More pictures below        

NPS STUDY DAY 17^th October 2009

The NPS Study Day for judges, potential judges and all those interested in Riding Ponies and Native Ponies was held at the Catherston Stud, Hampshire by kind permission of Mr & Mrs A J Loriston-Clarke, who provided us with excellent facilities and we are extremely grateful to them both for their superb hospitality during the entire weekend.

We had an attendance of 120 people who had travelled from all over England and Wales plus Spain, France, Austria and Sweden, who we are sure, will have learnt from the excellent speakers who took part.   Jennie Loriston-Clarke gave an excellent talk on the ‘Way of Going of the Riding Ponies and the British Native Breeds' which opened up some good discussion.   This was followed by Jerome Harforth on recognising the differences to be looked for regarding Show Pony and Hunter Pony types, this was very interesting and gave some good advice regarding conformation.

These talks were followed by a speaker from each of the Native Breed Societies talking about their particular breed, which again provided plenty of ‘food for thought' and some very good questions.   We had some very good examples of each breed forward giving the audience a good template to work from as to the correct type for each breed, which I am sure was a great help for the potential judges coming to the assessment on the following day.   We would like to thank the breed societies for their help in providing Speakers and ponies for this day and would like to convey our thanks to the pony providers for so generously bringing their ponies.   A short talk was given by Jackie Webb regarding new NPS rules and also emphasising the need for all judges to read the Rule Book carefully with special regard to Judges Code of Conduct and Judges Rules.   Please remember to carry your NPS Rule Book with you at all times when judging so that you can check on the rules for each type of class coming before you before commencing judging.

JUDGES ASSESSMENT DAY 18^th October 2009

We had a very busy day assessing potential judges to join our probationers scheme for the Riding Pony and Mountain & Moorland panels.   We started the day with the Mountain & Moorland ponies, where our potential judges were able to see a representative of every breed and in some cases two of a breed, the ponies made a wonderful sight in the indoor arena and we are so grateful to all the pony providers for giving up their time to bring such lovely ponies, because without them we could not hold these assessments.   The NPS takes great pride in trying to select and train our judges to be of a very high standard and we feel that if we can give our candidates the opportunity to see ponies in this way, then they have a very good start on the ladder to becoming a fully fledged NPS Mountain & Moorland judge.   All the candidates attended one interview with Mrs S Brooks and Mr M Sharpley, being asked questions based on their observations regarding breed type and basic rules regarding showing and judging.   All the candidates had taken a written paper which covered many aspects regarding judging previously or the evening before.

This was followed by the Riding Pony assessment which unfortunately had a limited selection of ponies for the candidates, the Catherston Stud very kindly stepped in to help by providing us with four young ponies which gave the candidates some more choice.   These ponies were provided the previous day and we are so grateful to the staff at Catherston for turning these ponies out so beautifully.    The candidates were interviewed by Mr J Harforth and Miss J Stuart in the format as the M&Ms.