March2014_Dayboro Pony Club growing strong
On the 9th of February the Dayboro Pony Club had their first muster (practice day) for 2014. We start the year off with a roll up of 49 riders. For a lot of other sports this might not sound like a lot, but with equestrian sports, we had 49 riders and 49 horses = 98 with only 5 instructors.
This sent my girls into a whirl, but they were very professional and didn’t show the riders they were about to have a mental break down. We graded everyone into 5 groups and got on with the morning session. To date we have 83 members on our books. So if there is anyone out there with equine experience and would like to help us out, give me a call (Diane Bell 3425 1137).
As a club, we were invited to do a performance/demo at the recent Horse Home Show at QSEC Caboolture (Queensland State Equestrian Centre) – February 8th 2014. Our club had purchased a new tool for teaching our riders how to use leg to control their horse. We bought a very, very large ball called a Hoof Ball, which we have nicked named Goof Ball. It also has a game attached. Somehow QESC got wind of our ball activities late last year and invited us to demo the sport/game. Well, we were surprised and a little shocked. At the time of the invite, we had not had any horses that would have a bar of the ball. So we hired the Rodeo arena on a few Friday nights over the summer and got 7 horses performing very well with the ball. We had to modify and add a few rules to the game, to make it safer for our young riders. Finally the day came and we all arrived up at QESEC at 8am on the Saturday morning of February 8. Our time slot wasn’t till 12.10pm, so we all went and had a look around and watched some of the other displays. While we were warming up, the Courier Mail News Paper reporter came and did a photo shoot of us with the ball. He was only to be there for 10 minutes, but he stayed and watched us perform some two hours later. He must have taken 3,000 photos. Our ten minutes of fame went very quickly, but all went well and the horses all locked onto the ball and didn’t worry about the crowds of people around them. We even managed to get a few “oos” and “ahhhs” from the crowd. The team was as high as a kite when they come off the arena. We took our horses back to the very fancy stables, and went and had some lunch, but we had so many people stopping us for info that our cold lunch went hot.
So keep a look out for next year’s Horse Home Show at QSEC, they tell me they plan on a two day event next time. Great day, great venue.
(Hoofball has been likened to soccer on horseback
