Pony Safety

Staying Safe and Having Fun

Ponies are thinking, reacting animals.  They are heavy, sometimes pushy and can move from stop to gallop in an instant.  They can bite, kick, rear up or back you into a corner.  They can tell when a handler is frightened, nervous or excited and can mirror these feelings themselves really well.

One of the main aims of this site is to help children to be safer around ponies by helping them to understand more about how ponies think and behave.

Safety is important to us and we will do what we can to help you to think about any special safety precautions for each lesson or individual experiment. 

Online lessons are no substitute for practice with a real pony.  Any practice with real ponies should be supervised by a responsible adult, preferably one with some knowledge of ponies or horses.

It is up to you to assess the risk for your own child, the pony and the particular situation in which you find yourself and take any precautions that you feel necessary at the time to stay safe.

A Pony’s View

There are lots of things to take into account if you want to be safe around a pony and we hope that this site will help your children to think about things from a pony’s point of view.
Staying safe is about understanding:

- a pony’s eye view of the world

- how ponies learn

- how ponies behave

- how children and ponies interact

- what children can do to understand their pony better

- how children can change their behaviour to help their pony

- how children can help their pony to be braver and more confident

Staying safe on the net

Click here to go to our page on online safety.

Clothing

Wearing appropriate clothing is important for the safety of your child and the pony.  It is obvious that open-toe sandals are not good footwear but what about welly boots or stout shoes? 
In the UK children would be advised to wear a hard hat, stout shoes or boots and gloves when handling their pony. 
The site contains photos of children from different countries where clothing is very different and people do not wear hard hats, such as Australia, the USA and parts of Europe. 
Only you can decide whether you want your child to wear a hard hat, gloves and stout shoes or boots when they are doing groundwork or riding.  You may insist that they wear a hard hat when they are riding but not when they are working from the ground or it may be one of your rules that they wear hi-viz jackets or tabards when they are out on the road. 

Not everyone will choose to wear specific safety clothing, gloves, boots or hard hats.  There will be photographs on the site of people without hats, gloves or boots.

Hard Hats

If you are buying a hard hat for your child, make sure it has the latest kitemark.  It is best to take your child with you so that a new hat can be fitted by a trained person. 
We recommend that you do not purchase second hand hats from internet auction sites or mail order.
Discard a hat if it has been dropped, shows signs of cracking or is involved in an accident and buy a new one.

We have a small selection of clothing in our on-line shop.