Proper equestrians

MOSES LAKE – 4-H and the Grant County Youth Equine Program partnered to hold horse-riding-related events throughout the week at the Grant County Fair, including English Equitation Wednesday morning in the Gene Harwood Pavillion.

Stephanie Roeter, the 4-H regional specialist for Grant, Douglas and Chelan Counties and the 4-H horse barn superintendent for this year’s fair, emceed the event.

“In an equitation class the judge is specifically looking at ‘Is the rider riding with the correct posture and form and are they sending clear, but subtle, cues to the horse,’” said Roeter. “So it should look kind of nice and put together.”

Roeter said that English Equitation differs from Western Equitation, which 4-H and the GCYEP hosted Tuesday afternoon.

“So English is the style of riding. They have a saddle and outfits and equipment that they would wear to go…over some jumps and that kind of thing, compared to the Western riding they have the western saddle with the saddle horn and they're going to go maybe rope some cows. So the style is different,” said Roeter.

4-H has several participants in the horse-riding events and the GCYEP has a significant number of youths in the event, said Roeter. 4-H and GCYEP group the participants from each organization in the same event, but they compete for different awards.

“We have both 4-H and the GCYEP, and they'll be, within their organizations, practicing throughout the year,” said Roeter, “and sometimes they'll bring in clinicians or just have local experts coming in and providing group lessons and helping to teach them how to do really well in these classes.”

According to the Grant County Fair website, there are four levels to English Equitation; Novice, Junior, Intermediate and Senior. Roeter said the judge, Heidi Bach, would look at how the riders control their horse at each level.

“And so she asked them to do a series of maneuvers and ride different gaits of the horse to see, ‘can they ask their horse in a way that their horse is responding’ and again back to ‘are they doing that in a way that looks nice and put together,’” said Roeter.

The advanced riders had to succeed at more complex maneuvers during the competition, said Roeter.

“So they had a specific pattern that they had to demonstrate for the judge, and that pattern would include maybe trotting and cantering with a circle and those types of things. And so It comes down to – there's a precision piece of it – did they do the pattern correctly,” said Roeter.

Katie Terriel, the parent of a novice English Equitation competitor, spoke about what she liked about the competition and program.

“The kids in this group are amazing, they support each other…and even the parents are all supportive, they’re there to root the kids on,” said Terriel.

Event competitor Mallory McGee, part of the 4-H group of competitors, explained why she participated in the English Equitation and 4-H horse events.

“It's just always something that I've done, since I was eight and this is my 10th year. I just love my horses and I think it's fun to be a part of a community and just get out there and meet people and represent 4-H,” said McGee.

Gabriel Davis may be reached at gdavis@columbiabasinherald.com. Download the Columbia Basin Herald app on iOS and Android.