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Dear Ms. Goodnight,
I am the Director of an equestrian center Resort & Spa.
We provide one hour scenic walking trail rides for our guests.
We have an age limit of 8 years old, (although our insurance
company only limits it to six years of age). We found however
that parents lied about the child's age and expected 4 and
5 year olds to handle a horse/pony out on trail.) We also
have implemented the height and weight restrictions that CHA
recommends.
In spite of our guidelines, we have parents insist on their
child riding even if they do not meet our requirements and
there are children who do meet the requirements, but are unable
to keep their mount out of the grass.
So, in an effort to accommodate the guests' requests and enable
the family to ride, our trail guides have been ponying children
who have a hard time controlling their horse/pony. Some of
my staff however, feel that ponying is unsafe and do not like
to do it. (Again, these are walking trails only.)
If we discontinue to pony we will lose significant revenue,
as often the entire family will not ride if little "Johnny"
cannot go. I have been with this facility for nine years and
to date we have not had any serious accidents with ponying.
In fact, to my knowledge we only recently had one incident
total and fortunately no one was seriously hurt. (We do document
all incidents and am glad to say that we have a good safety
record, thanks in part to CHA.)
So my question is...what does CHA recommend and how do you
feel about ponying children? Thank you for your feedback.
Sincerely,
Sheryl
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Sheryl,
Thanks for your email. While I cannot give you any hard and
fast answers, I can give you some issues to think about in regard
to ponying horses for guests.
First of all, you have to consider that the guide ponying the
guest is essentially incapacitated as a guide (being attached
to the other horse) and so should not count in your ratio for
guides to guests. In other words, if you pony a guest, you should
have an additional guide on the ride to take the place of the
one doing the ponying. If there were an incident or a situation
that required the guide to take action, she would have to either
take the ponied guest with her or get off, dismount the guest,
secure the horse, remove the guest to a safe place and then
leave the guest (child) unsupervised while she attended the
other situation. As you can imagine, this would take far too
much time. Also, throughout the ride, the attention of the guide
will be on controlling the ponied horse not on watching the
rest of the riders, so there is a supervision deficit from the
guide doing the ponying.
Secondly, it is pretty easy to get in a wreck while ponying.
It takes a fair amount of skill, experience and coordination
on the part of the guide and the horses used must be properly
trained for ponying. There are many things that can go wrong
while ponying, including the rope getting under the tail of
the lead horse (which generally causes the lead horse to panic
and spin in circles); the pony horse getting aggravated at the
horse being led and kicking or biting (which causes both horses
to become reactive and it is possible that the guest might be
the recipient of the blow); and the horse being led may jerk
the lead rope out of the hands of the guide (now you have a
loose horse with a rope dangling). It takes a lot of skill and
coordination to ride two horses at once, which is essentially
what the guide is doing when ponying. You've got to control
your horse with one hand and control the horse being led with
the other hand. Sometimes you are doing two opposite things
(trying to make the pony horse slow down and the horse being
led speed up). There are many other things that could go wrong,
these are just the highlights. So unless your guides are very
experienced at this sort of thing, I can understand their reluctance.
Another problem with ponying is that, technically speaking,
the horse being led should walk beside the pony (lead) horse,
so that the horse's nose is even with the guide's knee. This
keeps the guide better balanced in the saddle (it is very easy
to get pulled off balance or even right out of the saddle when
you pony). Ponying the horse beside you works well if you are
riding on wide open tracks such as a road; it does not work
well at all if you are riding on single-track trail. If the
horses on your trail rides are supposed to walk in single-file,
you'll have a problem ponying the horse beside you. Either you
will be "anti-training" the horse being led (that
he really does not have to stay in single file) or you will
require the horse being led to walk directly behind the pony
horse, where he may get kicked and where the guide has to ride
very twisted in the saddle.
Most trail ride providers regularly deal with this same dilemma.
Many have come up with some creative solutions such as providing
lessons or pony rides back at the barn for the youngest riders
while the rest of the family enjoys a trail ride. Some operators
provide a babysitting service with fun activities for the children
that cannot go on the ride. Other operators offer a petting
zoo for the youngest children so they can stay back at the barn
and feed the small farm animals.
Perhaps requiring the youngest guests to take a lesson or demonstrate
control of the horse before the ride would help both the guides
and the parents see whether or not the child is capable of controlling
the horse on the trail. Most parents that try to sneak young
children onto a ride are just ignorant of the risk and it may
help to educate the parents on what can go wrong and let them
see for themselves that the child cannot control the horse.
Having said all of this, I will tell you that many trail operations
do pony riders. I would suggest that ponying should be a last
resort and should only occur when a problem results during a
trail ride. I think your guides should know how to pony and
should pony when absolutely necessary, but perhaps you want
to rethink making it a standard operating procedure. It sounds
like you operate a very safe program and whatever decision you
make, I am sure it will be the best compromise between great
guest service and keeping your riders safe. Only you can decide
what is best for your operation. You'll have to consider all
the options, the skill level of your guides, the training of
your horses and decide what the best management practices are
for your program. Good luck!
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