Remember that if you need to register a new mount with the AIRC the service is currently free of charge. However a fee of E25 will come into effect on the first of April and remain in place until the Monday after the Riding Clubs Festival, which is on the 12th and 13th of June this year (hopefully). The application can be made online if you have a scanner to upload a pdf of your horses passport, or you can print off a postal form and send it along with photocopies of the passport. Do NOT send the actual passport as HQ cannot guarantee its safe return in the postal system.
At the moment the road ahead looks long and bleak, but rest assured that when restrictions ease there will be a glut of applications for everything and admin staff will be snowed under. Why not get registered now and rest easy knowing you are a step ahead of the crowd.
Most of us in the local riding club scene have come across equestrian coach Sonya McAleer. Sonya coaches all around the area and has been a guiding presence for many of the regions riders over the past few years.
Four years ago Sonya realised that she was suffering from depression and anxiety. In her own words “I will be totally honest, it took so much out of me that even the smallest task like getting out of bed felt like too much.I’m so lucky to have wonderful support from my partner Warren and my family and I came out the other side. That being said it’s still something that I have to work on daily, especially within the past year with the current situation in our society”.
As a show jumper and equestrian coach all too often Sonya comes across both children and adults who are also suffering from mental illness.It is because of this that she has created the Irish Equestrian Mental Health Project. The first step with this project is to raise awareness for a charity called AWARE NI. AWARE is the depression charity for Northern Ireland – and the only charity working exclusively for people with depression and bipolar disorder. AWARE delivers mental health and well-being programmes into communities, schools, colleges, universities and workplaces. Many people within our community could benefit from these services, therefore the aim of this project is to raise awareness of mental health charities within the equestrian community, so people know where they can go for help. The starting point is to raise much-needed funds for AWARE, which Sonya is doing by organising a charity raffle.
The list of prizes up for grabs in this raffle is very impressive, with everything from art-work by well known equestrian artists, through stallion semen, saddlery and clothing vouchers to sport-psychology mentoring. There really is something for everyone and its all in a very good cause. Why not support Aware and enter this fantastic raffle? After all, you just might not be aware of who needs the support offered by the mental health services.
Contact Sonya directly with any queries you have regarding the draw.You’ll get her on Facebook or you can contact her by phone on 00 44 7874 350665.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said “severe” lock-down restrictions will remain in place for at least another nine weeks – until the end of April. Now this does not necessarily mean Level 5, but the problem is that we don’t know what exactly it does mean. An educated guess is that the best we can hope for is the permission to travel within our own county, which would be an absolute blessing at the moment….there are SOOOOO many wonderful places to explore in Donegal that most of us would settle for that at the moment. What could be better than sticking a jam sangwidge in one pocket and a flask in the other and taking to the hills and beaches of our beautiful county?? And sure you never know who might be exploring the same hill or beach on the same day…. Safe to say that there wont be a big run on stabling at Flowerhill on the 10th April 2021. We did get a query this week “What’s happening about membership?” and the only reply we could honestly give is that membership is open and all we can do is hope that the rest of the country follows suit.
If you feel like joining the growing movement of online events then you might just be interested in the following:
We spend so much time as equestrians looking at our horses, and how they move etc, that sometimes we forget that the ridden horse is only half the picture…the mounted human is the other half of the same picture and both halves make the whole. Sometimes 1+1 does not equal 2! If you put a 70Kg rider on a 600Kg horse you do not necessarily get a combined weight of 670Kg. Some people ride heavy and some people ride light. Horse and rider biomechanics play a huge role in every horse and rider partnership. Learn more about this on the highly informative webinar being run by the north-eastern region.
Hang in there guys, we’ll come out the other end sometime (somewhere). In the mean-time watch this space and remember…you could be stuck in Kildare, or Meath, and not have access to God’s own country.
Whilst showing is definitely not to everyone’s taste it is a form of competition that is very broad in it’s remit and offers opportunities to almost every make and shape of horse and handler. In the second of their young horse training series Horse Sport Ireland talk to showing aficionado Brian Murphy about his schedule and methods used when producing a young horse for the show ring. Catch the fascinating article here
With restrictions keeping us all on home turf till March 5th at the soonest, and a pretty baltic few days ahead on the weather front, we can all do worse than curl up by a warm fire and read some good blogs. One interesting article available on the Horse Sport Ireland site gives a great insight into the production of young event horses by top professional Sarah Ennis. You can enjoy this read at the following link
People ride for many reasons—it’s fun, it’s good exercise, it builds mastery and confidence, it offers time with human and horse friends. Usually, these incentives are enough to foster improvement. But all of us tire of drilling a particular skill. We know we should post without stirrups for 15 minutes, but, aww… maybe tomorrow?
Motivation comes in two basic forms: extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic motivation is supplied by rewards—prizes, cash, jobs, praise, salaries, attention—that other people provide. Rewards fuel our interest in today’s goals, but they don’t do much for next week. They also undermine the long-term drive for improvement that is critical for outstanding performance. By contrast, intrinsic motivation is a feeling from inside that we want to progress for the sake of our own well-being. This inner drive encourages us to master skills through hard work, set and achieve goals, overcome tough moments, and focus on personal growth. These are good traits to develop no matter what we do in life, on horseback or off.
To kindle intrinsic motivation, shift your performance orientation away from outcome and toward mastery. Mastery-oriented athletes love the process of skill development for its own sake. Work on a skill set for a month. Are you better at it than you were before? Then you’ve succeeded! Whether the rider down the barn aisle does the same skill better or worse than you do is irrelevant. By focusing on your own improvement, you teach yourself to create competence.
Mastery-oriented equestrians—regardless of skill level—value learning and progress. They choose moderately challenging tasks, regardless of whether such tasks cause public mistakes. They work long and hard with singular focus, applying effort to a problem for months at a time. They respond to setbacks with increased effort, and they know that failure is caused by factors under their own control. They do not give up on themselves or their horses.
If you want to ignite your passion for riding well, develop inner motivation instead of seeking rewards. Identify factors over which you have control. Seek internal attributions for success and failure, rejecting the easier path of external attribution. Build self-efficacy by setting moderate goals that allow small but frequent victories. Reinforce yourself with inner speech that is positive and helpful. Refuse to give up entirely, but learn when to change tactics, call for a trainer’s help, or give the horse a break and try again tomorrow. Focus on personal mastery rather than social comparison. How others ride just isn’t that important—how you ride is.
Soon you’ll find yourself bounding out to the barn, impelled from within by the satisfaction of learning. Go ahead, drop those irons for 15 minutes. You’ll feel better for it all day long.
As many are aware Brexit has had far reaching effects, not least of all in the field of equine insurance and public liability. Many equestrians in Ireland will have, or will have had, insurance through their membership of the British Horse Society however the BHS is no longer offering public liability to members resident in the Republic of Ireland, leaving a lot of horse owners and riders seeking cover elsewhere. The AIRC have drawn up a list of insurance companies and brokers who offer various packages to cater for our industry:
Whilst members are covered by the AIRC’s liability and personal accident cover at AIRC sanctioned events, members are advised, as always, to ensure they have their own personal accident cover suitable to their own needs. The above is provided for informational purposes only as the AIRC cannot provide advice in this regard.
A new Equine Safety Initiative has been launched which aims to highlight the importance of being adequately insured around horses.
The initiative, developed by Hive Insurance Services, includes a new survey on equine road safety. Statistics will be collated from the feedback provided which can then be used as part of an Equine Road Safety campaign.
A number of Irish international riders including dressage rider Heike Holstein, event rider Cathal Daniels, and show jumpers Mikey Pender and Seamus Hughes Kennedy have also come on board as brand ambassadors.
For further information about the Equine Safety Initiative, please click here.
Our regional zoom meeting was a quick affair and very well attended, with some new faces on the screen too. Obviously the lock-down measures are hitting events hard and the difficult decision was made to shelve the 2021 Spring League due to the unpredictability of the coming weeks and months. As soon as restrictions permit it the region will hold a training show to allow us all a low-key reintroduction to the arena. No doubt a number of horses (and their riders) are far from fit at the moment and it was felt that a training show would be more welcome than a competition.
A lot of talk about horses and road safety is occurring at various levels at the moment. Lawrence Smyth is pursuing the issue with a contact he has at the RSA, and the general feeling is that a major nationwide awareness campaign needs to be put in motion. Some of you may have seen the questionnaire that was on the AIRC website before Christmas and hopefully may have taken the time to fill it out and provide the riders-eye-view of the situation on the roads around us. Making the equine-community heard at government level is the only way that changes will be made in our favour and Lawrence has undertaken to pursue the issue as far as he can.
As some of you are aware Erica has been snowed under for the past few weeks with family life, and a bereavement to boot. She’s back in harness now and will be working on our club affiliation, and ironing out some glitches on the itsplainsailing website, over the next few days. Our own club meeting has been pushed back to February 5th to allow for any government announcements to be made at the end of January. Needless to say itwill be a zoom meeting and the link will be sent out closer to the time.
Inter-club zoom meeting at 8pm this evening, Mon 18th Jan ’21. It’ll be good to see you all again. Join the meeting at the following link https://us04web.zoom.us/j/76532785134…
Somewhere on the WordPress.com site there is an option which allows you to shelve your website until you have made all the changes you want and feel that the new and improved version is ready for the world. I know this because I noticed it late last night, just before shutting down the laptop. Unfortunately I cant find it today, so I will just have to settle for giving you my apologies for the multitudinous versions which keep popping up. I promise I am slowly getting to grips with it. It only took me from 8pm yesterday till 1pm today to work out how to create a drop-down menu for the Gallery page…thank God for Covid lockdowns coinciding with annual leave. The Gallery photos are one of the best parts of the site. The good times they recall really are what riding club is all about and I hope that I can keep this section up to date in the future.
I’ve managed to add in the link to our membership renewal forms on the Join Us page. I realise that with the level five lock-down keeping us firmly in our place at the moment it might be hard to motivate yourselves to get memberships in but, as we discovered in 2020, when the restrictions are eased (which they will be eventually) events and competitions occur very quickly and it will certainly help if you have all your i’s dotted and t’s crossed early in the year. Remember that membership cards are not being issued this year unless a member specifically orders one. The AIRC has produced an App for download. Find details here
This is also the time to make sure your four legged partner is ready to rock when things kick off again. Some riders have changed mounts over the past year and may need to register their new horse with headquarters. There is no charge for this if it is done before April 1st. Many horses are already registered with the AIRC and if your new mount is on the list already you are not obliged to update the ownership details. Vaccinations are another area liable to lapsing when the world is shut down. Check that your horse is up to date with theirs. If you need further info on passports or AIRC registration follow the following link
Letterkenny Riding Club 