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
262