We have some great horses in our riding lesson and camp program. They are calm and patient, forgiving our students’ wrong turns and over-enthusiastic shouts. They wear bridles full of bling and let little girls braid ribbons into their long, multicolored manes.
And they’re pretty easy keepers. In fact, a few of them only need a couple of feet of office space — and they don’t get their hooves trimmed, and they’ve never caused us to call a vet out after hours!
That’s right: our homemade hobbyhorses are so useful, we consider them to be part of the staff.
Hobbyhorses can work for you when the real horses can’t
Your best beginner pony is laid up with an abscess, your second best seems spooky and cranky, the arena is slick from rain, and you have a big walk/trot group on the way. No need to throw in the towel — just saddle up the hobbyhorse herd instead.
We are up front with our students and parents about the possibility of unmounted lessons being substituted for mounted lessons as needed.
Sure, riding is fun, but we want our students to learn that horsemanship involves much more than time spent in the saddle. And we’re never going to ask a horse to suffer for the sake of a fun ride!
Having the option to teach lessons from the grounds saves our horses — and keeps the students safe — on hot, frozen or muddy days.
It saves us revenue and prevents scheduling headaches if a horse goes unexpectedly lame. It can also accelerate our students’ progress by giving them addition insight and theory to go along with the skills they practice in the saddle.
These lessons might cover the footfall pattern in each gait, letting students feel the effect of a wrong canter lead in action. We might “ride” dressage tests on foot, including upper level, musical freestyle, quadrille or Prix Caprilli tests. We might practice walking a course and measuring distances, setting up accurate ring figures, or positioning for different lateral maneuvers.
Technically, we don’t need hobbyhorses to accomplish all of this — but they sure make things more fun!
Hobbyhorses can make riding lessons safer
Teaching beginner group lessons is not for the faint of heart. But not every business can afford to teach private lessons indefinitely, and if you want students to learn to ride safely in any group activity, eventually you’re going to have to put them in a lesson group.
Reduce your stress — and save your horses’ sanity — by teaching arena etiquette and some fundamental safety skills on the ground. Red Level students use hobbyhorses to learn techniques such as passing, circling and using the corners to adjust space.
We teach arena terminology (“What does it mean to ride down centerline? Track right? Go across a short diagonal?”) and let our students play out scenarios with a little help from the hobbyhorses and Stuff Happens cards.
If students or parents complain about spending a lesson out of the saddle, explain that learning ring rules is mandatory before joining a group — and group lessons get to have a LOT of fun.
Hobbyhorses can make money for you at in-house events
Want to make your farm schooling shows open to everyone? And generate a little extra cash while you’re at it?
Offer open hobbyhorse classes during arena breaks, the lunch break, or at the end of the day while your scorer tallies up points to award Champion ribbons. Set a simple ground pole course or pattern that participants can “ride” on foot, with classes offered by age division.
We run a special class for young children where parents are allowed to go around the course with them, and everyone gets a blue ribbon.
Older children and adults — yes, adults! — can sprint through “jumper rounds” against the clock.
Hobbyhorse events are a good way to involve younger siblings and non-horsey audience members. They are also a sneaky way to teach horse show protocol to prospective students and beginners.
All competitors are briefed on order of go, opening circles and how to salute the judge — skills we hope they’ll put into practice on a horse during next year’s show.
Hobbyhorses can let unmounted students experience a wide array of horse sports
We are big believers in exposing beginners to as many different riding disciplines as possible. Teaching different approaches to horsemanship helps students appreciate and seek out new horsey experiences and can prevent prejudiced assumptions.
Of course, few of us have barns equipped with skilled jumpers, reiners, dressage horses and vaulting horses to show students the ropes! Luckily, hobbyhorses are a versatile breed and can handle any sport we throw at them.
We like to spread horse sport lessons over week-long summer day camps, and schedule them for an hour where the arena is empty and the kids have lots of energy. (For younger children, this is usually right after lunch; teenagers usually need to do their on-foot activities first thing in the morning or right before quitting time!)
After watching some videos of different disciplines in action, students choose their hobbyhorse steeds and head down to the arena for a scaled-down competition.
This might involve:
- A team-effort dressage test or reining pattern, with the student on deck calling out the test movements.
- An exciting Grand Prix jump-off.
- A mounted games competition with pairs or teams facing off in 3 to 5 races.
- Team penning or cutting, with students volunteering to play the cows.
- Barrel racing or pole bending against the clock.
- A Puissance show jumping class. Like speed events, this is fairest when divided by age group and/or height.
If time is short, play Horse Sport charades instead. This involves writing down the names of different disciplines on index cards and letting students draw cards from a hat. Students can work individually or in pairs to demonstrate their chosen sport with hobbyhorses, while the rest of the group has to guess the discipline.
You wouldn’t think it would be possible to do a recognizable impression of vaulting with a hobbyhorse — but we’ve seen a great one!
Hobbyhorses, like your actual school horse string, can win your students’ hearts
Lovable school horses are the glue that hold a riding school together. While we expect our students to show appreciation for any horse they are given to work with, we secretly love it when they form attachments and favorites.
And not just because of the potential revenue in lease fees and photo shoots, either. Students often develop connections and friendships with each other over shared horses, and a tight-knit barn family is essential for business.
Believe it or not, hobbyhorses can do this, too!
Assemble a unique herd of stick ponies with different colors, decorations and personalities, then stand back and watch your students fawn — and fight — over them. (We’ve had teenage students arrive early for camp days just so they could claim Nessie the Dragon Pony for unmounted demonstrations.)
Once some attachments have been formed, give away a popular hobbyhorse as an event prize and watch the entries pour in.
A decorative wooden stick pony is never going to replace a real horse, but there are times when having a lesson horse that can’t kick or bite comes in handy.
And the hobbyhorses do seem to have their own unique appeal.
Maybe they help us remember that riding should be playful and joyful. Or maybe they bring us back to years of pure love for horses, when all we could do was imitate and dream. How lucky we are that we also get to ride the real thing!
