Ponies Rule!

Grace’s little cousin, Janie, is just as horse crazy as we are. She has been planning a trip to our house for over a year now to go to horse camp with us. The barn where I work runs a summer day camp that is pretty cool. You have to be 6 years old and she came to the first week of camp after her 6th birthday. Grandma decided to help her get here, so Grandma, Grandpa, and Aunt Christine left SLC about 3 weeks ago and headed to Denver. In Denver, they picked up Aunt Jane, Janie and Evan (and their car) and headed East.

They all got to our house Sunday night 2 weeks ago. The first week they were here, Janie, Grace, and I went to horse camp at our barn every day. I taught some of the riding lessons (not theirs) at camp while they went to camp. They are both tiny, young, beginning riders and went to our “Ponies Rule!” program. There, they were in a class of 8 riders with an instructor, 4 counselors, and 3 ponies, Tinkerbell, Peter Pan, and Peppe. Everyone knows that Tink is Grace’s favorite pony and the one she calls her own. I have schooled her for months on sharing Tinkerbell and she was all set to let the other kids ride her. However, I wasn’t prepared that she wouldn’t want to share Peppe! She had a few disappointing moments when she really wanted to ride Peppe and couldn’t.

During Ponies Rule! The kids get to have a 45 minute riding lesson every day in a small class of 3. They also learn how to clean stalls, groom a pony, put tack on and off, etc. They do a few other campy type activities like arts and crafts and singing. This year they learned the cutest song set to a “Sound of Music” song – the one about “these are a few of my favorite things.” Just so I have it written down somewhere, I’m going to type in the words here…

Clinics and riding and mucking out stalls,
Learning to ride and learning to fall,
Swimming and ponies and all sorts of stuff
Riding at Hybid Farm isn’t so tuff.

When the horse bites,
When I fall off,
When I’m feeling sad,

I go to my pony and give him a hug,
And then I don’t feel, so bad!
There are 2 rules at camp: You are not allowed to say "can't" or you have to ride backwards! and, if you fall off, you have to bring your instructor chocolate. It looks like Janie had to ride backwards. I think Grace did too. Neither had to take their instructor chocolate, but I did receive chocolate as an instructor from one of my students.

Each day after they are finished with their ponies and chores, we head over to the pool for lunch and swimming. Grace isn’t a good swimmer yet, but Janie is a fish! Grace wore a lifejacket so she could keep up with some of the other kids. At the age of 4, Grace is by far the youngest kid to go to camp. Of course, her mother was there with her to deal with the 4 year old stuff like temper tantrums and going potty and watching to make sure she didn’t drown!

By about Wednesday, the kids were getting pretty worn out from the hectic schedule of getting up early every day and having so many physical activities. They were troopers though and finished out the week well.

I know Janie was especially sad to leave the barn on the last day of camp because she knew she wouldn’t be coming back for a long time. So, the next week, when most of the ponies were “on vacation” at a camp-out in NH, I took Janie and Grace AND Evan back over to the barn for a farewell ride. I could NOT believe how much the girls had learned at camp. They really had learned to ride. Janie was amazing – quite the little horsewoman, and Grace had learned so many things I hadn’t taught her yet. I had no idea she was ready to learn so much. I’m going to have to do more with her. Even Evan who had been too scared to ride or even touch the horses got on Peter Pan and had a ride before going back to Colorado. I was really proud of him too.