I love youth education; it’s one of the things most dear to my heart, and I like giving back to the youth equestrian community where I can. So last weekend I judged a Pony Club eventing rally at Frying Pan Park in Herndon, Va., a lovely place.

I’m a huge fan of Pony Club. It produces riders with good basic skills who have to demonstrate those skills before they move up; riders with good stable management skills; kids who take the health and comfort of their horses extremely seriously and know as much as any vet tech.

The Pony Club graduates I’ve met have also been team players, kids who take direction well, and have tremendous attention to detail. Pony Club teaches as much about life skills as it does about riding (though the riding and horse care is pretty darn good.)

At this rally, I was not disappointed. I saw 4 1/2 hours worth of immaculately turned out horses and riders. I saw riders appropriately mounted, in safe, clean tack. I saw some lopsided circles, some questionable definitions of “free walk,” and a lot of riders apparently blissfully unaware of what a correct canter lead is, but hey, them’s just details. I saw a lot of happy kids taking good care of their horses in absurd heat, and with smiles on their faces.

I also saw a lot of courage under fire. One rider had an absolutely cataclysmic test—her little Arabian horse said hell no, we won’t go, and proceeded to do that awful inverted-broken-neck thing that only Arabians, with their extra neck vertebra, can do, along with bucking and carrying on everywhere. The rider stayed totally cool, and she never once got mad or excessive. There were several other riders with troubled rides, particularly older teenagers on young horses, but I didn’t see a single temper tantrum. In 60 rides, that’s pretty impressive.

One of my scribes noted that she wished more kids could scribe, or at least sit with judges, because you can’t appreciate some of the details until you’ve watched it. I think she had a terrific point. One of my pet peeves is accuracy—20 meter circles that have corners, not riding from letter to letter. There were quite a few points lost in my arena because of that, and I hope that all of those kids—heck, I hope everyone—can someday sit at C and watch how easy it is to see the riders who prepare their horses well for corners, or diagonals, or circles, as opposed to those who haven’t done their homework.

But all that aside, it was a really fun day. I shudder at the thought of running cross-country in the kind of weather we’ve been having, but that’s why I’m a weenie DQ in my indoor, out of the sun. Hey, if the shoe fits…