Adult Riding Camp

24 and 25 October 2009

Adult camp proved once again to be a fantastic weekend of laughter and learning. I was in the ‘blue’ group on my new horse Billy with Joan on Margi, Sue on TJ, Bettina and Skirmish, Amanda on Della (Sat), Linda on Belle, and Alison on Thawed (Sun).   Many of us were on a new or green horse and the instructors accommodated our individual needs throughout the weekend always encouraging us to test our boundaries.

We were fortunate to start with horsemanship. Kathryn’s methods have a wonderful calming effect on the horses and provided us all with some useful methods to relax our horses quickly (including reminding us to breath when things get tense). Trotting and cantering our horses on the buckle is a truly liberating experience and like last year I feel that it allowed us to really build trust with our horse and vice versa.

Next we had cross country with Meg who was riding the beautiful grey mare Fab (I’m biased of course). We began by working our horses on the hill requiring us to canter downhill in preparation for the jump. With Meg’s instruction and her firm but kind insistence that we do it again to ensure that a good jump wasn’t just a fluke, we all pushed our comfort levels and got to feel the adrenalin rush that comes with facing our fears.  

Saturday’s training concluded with dressage. It was a treat to have a lesson with Erica who quickly identified each horse’s issues and worked with us to improve each combinations performance. We worked in groups of three for the trot work and then individually in the canter. It was great to see everyone’s smiles as they felt the improvement in their horse’s performance.

Rob and Michael did a great job of the BBQ dinner and the salads and deserts that Anne organised were a hit. Everyone had a great time together over a quiet drink. The socialising is almost as much fun as the riding  - let’s face it most of us are obsessed with our four legged friends so there isn’t much better than putting a group of like minded people, good food and some alcohol together.

Sunday began with sporting. Michelle and Narelle had devised some innovative games for us that had us laughing and improving our sit trot at the same time. Thanks to Kathy who was the ‘water girl’ with the ‘mostest’ and looked after us dehydrated and in some cases slightly hung over ladies. Also, thanks to Isabelle who ran to retrieve dropped eggs and mounting blocks when required. The apple bobbing took on a new element of surprise after some of our group mistook the water buckets as a trough for their horses ensuring that we dunked our faces in water mixed with a healthy (or unhealthy) dose of horse saliva.

Only two of us participated in the polo cross. I think Kevin must have been quite excited by Bettina and Skirmish’s aptitude for the game. Kevin was very gracious about my limited hand eye co-ordination and Billy was very forgiving of the whacks in the face he received from my racquet. Our weekend concluded with show jumping.  Lec did a great job talking us through developing more bascule and cadence from our horses. All the horses and riders were a bit tired by this class but Lec’s direction kept us focussed and the improvement in all the horses was obvious.  Chelsea did a good job picking up dropped poles and we all had lots of goes developing our horses and in some cases desensitizing them to their over excitement and tension about jumping.

Anne and the crew did a great job putting this weekend together. The only sour note of the weekend of which I am also guilty of is that a lot of us through exhaustion, exhilaration, the rain, or the tyranny of travel left a few of the committee members to pack up the remaining equipment without our help. This is a serious disincentive for them to go to the effort of coordinating the camp in the future. Next year I’m sure that we will all work together to pack up – prolonging the fun for a little longer.

Kerrie Dennis

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