Acorn and Squirrels RDA return after christmas break.

We have been back for a couple of riding sessions after the Christmas break at Acorn and squirrels RDA. This week I was again working on getting the riders to steer and stop their ponies on their own off the lead rein.
Last week being the first week back I just got the riders back into riding by doing simple exercises, stopping and starting, walking through cones. A couple of my riders, suffer from tight muscle tone, so not having been riding for several weeks, means they often get tired and their muscle hurt so very often they can't manage riding for the whole time, when this happens they tell us and we get them off the ponies. This week they managed the whole ride.

Sue, my fellow instructor at the group, who normally takes the first session, had been sorting out over Christmas and had found some apples which where fake, they had been used for one of the obstacles in the countryside challenge, this is an RDA competition. They had a loop of string attached so they could be hung on hooks, they look very realistic as shown by the teeth marks in them. I think they were florist  accessories ,they were I think quite expensive.

We placed them on poles that had hooks on, the riders had to remove the apples,this exercise was good in helping the riders with their fine motor skills.

key to picture.
Green triangles are cones.
3 sided squares are buckets.
The T shapes are the poles with rings on the top.


 

For a change today I set the arena out as shown in the picture, I got the riders working on going diagonally across the arena,on one diagonal they had to stop and remove a ring from the top of the pole and place it on the next pole, on the other diagonal they had to stop by a pole and remove an apple and then stop by a bucket and place the apple into it.

Once the riders had got use to doing this, I got the leaders to remove the lead reins so the riders did this exercise on their own, I also had a row of cones down one side so the riders could practice weaving through them. To finnish the session, the riders lined up at one end and had a couple of races, one was to put a ring in a bucket at the other end and another race we did was to drop one of the apples in the bucket.