The Pony Academy UK

07/10/2023

This week we had to say bye-bye to one of the founding members of the equine team of The Pony Academy. 😢

Darling Tango, almost 30, was the highlight of so many children’s week over the years:

❤️ the perfect confidence giver
❤️ the gentlest ”first trot”provider
❤️ the safest “off the lead” pony
❤️ Pinky’s best friend forever
❤️ Chief “smile producer”

… the list goes on!

A one-in-a-million pony! 🙏

Tango helped us share the joy of ponies with many children for almost 15 years. The last 3 she enjoyed a well deserved retirement, hanging out with her herd!

Sadly, age caught up with her… if only she could have lived forever.

Thank you Tango for all the happy memories. You will be sorely missed. 😢

If you have any photos or memories of Tango, please share them here with us! 🙏

15/11/2022

We are often asked how we manage to keep our ponies so calm and gentle.

This is how.... we do these 3 things before we touch them!

Would love to share it with you, too!

19/10/2022

This is why we don’t even allow whips (or bits, or spurs or use the work “kick”) at The Pony Academy!

We need to stop normalising horse and pony abuse….. now. When they are young. 🙏❤️🙏

Jumping coaches: you must STOP teaching children to use a whip whenever a horse hesitates in front of a jump.

Children do not naturally have a desire to kick or hit or yell at their animals - they observe it, or are instructed to do it, by people who should know better. This generation of angry and abusive riders are specifically being TAUGHT how to be angry and abusive.

Imagine this - you see a dog being taken for a walk on a leash. The child leading the dog turns towards some stairs, and the dog stops at the bottom step. The child kicks the dog forcibly in the ribs, yells “GET UP”, and hits it with a whip.

I hope you would be outraged. I hope you would wonder who or what on earth caused the child to be so abusive to that animal. I hope you would NOT turn a blind eye and ignore it.

Now imagine this - you see a horse being ridden by a child. It is turned towards a jump, it hesitates, the child kicks the horse forcibly in the ribs, yells “GET UP”, the horse stops, and the child hits it with a whip.

I hope you would be outraged. I hope you would wonder who or what on earth caused the child to be so abusive to that animal. I hope you would NOT turn a blind eye and ignore it.

This situation is so common, normalised, accepted, TAUGHT TO THEM that nobody even blinks when it happens to a horse. I'm sure you can exactly picture it applied to this photograph. I hope you can also picture that it will not help the horse or child become safer, more confident, more harmonious, more balanced. Once these abusive “techniques” become automatic habits, they are very difficult to correct. UNLESS WE STEP UP NOW!

But but but….. why did the horse stop in the first place? There are a multitude of reasons:

Underprepared
Over faced
Tired
Sore
Lacking clarity
Rider unbalanced
Horse unbalanced
Wrong pace or line
So many many possible causes, NONE of which are helped by angry and abusive riding.

Yelling at the horse, hitting it, frightening it even further results in nobody having fun, nobody feeling safe, people and horses getting hurt, and our sport being in the media for all the wrong reasons.

Here are some phrases I never wish to hear again:
Make him do it
Don't let the horse win
Always discipline a stop
Don’t let him get away with it
MORE LEG!

Replace the above phrases with these:
Prepare, then prepare some more
Reward the smallest try
Breathe
Wait
Feel
Trust

There are also FREE preparatory exercises here: https://www.classicaljumping.com/next-level

Children do not naturally have a desire to kick or hit or yell at their animals - they observe it, or are instructed to do it, by people who should know better.
STOP IT!