POLO PONY SCHOOLING
Exposición Rural de Palermo 2015
Gastón Laulhe, together with Juan Pedro Harriet, who works at La Aguada; Tomás Fernández Llanos from Las Monjitas, and Claudio Pérez a benchmark at Ellerstina, were speakers at a conference on Polo Pony Schooling within the framework of the 2015 Palermo Rural Exhibition, where they shared with their audience their experiences in this field. We hereby present the transcript for our breeders.
The idea is to divide the conference into three stages. The first being that in which the horses are handed over from the tamer until the trainer begins to stick-and-ball them a bit. The second, when they begin to play polo and the third is when they are ready to be handed in to compete at the highest level.
FIRST STAGE:“ SCHOOLING”
Tomas Fernández Llanos
I shall start by dividing the method of polo pony schooling chronologically as we do it at our organization. Horses arrive from our farm where we raise foals before they are weaned and until they are broken in; we break them in and we school horses kept in stalls, because that is where we have the tools and organization.
We receive the batches that have been broken in in February, and we try that changes be as smooth as possible. We carefully saddle them; we take as much time as is needed; we mount them and then we begin, taking it very easy those first days. We must bear in mind that many of those mares have travelled in a truck for the first time and are then stabled. We then slowly start to gallop them, showing them that nothing bad is going to happen. That first stage lasts about 15 days and it is carried out wherever they feel most comfortable.
Then comes the foundation that we aim at providing them with as schooling. If and when each mare works well she will get to play polo. By working well we refer to those that turn both ways easily and are tidy when stopping and starting and are quiet. And then comes the second stage which is when we start to stick-and-ball them.
Juanpi Harriet
We receive horses from different tamers who have been working for us for several years.
The first time we catch them up we do so always from the field, not in a box. Our horses are shod on their front hooves at first, and the first time we
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