Hi everyone and welcome to September’s newsletter! Obviously, we felt that it was only fair that Murphy gets to star in the pic of the newsletter this month as he’s the horse that everyone has been talking about!
MURPHY
So as most of you will have seen from our social media, we took delivery of a Grand Prix Dressage Ridesafe Equine Simulator with RDA software at the end of August.
We initially identified a simulator as being something that would help us make horses accessible in around 2020, but then we had the challenges of Covid, and it needed enough time for Sally to concentrate her efforts on organising it all and raising funds for it. Fast forward to 2024 and we were offered a very kind substantial donation by a local family towards a simulator, so we started planning. We firstly spoke to our ever-supportive landlords, The Seven Incorporated Trades of Aberdeen and they were as always incredible, offering to carry out the work needed to install a simulator, which included them funding a roof hoist which will be so beneficial to the Hippotherapy Group and riders with limited mobility.
We then made an application for lottery funding – lottery funding is always “match funding” so the organisation applying has to raise 50% of the funds – which we did between the local family donation and the funds that the club had available from membership fees and lesson income.
Sadly, we were declined for lottery funding – we suspected this would happen, as it can be challenging for organisations to understand how important accessibility to horses is (as it is seen as a minority sport) but also organisations always struggle initially with the concept of ARC – that we genuinely try to make horses accessible by using our mainstream riding school funds to support others accessing horses. Not to be deterred though, Sally found a second-hand simulator which was exactly the type we needed and flew down to beside London to “view” it – it was perfect for what we wanted and had been really well maintained so she agreed to purchase “Murphy”.
Step forward again our incredibly generous landlords who then made a further financial contribution to help us purchase Murphy and then you know the rest – he arrived last week and has settled in really well!
So, what can Murphy do?
Murphy can do most things flatwork related – from walk/trot/canter through to lateral work and you can also ride him without stirrups/reins e.t.c. He has a large monitor which shows you in real time what your rein aids/seat aids/leg aids are doing. We think he’s a brilliant asset to have – our existing riders will really benefit from the balance and position work that he can offer and he has unlimited potential for disabled riders who access ARC through RDA groups or through our therapy riding provision. The roof hoist means that our RDA groups can now welcome riders who were unable to mount from the hydraulic platform or who can’t ride a real horse (due to allergies e.t.c.) and we will also be making sure that Murphy has availability for local physiotherapists to hire to run sessions for riders who may benefit from physio sessions on the simulator.
We will be offering simulator sessions for club members first – so we have created some spaces (both peak and off peak) for September (bookings opened on Tuesday 3rd September) and we will then assess demand – we would imagine it will be very popular initially till most members have a first shot, then will slow a bit as it is supplementary to your normal lessons rather than instead of.
Bookings for Murphy will work in the same way as private lessons (after September) and will open on the last Monday of the month for the next month – do please be aware that simulator sessions are different from “real horse” private lessons – the diary has been meticulously planned for it with staff timetables taken into account, so we can’t swap a real horse lesson for a simulator lesson and vice versa.
Our simulator private lessons (half hour) can be booked with any of our four coaches and are priced cheaper than a real horse lesson (as Murphy doesn’t need shod or fed and hopefully won’t need the vet often). So prices are as follows:
Off Peak (Laura or Liam) – £28
Peak (Laura or Liam) – £30
Off Peak (Martin or Sally) – £32
Peak (Sally or Martin) – £34.
Please note these are ARC member prices and the price will be higher for external users who wish to have a one off lesson on Murphy.
PONY STARS – OCTOBER HOLIDAYS
Time flies and we are ready to open bookings for October Pony Stars. We will be running the following courses in October (city kids holidays)
Monday 14th October – Thurs 17th October inclusive – Dartmoor Dazzlers
Monday 21st October – Thurs 24th October inclusive Welshie Whizzers
Dartmoor Dazzlers are suitable for beginner participants through to those who have done some Dartmoor Dazzlers Pony Stars already. Welshie Whizzers are for children who have completed Dartmoor Dazzlers and are cantering in their lessons.
As normal we offer two different types of session – the (limited number) of spaces for the full course with riding which runs from 10.am – 2p.m and costs £205 for the four days (including hours riding lesson each day). For the full riding course, children must attend all four days.
Then we also have the morning groundwork only sessions from 10a.m – 12p.m which follow the same content of Pony Stars, but without riding and cost £35 per morning – you can book as many or as few mornings as you like with this option.
Bookings for Pony Stars will open at 10.00a.m on Monday 16th September and as normal a £50 deposit is payable on booking for the full riding course and full payment on booking for the morning only sessions.
ANNUAL ASSESSMENTS
We will be doing our annual assessments for riders in October this year – once everyone has returned from school holidays. We do our assessments in September or October each year (depending on staff leave and school holiday dates) and most of our riders have been assessed plenty of times so the same rules apply – please don’t worry about assessments – they are not a test! They are a way for us to check that you are progressing correctly in the correct group and that your coach is covering all our syllabus correctly with you – so parents do please help to let our younger riders know not to worry about it! The only difference in assessment week is that you may have a different coach covering your lesson (we all swap about to ensure there is a coach free to assess each one) and another coach (likely Sally) will be sat at the side of the school typing and may ask some riders some questions! For our adult/more advanced lessons we will assess them if they specifically want to be assessed, but equally we are happy to not assess adults as regularly – so your coach will check in with your group to get a majority decision.
The assessments take quite a bit of organising and require our coaching staff to do quite a bit of overtime that week, so please remember that if you are unable to attend your lesson when it is being assessed, we can’t assess you on another week, but we can assess you within a private lesson so you can book a private lesson to be assessed in if you are going to miss your group lesson – as long as you let us know on booking that you would like to be assessed.
SOME CHANGES TO ASSESSMENT CRITERIA
It has been around 8 years since we reviewed the full criteria for our internal rider assessments, so our Senior staff team have been working on this in their training sessions for the last few weeks and making adjustments to the criteria to reflect our coaching syllabus and how we introduce new exercises to riders. So you may see some wording changes and criteria changes if you are a rider who likes to keep their assessment forms and compare year on year, but please don’t worry – it doesn’t change the current standard of anyone – the changes reflect parts that we have introduced around equine learning and also acknowledge more than many riders cannot access competing/have their own horse and may not want to jump or jump a specific height, so we have tailored the new criteria to better reflect what our riders are doing.