Horses and teaching are two of Noreen Pinder’s passions. And for six days a week in July, every year, Pinder is able to combine both during the Ridgeview Riding Club’s annual summer riding camp at High Ridge Stables.
Pinder’s day job as a teacher at Vista Virtual, Alberta’s online school based in Barrhead. Her other is that of a riding instructor at High Ridge Stables.
The purpose of the camp is to teach young people, ages six to 20, how to care for and handle themselves around horses.
Pinder said when she first started the Ridgeview Riding Club with co-founder Patty Lynn Hamilton, the idea was to give young people the opportunity who wouldn’t normally have the chance, either due to location or finances, to learn about and be around horses.
“Not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a horse camp in the city. That is why we have done everything we could to make this one as affordable as we could, so as many people as possible can have the opportunity to be around these animals,” she said.
Now how many years later, Pinder admits the biggest drawing card for the camp is learning how to ride.
“I think that is why most people come to the camp. To learn how or to improve on their skills as a rider,” she said, adding the majority come from the Barrhead area, but every year they have riders who come from Edmonton, Spruce Grove and beyond. In fact, this year six riders came from the Aurora Horse Association from Yellowknife, N.W.T.
The camp culminates with the Ridgeview Fun Show, an informal competition where all the participants get to show off what they learned over the week in three different riding disciplines: dressage, flat class and the hunter/jumper class.
Unlike other competitions where participants are separated into various age groups, the Fun Show riders are divided into categories based on experience and ability and are then paired with a horse appropriate to their skill level.
The first event riders compete in is dressage.
In this event, rider and the horse have to perform, from memory, a series of predetermined movements.
“It really emphasizes not only how precisely a rider can control their horse, but how well they can train their horse,” she said, adding that the dressage category is often referred to as horse ballet.
The next competition is the flat class, also called an equitation, where riders have to demonstrate not only their control of their horse, but their riding ability by moving at three different gaits: walk, trot and canter.
In the last class, the hunter/jumper, riders get to learn how to properly ride and prepare a horse to go over a series of jumps.
“We start slowly. For our novice riders we have them jump over poles, which are just lying on the ground, moving to small cross rails and for our most advanced riders obstacles that range from 3’6” to 3’9” inches jumper courses,” she said, adding all the hunter/jumper events are timed.
Besides giving youth the ability to learn about horses, Pinder said one of the reasons why she continues to host the camp is to help diversify the riding styles in the area.
She said when she came to the area about 14 years ago she saw there were a lot of people who were riding in the Western style, but there was practically no one taking part in the English riding method.
“That is one of the reasons why I’m still doing this, to teach young people another way to ride. Plus, I’m a teacher and instructor by nature and what better thing to teach than something you love,” Pinder said.
