We all had a great time at the RMH Youth Clinic held here on Saturday. We had 6 horses which was a great number with which to work. The kids and adults came ready to learn and everyone did a great job. Robert began explaining how conformation relates to the gait of a horse. He explained how the build of a horse helps determine his way of going. 2009 RMH Yearling Champion Branson Blue and 2009 RMH International Reserve Conformation Grand Champion RRF Gold Nugget were our demo horses and they did great. The horses were brought into the arena at that time and Robert worked with participants on safety, teaching horses to bend and flex, and general horsemanship techniques. We broke for lunch and enjoyed chatting over pizza. After lunch, Erin did a demo on how to teach a horse to canter in preparation for Training Level dressage. Pepper's Just Plain Pretty is a super horse to demonstrate the canter. It is an easy going, ground covering gait that all horses perform naturally in the field. From there everyone enjoyed working on trail obstacle foundations. The kids especially enjoyed running the poles and barrels. At show in Wilmington in two weeks they will have an opportunity to compete in these classes. I believe they are looking forward to it now that they have had a little experience. Finally, we wrapped up the day with gaited dressage. This is a fairly new venue for our gaited horses. Tests have been adaped from trotting horses to Walking horses on to our Rockies. Dressage is a beautiful way to connect with your horse and build harmony. Erin worked with the kids on fundamentals. We had prepared a packet of information about this new discipline. It was really surprising to see how many folks were interested. We'd love to invite an actual dressage judge to come and put on a clinic here if we have enough interest. Anyway, everyone left with something new to do with their horse. We really appreciate all the hard work that Angie Jaggers put into the event. It was a great day.
