Monday, October 20, 2014

Through an Intern's Eyes: Fall Fun!

This past weeks event was another great one! We had 7 riders join us from Peggy's Kids. This is my second time working with these young riders and they did just as great this time as they did last time. Peggy's Kids was the first group that I ever worked with when I started my internship with Fidelis. In my previous experience with non profits I never really got to work hands on with the people of the group so it is a nice change for me to be able to work with different populations.

After meeting and grooming our horses the 7 riders split up into small groups. One group started out riding and the other group put together scarecrow like pumpkins. I thought the design for the pumpkins was pretty cool, the riders had a design they could follow on the package but most of them went with their own designs. It was really interesting to see how some of them decided to design their pumpkin scarecrows. Some had very little on it, and some had so much hair it was layer on top of layer. Not only did the riders get to enjoy making a pumpkin, but I also saw a few volunteers get in there and design one!

Peggy’s Kids have been coming to the barn for a while now, so out in the Arena they know what they are suppose to do. We were lucky enough to have a lot of volunteers to help assist in the arena. With a volunteer on each side, the riders walked around the arena, then trotted for a few laps. We also practiced stopping our horses and instructing them to hug the fence. At the end we set up a few obstacle type courses for the riders to ride their horses around, such as barrels and zigzagging through cones.

Not only did we have a lot of riders last week but we also had a lot of volunteers! We had probably 5 or 6 new volunteers which is great! Most of them had come from Coastal Carolina University and they jumped right in to helping out! It is always great to see that people can come out to volunteer and dive straight in without any hesitation.  All in all we had another very successful time with Peggy’s Kids!

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