Apologies for the long period of inactivity- I have had a wonderfully busy, diverse school holiday period.

Bath time
We ran our 1st Social horse camp for adolescents with Autism at the “Edge Stables’ ran by Strength in Horses and Learning Through Horses charities. I am a program co-ordinator for Learning Through Horses and had a brilliant time helping with the summer programs.

The social camp was a success, with a markable improvement in confidence, self esteem and decision making by the end of the week. The course involved a mixture of horsemanship skills, equine therapy ran by Dr Jemma Hockley and instruction based activities as part of equine assisted learning all designed to benefit the participants cognitive, emotional and behavioural functioning.

I have also been really busy with Biscuit who has come on leaps and bounds. He has had a busy summer with lots of friends and their children doing different activities on him. I am also super proud of him as I took him to his 1st show yesterday- Barnet Lane- to do clear round jumping.

He was such a star and took the show environment in his stride and was great in the jumping ring. He was slightly nervous when Jay left him, as we had hacked them down together, but soon got the hang of it.

It was quite a tight course and he still struggles to collect and work round the corners so we missed a few jumps the 1st time but he wasn’t spooked by any of the jumps and went round clear the 2nd time : )

He was responsive and listen well to my aids, coming back to trot in the corners so we had straight lines- he tends to lead with his shoulder round corners so it can be easy for him to drift past a jump unless he is brought back to trot and rebalanced on the corners. He was really so easy to get round though and should be a perfect pony for a child to do pony club activities on as well as equine therapy!

I am trying to give him as many experiences as possible so that new situations and people don’t effect his performance. I look forward to getting him out to XC training soon to!
