SATURDAY 20TH AUGUST 2011

Forthcoming Events: Once again we have organised a group trip to the Olympia Horse Show in December. We have block booked a number of prime seats for Monday, 19th December, at 7.00pm. The seats cost £55 each and this includes the coach from Knockholt and entry. Olympia is a fantastic show, loads of family entertainment and last minute Christmas shopping. Well worth attending. If you would like to go, please book your seats asap, booking forms are available in the office.

This week it was mainly older members attending the Pony Club so we changed the usual routine slightly.

Today the members had to do everything they would have to do for their ponies before they could ride. So, they started out by grooming them, this was done properly and efficiently. They then took it in turns to tack up their ponies.

Jenna took all of the older members for their riding & concentrated on co-ordination, accuracy & control, emergency stopping of the pony, keeping the pony out on the track & position. Bad habits as we all know, are quick to learn & extremely hard to correct! Correct position in riding is extremely important so has to be corrected as soon as errors start to occur!

The 2 younger members rode with June, who with help from 2 of the older & more experienced members, concentrated on upwards & downwards transitions from walk – trot – walk – halt & back to walk. Position was also corrected and while riding on the track, various plants were spotted and talked about.

Up in the yard, while the members were not riding, they mucked out their ponies stable, washed out the water bucket & refilled it, put their beds back down ready for their return & filled hay-nets ready for their ponies to have later on.

After checking the beds I came across a potential hazard that had been overlooked, and we had a discussion about the sort of injuries that could happen with different items left in stables - this one was a broken piece of wood!

All of the above jobs are the things that they would have to do on a daily basis if they owned their own pony, and they have to learn to do them quickly and efficiently or they would never get to enjoy their rides because they would spend all day just grooming & mucking out and no time left for riding.