Old Pueblo Pony Club

👀 Old Pueblo Pony Club!

Welcome to all of our new Pony Clubs and Centers that have joined since the beginning of the year!

Treasure your best friend 🐴

So excited to resume our meetings again in September!

If you want to learn more about our club, please reach out!

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Some great info on how to choose a helmet!

Being an equestrian pretty much guarantees you’ll end up eating some dirt at some point 😅

If you haven’t had the joy of hitting the ground yet, count yourself lucky. But the best thing you can do is take the proper precautions for safety — especially protecting your head.

So what makes a riding helmet the right fit for you? Check out this guide ➡️ bit.ly/448QqQW

There are so many disciplines within Pony Club to pursue! This is an example of a Vaulting Rally in the Midsouth Region! Great job to all the competitors!

As we prepare for our first show this weekend, I am excited to learn and bring back some experience! Grateful for guidance from Desert Hooves Pony Club - USPC to help our new members be as successful as possible! Great tips in the link!

But at least we had fun, right? 😅 Seriously though, feeling unprepared at a horse show is far from ideal. Check out some tips to prepare for a show and how to tame your nerves 👉 bit.ly/3wWIExm

Looks like Desert Hooves Pony Club - USPC had a great time for their Certification Testing Day! Good job!

It's springtime, and friends to the north of us have some beautiful foals! Sovereign Farm

Pony Club has Western Dressage! We will be participating in our first Dressage Rally with Desert Hooves Pony Club - USPC on March 30th! Excited!!

Do we have any Western Dressage fans?
We chatted with Al Dunning and Lynn Palm to find out four reasons to try Western Dressage.

1. Horsemanship. As Al observes, “The classical dressage seat is almost identical to the traditional Western seat.” Both make use of a long leg and upright (as opposed to forward-leaning) rider posture. This means that learning WD will fine-tune your basic Western horsemanship. You’ll improve your balance and security in the saddle, plus develop the “following seat” that enables you to move fluidly with your horse’s motion. The result? You’re a more effective and polished rider overall.

2. Control. Lynn Palm notes that WD will eventually enable you to ask your horse to do anything—go slow or fast, put his head down or up, hold his body straight or move his shoulders or hips to the side, gallop calmly up a trail, do a rollback. “You’ll love the control you’ll gain,” she says, adding that it’s all without “bigger-bit, sharper-spur intimidation,” too.

3. Suppleness. WD incorporates a lot of bending and lateral work to supple and relax your horse. “Let’s face it,” says Al, “regardless of the breed we’re riding, a supple, relaxed, responsive horse is what we’re all after.” Amen to that.

4. Versatility. A horse schooled in WD will be more successful in all other endeavors, too, whether on the rail or out on the trail. As Lynn explains, the word dressage simply means “training” in French, and dressage is actually “the original natural training method.”

Read the entire article, here --> https://bit.ly/43oaK0l

🤎 Charlie Mackasy 🤎

How did the USPC begin? This is an interesting read about the first Pony Club president.

Louise Lott Bedford was worried about the future. She and her husband, Dean, loved horses, loved to foxhunt, and loved children. As she looked across their rolling Maryland landscape during the Maryland Hunt Cup races, she saw accomplished, well-groomed veteran riders and their mounts.
However, Louise Bedford also saw children riding ponies and horses of all sizes and breeds, often ill-matched to their stature, and not all properly trained. She saw trouble brewing for the sport and lifestyle she loved. So, she decided to do something about it.
Read more about how she helped create the United States Pony Clubs and how she became the first USPC President here: bit.ly/pony-club-history-1950s