Pony Club Horse Care Competition

The last week of the Easter hols has certainly been a busy one. After winning the Quiz at Warwickshire last Sunday. We then had two days to get some serious practise in for the Pony Club Horse Care Competition at Abergavenny. I entered two Junior teams and one senior team. The Horse Care Competition doesn’t involve any riding but is based on knowledge and practical skills, there are six sections which include a written question paper, 15 objects to be identified, putting together a bridle (snaffle for the juniors and double bridle for the seniors), preparing a horse for travelling answering questions on Riding and Road Safety and plaiting and each section scores 30 points. Freya practised with the teams on monday afternoon, taking apart and putting bridles together as fast as they could and I even saw some practising blindfold, they also spent time plaiting and putting boots bandages tail bandages and rugs on for travelling. We had another practise on tuesday with Freya and Laura. On Wednesday morning we left at 7.30am I drove some of the teams and Kim Hughes drove the rest, Freya came to support the teams. We called in Mcdonalds at Pontypool for breakfast as in now customary with pony club events. Arriving in Llanthony near Abergavenny after being stuck behind – a sports car would you believe for miles the Kids were ready to make a start. It was drizzling with rain on the way but it stopped when we arrived and it turned out to be a nice day. All teams did very well at putting their bridles together scoring nearly maximum marks. The senior team, Chloe Reakes, Carys Morgan and Sarah Blake scored 27 for their plaiting and this was the highest score of the nine senior teams that took part, they also did well on the riding and road safety, their scoring on travelling and plaiting were fairly good. Talygarn A Hannah Cogbill, Emily Groves and Zoe Morgan and Talygarn B Kate Owen, Anharad Hopkins and Zoe Hughes were against 14 other teams, their scoring in most sections was pretty good but the section which all three teams lose most points in is the identifying objects. One of the Questions which made me laugh in the question section was what is ’stringholt’ – it is an involuntary upwards jerk of one or both hind legs that can vary in its severity and the horse would be considered unsound by a vet, one of our team members had written Stringholt is a continous peice of rope used as a Halter – imaginative I think!! The junior teams were quite nervous but really wanted to do their best. All three teams were immaculately turned out and its lovely to be out with children who are so well behaved and polite. After a long day which finished at 3.30 the scores and results were put up, the junior teams didn’t get placed but weren’t last either and overall they did very well as some of them had never done anything like this before. The senior team did very well to be placed 3rd as there were no other centres there and they were competing against children in branch who have their own horses.

Posted on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 12:12 am You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.