Monday 28th June 2010

The camps I am running this summer are for a 4 hours in the morning for 5 days and on an individual basis.  I dont have the horses or staff to do more than that and be able to give the campers the attention they deserve - and paid for.

This week the camper is a teenage girl who has been riding with me for almost a year.  She has not had any theory or hands on work with horses, so I have a blank canvas to work with.  I have based the camp on the day to day work at a horse farm interspersed with theory sessions and riding.

The first job of the day is mucking out the stalls, cleaning the water buckets and refilling them.  After letting the horses into their stalls, the student learns how to mix the horses feed and then feed them.  I explain what the feed is, why I am feeding it and amounts.  While the horses are eating and the time for digestion before riding we sat in the tack room and I gave her a new folder.  I have lots of handouts covering almost everything for my students that I have made up over the years for the various courses I run.  We covered colours, markings, breeds, the parts of the horse and being able to describe each of my horses.

Next was riding time.  I have planned for this student to ride or drive each of my horses this week.  She hasnt driven before and I am also letting her ride my competition horse.  Today she rode Prissy, my paint pony, who is only 13.2hh.  She is quite advanced for a school pony.  This student hasnt ridden this small of a pony in a long time and found the short strides hard to deal with, but found it interesting anyway.  Tomorrow she will ride the horse she usually rides, Wally.

After washing down the pony after the lesson we spent time setting fair the barn and horses and did some fun things in the tack room ad then it was time for her to go home.

I had to dash into the house, have something to eat, get changed and then off to the orthodontist with my oldest son.  He gets a check up every six months.  We are waiting for all of his teeth to come in before putting braces on.  Not needed yet.