September Newsletter 2025

Hi Everyone, and welcome to the September newsletter! The pic this month is of a great safety poster that our Summer Leadership participants created as part of their “Innovation” section for their Bronze Award and is always a really important one to remember when you are taking your horse or pony out of the stable to go to your lesson – well done the Leadership Participants!

ASSESSMENTS

As noted in our previous letter, we will be doing our lesson assessments this month – starting on Tuesday 30^th September and running through to Monday 6^th October inclusive. We will be assessing all of our junior lessons but are not going to do our adult groups/evening groups this year as we know from previous feedback that our adults are not keen to be assessed quite as regularly. However, if you are an adult and would like to have an assessment done, do please just let us know and we can arrange with you to do it in a private lesson.

Do please remember that our assessments are not a “test” as we sometimes find that our riders get a bit nervous before them – in fact, we find the parents and carers of the young people are often more nervous! The assessments are firstly for us to check that everyone is in the correct level of group for them and that they are following the correct syllabus. During the assessment week your lesson will be as normal (sometimes with a different coach) – the only real difference is that Sally or Martin will be taking notes at the edge and may ask the rider some questions depending on what ribbon level they are working at.

In previous years, we have sometimes found that it can be difficult for parents and carers to understand why their young rider may not be jumping or cantering yet and we sometimes get questions around why we aren’t pushing the riders quicker up the levels. We totally understand that parents want their young riders to be progressing, but riding is a bit different from other sports in that it involves a live animal, who’s welfare and wellbeing will always be our priority.

So, as a general rule of thumb, we won’t start to do canter work with riders until:

• They can walk and trot independently with still hands that don’t pull back on the reins – this includes in sitting trot and working without stirrups in trot. If we push a rider to canter before they have this basic stability, it can be unsafe as they are reliant on the rein and it also makes it hard for the pony to go forward – so you will see us looking at their sitting trot and in particular their hand position when we are looking at whether they are ready to start cantering or not.

For jumping, we have very specific requirements:

• Riders need to be able to walk, trot and canter independently without stirrups.
• Riders need to be able to hold their balance in a light seat (with a light rein) in walk, trot and canter and over poles.

Again, the reasoning for this is both safety and horse welfare – if a rider is reliant on the rein for balance on the flat, then they are not secure enough yet to be leaving the ground.

Every rider is different and takes a different amount of time to achieve different stages in their riding – for us, the key is that everyone (including the horse) is enjoying their sessions so if you have any questions about progress, then do check in with the coach or Sally or Martin after the assessments. The assessments sheets will be completed and available to pick up from reception the week after the assessments take place and for anyone who wants to have a look, we have a clear breakdown of assessments standards/ribbons on our website.

OCTOBER PONY STARS

We have some space available in the Pony Stars and Leadership Award sessions in the October holidays –

Dartmoor Dazzlers (beginner level) pony stars are on from Monday 13^th October to Thursday 16^th inclusive and the Welshie Wizzers are from Monday 20^th October to Thursday 23^rd October inclusive. Both these courses include a riding lesson for an hour each day and run from 10a.m – 2p.m covering the Pony Stars activity booklets. The courses cost £235.00 for the four days including the lesson with a £50.00 deposit payable on booking.

The Leadership course for 12–18 year olds which is non ridden and looks at building skillsets around confidence, teamwork and communication, was a great success this Summer with the young participants really enjoying it. This course runs from Monday 13^th October – Thursday 16^th October inclusive and is £160 for the four days.

If you’d like to book in for any of these courses, then please just contact Ali at reception or by email.

PROJECT MARIO

Project Mario has now started with a group of 5 young people attending each Saturday for 2 hours of riding/Horse Explorer Awards and Leadership training and it has been brilliant so far. It is so nice to see an underrepresented group getting access to the centre and horses/ponies and even better to see our members who stepped up to volunteer coming along and supporting the young people – #teamworkmakesthedreamwork! A huge thank you to Befriend a Child, who have referred the young people onto the programme and have been great to deal with throughout.

CLEAN ROOF!

We recently had quite a bit of work done to the building roof as the skylights had gotten quite dirty on the outside over the last few years with moss and leaves e.t.c. falling on it in winter. So, we had a company out to spray the skylights with a cleaner spray (no small job when you have 90+ skylights) and do the standard annual clearance of all the gutters and downpipes.

The works cost approximately £5000 because it’s such a big roof – the reason we let members know is that it helps everyone understand the types of cost that come with running a centre – there are the obvious ones like shoeing and feeding the horses and paying wages, but then there are lots of “hidden” maintenance ones as well! It does mean however that we’ll use less electricity as we won’t need the lights on during the day, so a saving in the long run!