HPEC Newsletter Jan/Feb 2018

Highland Pony Enthusiasts Club Newsletter January 2018 e-mail it to Amanda Hart. Please ensure that your BACS transfer clearly states whose membership is being paid and state that it is for a subscription payment. Benefits of membership includes a series of newsletters throughout the year, your copy of Highland Times, a various performance awards competitions, events around the country including our newly instated national show and the AGM with its associated awards ceremony, lunch and social, plus members only areas of the website, forum and Facebook page.

The 2018 AGM and Performance Awards will be hosted by the Pennine Group and will be held on 25th March at St John’s Community Centre, Penistone, Sheffield. A lunch will be provided at a cost of £10 per person. Further details will be sent out to members nearer the time.

Performance Awards cards for the 2017 season must be submitted to Linda Graham by the deadline of Jan 14th 2018 to ensure that points get included in the competitions.

Please make sure that if you e-mail your results to Linda that you ask for and receive an acknowledgement within seven days so that we have proof of your results arriving. If you do not get a reply please make sure you contact Linda.

Due to the high cost of postage charges please note that although rosettes will be posted to recipients, trophies will not be posted.

If you think that you are likely to be a winner of a trophy and not able to attend the performance awards, please make arrangements for someone else to collect it or contact the Performance Awards co-ordinator to arrange payment for postage.

Editor’s comment By now members should have received their copy of the ‘new look’ Highland Times Review of the Year, which hopefully has been enjoyed by all. It would be helpful if members could make known any ideas they have for items which could be included in the next edition which is intended to reflect activities throughout the 2018. It would be great if it also acted as a catalyst for members inspiring them to get involved with events or better still going ahead and organising some. Please contact the editor with your news or ideas for articles at alisonpayne909@btinternet.com

Thank you to Jo and Mark Jo Jeffs and Mark Unitt have been editing the Highland Times for some years now. Sadly, Jo has been through some ups and a lot of downs this year due to a long standing health issue and both she and Mark have had to stand down from their editing posts. We would like to thank both of them for the work they have done and wish them the best for the future.

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A quick reminder to all members that your subscription runs from the 1st April to the 31st March in any year. The current cost of the subscription is £15 and can either be paid by cheque or by BACS transfer. Please ensure that you download the required form (to be available soon on the new website) and either post it to the secretary or if paying by BACS, 1

bought another from this stud, Maroa who has also been extremely successful. Subsequently Lagalgarve Ben Ghuilean arrived at my yard and I then took him out under saddle doing dressage and novice showing classes. After a good first year under saddle together we now do open ridden classes. He has also been very successful in-hand too.

Mandy has two of her own mares to cover in 2018, Anya and also Tiffany of Carlung, which will allows her to concentrate on showing Ben and Maisie of Strathmore along with the foal if he is ready. All of her six highlands and a Sec A are all kept at home as she is fortunate to live on a farm in Euxton, Lancashire. Her job is outdoors at Hedges Direct a specialist plant nursery along with the farm and family business, but she manages to fit her equestrian activities around this, although unfortunately winter showing is not an option as work is far too busy at this part of the year.

The ponies are not over shown but Mandy enjoys taking them to agricultural shows and ‘area’ shows plus of course the ones with Highland classes. Her plans for the future are to keep enjoying showing where many great friends have been made. Also, having judged at a few shows She would like to pursue this route further in the future, when time allows, giving back something for the pleasure it has given her over the years. She is looking forward to the 2018 which may be hectic at times but as she says, “Having animals it will be!”

Focus on Mandy Fairclough Mandy has had ponies since an early age and at the age of 18 came to the crossroads of either moving into horses or staying with ponies and showing in-hand. She made the decision to stay with ponies and firstly showed welsh ponies and cobs and also breeding a few as well. However Mandy came to the conclusion she wanted to have ponies that could do more than just in-hand showing and in 2010 she decided to look for a highland pony.

Her first highlands came from Kathleen Grant on Orkney, these were Orkneyinga Anya who is the foundation mare for her breeding program who had her first foal (Shaw Green Glen Dhu) this year to Frodo O’ the Glens her young stallion, and also a foal, Orkneyinga Loki who Amanda eventually gelded and sold as a ridden pony.

Whilst away for a few days in Scotland she visited the Lagalgarve stud where all the foals had been sold that year, so the following year Lagalgarve Capercaillie was purchased. She was very successful and is now under saddle with Emma Clarke. After meeting up with Sue McGuire (Lagalgarve) at the Royal Highland I

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Trekking in the 21st century It seems like a long time ago now that I used to sit in school and stare out of the window at the Cleveland Hills thinking “I’d love to be riding on the hills all day.”

a ‘sanitised’ version of horses – gone are the days where people accepted that if they got on a horse they MIGHT fall off. Now I am asked basically to guarantee they won’t fall off! Well, as you know, no horse is a machine and even the quietest pony can trip or stumble which can be enough to unseat a novice rider.

People do not generally have the same basic levels of fitness and core strength and also the average weight of clients has crept up, which impacts on balance and confidence.

The rise of the ‘blame’ culture can also be held responsible in part – I do sometimes ‘dumb down’ a ride or trek if I think riders will not cope or be generally scared by their experience on the ponies, if an accident should occur, then it is always in the back of your mind “Could this accident have been prevented?” Even if the only way that it was preventable was to not get on in the first place, it is still a major worry!

We have certainly over the years turned into “a fun experience for all the family”, rather than “an exploration and adventure in the Dales”.

A word of warning – if we remove all aspects of risk from young people’s lives, how are they going to learn to assess a risk themselves and learn from their experiences?

Consciously or not my day-dreaming has become a reality – I now work at a BHS approved riding centre in the Yorkshire Dales – riding on the hills all day.

I’m sure that those of you with an interest in Highland ponies will be aware that Pony Trekking evolved as a way to make use of the surplus of ponies after farmers went mechanical and to promote tourism in more remote areas.

As you can imagine, things have changed an awful lot since then! When I first started taking treks out it was completely normal to have 12 to 14 riders with two escorts going up into the hills for at least two hours. Most of the riders had little or no experience.

Now we don’t like to take more than 6 (although I will take 8 if I am one of the ride escorts) and we always have two escorts for that number.

So, what has changed?

Personally I feel that holiday-makers now want

Michelle Parkin-Vaughan 3

What’s on

The new website and forum

February 4th - NE Area New Year Social at the Coore Arms (between Leeming Bar and Northallerton) 1.00pm 2018 10th - HPS Dinner Dance, Nairn (close to Inverness Airport, perhaps the ideal venue for a group of people to meet up for ‘A bit of a Do!’ 11th - Pennine Area New Year Social, Roe Cross Green, Mottram in Longdendale.

March 4th—NW Area New Year Social at Crooklands Hotel (off J36 - M6) Sunday lunch 12.30 for 1pm

The HPEC committee have commissioned a new website and forum which is in the process of being built. It is intended that the new website is both easy to use by members and very importantly easily updated by committee members to reflect current information, news and events. The website will potentially have a members only area where there will be a library of archived club newsletters and magazines which members will be able to read online or download.

It has also become very apparent in recent times that the forum is now only used by a small but very loyal group and so it is intended to improve the forum to make it easy to upload photos (a major criticism in recent times) and make it more accessible for members and consequently increase its usage back up to the levels it used to see before the advent of Facebook.

It is hoped to safeguard and archive historic posts on the forum as it is recognised that this includes a wealth of important information and viewpoints.

Welcome to…….

Your area needs you!

….new members and those returned after a break:-Sarah Doran, Shona Race and Debbie Gaskin.

Currently some areas are very active with members running a variety of events. These areas are active because the rank and file membership want to get together and do things. Consequently they don’t wait around for someone to organise things - they get on and do it themselves. If you would like to see things happen in your vicinity, please be proactive and start the ball rolling. It only takes a couple of keen people to kick-start activities.

Events don’t have to be high profile or attended by many people, they just need to be organised, agreed to by committee through contacting Amanda Hart for insurance and then enjoyed by the people involved.

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The Highland Pony Society are organising a study day that will be run south of the border on April 15th at Adlington EC, near Stockport.

It will feature a number of speakers discussing - breed type, in hand and ridden showing, driving and AI. The event will be free to HPS Members but with a small charge for nonmembers and includes hot drinks and cakes, although those attending will need to bring their own lunch as the café’s kitchen will not be open.

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