Riding Workshop

Our last 3 days of December 2007 were spent holding a Basic Riding Workshop at the KICS (Khartoum International Community School) stables in Soba, Khartoum. For the past month we have been training 6 horses at this stable so they can be used for riding lessons in the coming year. We felt that an intensive workshop would be a good test for the horses... and it was!


8 children frm KICS ranging from the ages of 8 to 12 participated in the workshop along with Prem, the groom. The idea was to teach them the basics in order for them to be able to just get on and ride. The workshop was split into 4 sections.....


Groundwork


Grooming


Tacking-up

Riding

Half the kids arrived absolutley terrified of the horses, but overcame their fear very quickly. Billy taught the groundwork section. Between them all, they worked with 3 horses all at different stages of training. The goal was to make the horse go to establish who was the boss. To make it turn to gain the horses attention, and to make it stop to have control. The more advanced horses followed when called. Billy also demonstrated sacking out, which he uses to establish the horses trust. It was amazing to see these horses listening to the kids.

I taught basic grooming, brushing the saddle, girth and pastern areas, and picking out feet. This was more difficult because the girls wanted to spend hours making their horses look beautiful and trying to tell them that it wasn't necessary was difficult!

Tacking up is always difficult for little children but they managed with the help of the bigger kids.

Riding was the best part for most of the kids. They rotated through 4 horses. We taught them to turn by weighting their stirrups and to stop by breathing out and saying whoa! The horses were generally very well behaved. We designed a couple of obstacle courses to test the kids skills. I did a lot of lunging so the kids could work on their balance.

Our task was made a lot easier by Dagmar, Lars and Jan Wiltberger who all acted as guinea pigs in the week running up to the workshop. They also helped at the workshop with anything that needed to be done and without them, it would not have been the success that it was.