Tori Murray Elley, 2 stars Parelli Instructor orgarnised a great play day last week end in New Zealand. This is what one of her student wrote after the play day:
"I woke up and leapt out of bed. Strange behaviour, well on a work day, but today we were all getting together for a Play Day. We all drizzled in paying careful attention to parking so we would all fit. We had a 20 x 60m arena, although the sun blessed us with it's kiss on our wet winter ground.
Meet and greet time for the 16 horses and people and the 20 spectators who came to watch and support at 10am. The day had a great feel already. Tori Murray-Elley, our newest NZ 2* instructor along with mum Sam introduced us to the task of the day, which predominantly meant having fun and using our imagination. We were presented with a sheet of polythene with the promise of an after lunch challenge. The four children with their ponies headed off to a smaller covered arena while the adults worked in the larger arena.
There were horses following sheets, standing on sheets, wearing sheets, sniffing sheets. One horse had her sheet tied around her belly and looked so sweet she could have been delivered like a baby by a stork (the kind your parents tell you about when you ask how you arrived in the world). We tied sheets in knots, folded them into small squares, tied them to our carrot sticks and fished for our inquisitive horses. We dragged in all the zones on the ground and ridden, walked and trotted upping our friendly games.
Lunch time arrived and the super chefs had organised delicious buns and creamy pumpkin soup that we all shared over a chat while getting to know each other We learnt about each others horses, breeds and horsenalities. We had dinky ponies to stunning warmbloods and a handsome morgan to boot.
The afternoon challenge consisted of one minute tasks. A jump over barrels with the polythene sheets over the top. A circling game with the sheets. Another sheet was cut up to make a car wash and a big long blue strip of tarpaulin down the middle for us to walk, trot and even canter down!
The close of day ended in surprise presentations for the horses. Tori's little sister Hope and her friend were the horsenality spotters for these secret surprises and they did an amazing job picking the horse's horsenalities. There were horsenality badges, and ribbons and dehydrated apples for the horses. There were surprises for us all through the day. We were all so pleased to be there, learning, growing and Tori's family served up a big dish of that warm country hospitality that makes one proud to be a Kiwi.
