Kids & Ponies

I've had some time recently to watch and photograph one of life's great relationships, the one between children and their ponies. There is a lot about the horse-human relationship that is so instructive for kids, and sometimes so difficult.

This image, which I think of as the Centaur, sort of sums it up. (And has the advantage of not being a recognizable picture of the child involved, which is why I can't post most of the nice pictures I have taken recently). 

I've never been to a horse show without tears, falls, frustration and fear for some young riders. But I've never been to one where I didn't also see children encouraging their ponies, ponies working hard to keep their children safe and in the saddle, and both children and ponies rejoicing in the sheer fun of running, jumping, and hanging around together.

Last weekend at the Kabete Happening I spent half an hour at one of the cross-country jumps at the far end of the course. Cross-country is an interesting thing to watch, because the course is so long that there is no audience at all, just a judge at each jump, and the rider and horse have a feeling of being out there all alone. The horses are going faster, because it's a timed event, and because with the jumps so widely spaced the horses don't need to be so controlled in their speed (because they don't have to turn sharply to the next obstacle).

At this jump, as each child came by and negotiated the obstacle (a big log), every single one had a nice thing to say to their horse..."Good girl!" "Nice job!" "Way to go!" And I though how lovely it was that as these pony-rider teams were tearing through the landscape jumping solid and sometimes scary obstacles,  the kids were so focused on how their ponies were doing.