March Newsletter 2025

Hi Everyone and welcome to the March newsletter! You will notice that Tino (aka Valentino) is the star of the newsletter this month – we welcomed him to ARC last month, and he has now completed his isolation period and biosecurity checks so he has been doing a bit of work with Sophie and a junior member has been trialling him in group lessons for us. He is a very funny wee guy – hopefully will be great for our therapy riders, RDA groups and some of our group lessons. He is having his teeth checked this week and will have a check in with the farrier next week so that he has had a full MOT!

CAVAN TRIP

Sally didn’t buy any school horses at Cavan this time – there were lots of nice horses but none quite right for the riding school role that Sally had in mind for them. There were a couple of purchases – a lovely new horse for Marcy (one of our liveries) and Liam also bought a nice mare to produce and potentially sell on as Liam is keen to try producing a nice horse himself.

EASTER PONY STARS

The ridden Pony Stars weeks are now all full with waiting lists but we still have availability each day for grooming only sessions – these cost £35.00 per day and run on the following dates Dartmoor Dazzlers: Mon 31^st March-Thurs 3^rd April (inclusive) and Welshie Wizzers: Mon 7^th-Thurs 10^th April (inclusive).

For the grooming sessions, you can do as many days as you like from one to the full week (Mon-Thurs) and they are brilliant at building confidence and developing more understanding around horse behaviour.

COACHING4ALL DELIVERY

You may notice that Sally and Martin will be busy doing some further training sessions over the next few months. ARC has been chosen by the British Horse Society to be a training centre for their Coaching4All qualification. This is an inclusive coaching qualification (for those who are already coaching) which looks to develop the coach’s knowledge and confidence in delivering inclusive sessions and it makes sense for ARC to become a training centre for the qualification as our coaches all hold the qualification and we are very driven to make horses accessible to all. So, Sally and Martin will be delivering training to coaches in how to make sessions accessible for participants with disabilities or health conditions, how to ensure sessions are most beneficial to participants who may access them for therapeutic reasons and how to deliver sessions where everyone is welcome. There will be a couple of practical training days at the yard for coaches, where we will be looking for some riders to take part (for free) to give the coaches real life experiences, so we may be in touch with some of our members to get some willing volunteers!

THANK YOU!

Thank you to all our members who took part in the survey at the end of 2024 (from the QR codes displayed around yard at the time). As detailed in the survey, the survey was to sample our current participants with particular focus on socio-economic groups. Prior to the survey our staff team were tasked with the project of looking at how they can increase participation from an underrepresented group (in equestrian). Our team decided they were keen to try to increase participation of individuals from low socio-economic households, so our survey was the first stage in gathering data to ensure our thinking was correct in that this was an under-represented group. The data from the survey was really interesting and did clarify very clearly that cost is still a barrier to participation in equestrian for many and that those from a low socio-economic group are underrepresented.

So, our next step in our project was to make contact with a local charity who manage and deliver physical activity and sport services on behalf of Aberdeen City Council and other partners. We discussed the huge benefit that equine participation brings people and provided a fully costed proposal  and are now waiting to hear back whether they will support the project. As everyone who is involved at ARC knows, the club’s primary aim is to make horses accessible to all and over the years we have broken down a lot of barriers to equestrian participation. We do this both financially and practically – we try to create a centre where everyone feels welcome regardless of their level of experience, we support RDA groups, provide free riding to children who attend through Befriend a Child, provide regular free or discounted sessions for other charities and we also invest in coach awards, subsidise training days for equine professionals and have an “open doors” policy for anyone who wants to come and meet the ponies/spend time at the farm. So our focus on 2025 is to try to break down some more barriers for underrepresented participants and whilst we know the cost of living is hitting everyone and things are a bit grim at the moment for businesses, rest assured that we are always working our hardest to make lesson income and membership go as far as possible, not only to have the best coaches, horses and facilities for our members but also to try to bring the joy of horses to as many people as possible who have experienced barriers to getting involved.

SIMULATOR UPDATE

It’s been 6 months now since we bought Murphy so we thought it would be nice to provide an update for our members on him. In short, Murphy has blown us all away – we knew he’d be good, but we didn’t grasp quite how good! Murphy has been used by a huge range of people over his first 6 months and as coaches we have been delighted with the differences we see in riders when they have had session on him – the main improvements being leg aids in our more novice riders and seat and contact aids in our more experienced riders. Murphy has also been working with the ARC Hippotherapy group to great success with their participants, been hired regularly by local Physiotherapists to run their rider sessions and he will be starring in a professional development day for coaches in April which Sally is presenting. Our staff team have also had their hoist training now with Valerie, so it’s been brilliant to start sessions with some participants who we know have been really keen to get on a horse for ages but just needed the right equipment!

It certainly makes a change to have a horse that can’t worry us by getting sick or lose a shoe – Murphy does things a little bit differently in that sometimes he needs rebooted but other than that, he’s fairly well behaved!