm in Chapel Hill, North Carolina focused on strong foundations and safety of the horse and rider.
My Story
My name is Tory Whitson, and I’m the owner and head trainer of Moon River Training. I’ve been riding horses for most of my life (over 25 years), and I’ve been training them for almost as long. I started my riding journey in Eastern North Carolina with a horse named Taco and a wonderful instructor named Suzy Schertzinger.
Through my years with Suzy at Fairebourne Farm I trained my first pony, Allsfine B’N the Blue, when I was 11 and fell in love with the journey of training and competing young horses. I worked with many of Suzy’s young horses and brought along an OTTB of my own to compete in the Hunters. Since then I’ve worked with numerous green (and not so green) horses and riders to get them to their best at home or at shows, meeting them where they are in their riding journey.
My straightforward Hunter riding and training journey was derailed, I now know in the best way, when I met and purchased my first horse as an adult, Carolina’s Clover. Through Clover, and the people that she brought into my life, I was able to learn to recognize the impact of our energy and presence as handlers and how stress and anxiety plays a role in our training journey. She taught me to slow down, be present, and manage what I’m bringing to the table on any given day. I’ve added a tool box of groundwork and horsemanship awareness that helps me assess new horses and riders in my program. I look forward to continuing to share this journey and this tool box with my riders!
Moon River Training
Moon River Training started as a part-time dream that happened after my desk job and on the weekends. I started with a handful of students on borrowed lesson horses, and we bounced around a few barns in Chapel Hill until the Pandemic. In May of 2020 I lost my desk job to a restructuring, and surprisingly, no one was hiring for project managers in the international development space at the start of the pandemic. Through that summer more and more parents reached out, anxious to get their kids out of the house and in a COVID safe activity, until it was clear this was now my full-time gig.
In 2022 Moon River Training Center opened offering boarding and training for the first time. With this move I realized that I truly love working with owners and riders on their own horses. Encouraging the relationships between horse and rider to grow through mutual understanding is the best part of my job! During this time MRT grew from a one woman show to a team of instructors and employees.
Ardenwood Farm
In 2025 Moon River Training moved to Ardenwood Farm, and we are looking forward to new growth as a boarding and training facility. Ardenwood Farm is a stunning working horse farm owned and loved by the Tucker Family. It was founded in 2012 and has been developed from trees and hay fields to the premier equestrian facility that it is today.
