No rewards without hard work...

When I was young I used to read my Pony Club manual and all sorts of other horse 'how to' books and magazines and put it all into practice on my ponies. It amazes me the difference a generation makes. Nowadays, unless the 'trainer' or parents say it's OK, kids don't seem to do so much for themselves. I wonder if our 'helecopter' supervision is to blame, or if it's just a generational thing. For instance I clearly remember designing 'fittening' programs for my ponies which involved timed walking and trotting on the roads (but not TOO much trotting because the book said that causes navicular!). We knew all the causes of laminitis, how to wrap just about any part of the horse and the dire consequences of doing it wrong. We braided and loaded our own ponies for horseshows by the age of eleven, and sorted out their naughty behaviours by ourselves. The latter mainly involved putting on Pelham bits and martingales. We tied baler twine from their bits to their saddles to stop them eating grass and galloped them on the beach to blow the cobwebs away. I remember my sister falling off in the waves on Rock Beach on Christmas Eve when I was about 13 and she was nine or ten. We used to make jumps from everything we could get our hands on. We cut pallets in half and stuffed them with brush and used milk crates for wings. We watched Baminton Horse Trials and then did 'cross-country' in our paddock, riding up and down huge piles of dirt that Dad kept in the field. That one ended up with me falling Jasmin on my face and scuffing up my nose. We also dug a ditch which little Treasure stopped dead and threw me in. I think what I notice most from thinking about this stuff is that what we had back then that today's kids don't now is TIME. Our nights and weekends were our own to play with the horses, build obstacles and just be outside. No after school activities and limited homework meant we had time to be creative. Wow, we were lucky!!!!