Teaching children to ride in in Germany?

[turnbuckle]

Or thoughts in that direction. I have a very towny friend in Hamburg whose 7YO daughter is getting pony-mad.....promised I would do some digging and find out how best to get going. Local riding schools - do they exist and how do they vary? Pony Club equivalent?

Any input would be great, thanks.

 

[supsup]

Having grown up in Germany, my suggestion would be to look for a good riding school, and/or pony holiday camp. There is no real equivalent to British pony club (i.e. where kids mostly have their own ponies and get together for weekends/lessons).
There are plenty of riding schools, though of course you'd have to shop around a bit to find one that is good and caters to children, but I don't think that would be difficult in the greater Hamburg area. Riding schools often have a mixture of school-owned horses/ponies and private liveries and offer instruction to private and school-horse clients equally. My guess (if things haven't changed too much in the past 20 years) is that instruction/activity weekends will be organized mostly around a particular riding school (as opposed to a pony or riding club with members spread about).
It's also quite common for children to go on horse riding holidays (unaccompanied) for a week or two during school holidays where they get full board, are assigned "their own" pony for the week and get instruction/hack out. Again, the quality of instruction varies, but I spent many a holiday on a farm actually not that far from Hamburg, and thoroughly enjoyed it and learned a lot. Seven is maybe a bit young for that though.
IME, it is far less common for children (or rather their parents) to own a pony, or to "trade up" ponies as they grow up, since this is really something that goes along with the whole pony club competitive system. Most kids learn on school-owned ponies/horses, or at least that was the way when I grew up, and is still the case for my pony-mad niece living in Berlin!

 

[crabbymare]

from what I have seen of riding schools there they are generally the same sort of standard. copy and pasting old links to ones in the hamburg area so they may or may not still be there but it will give her an idea of whats available. normally there people learn not just to ride but to groom tack up etc and a lot of places do courses in stable management as normal. anyone wanting to compete affiliated has to take a riders test that includes hoof care stable management and saddlery as well as dressage and jumping that are both tested as germans tend to do both and the seat is considered important and there are rider classes for both jumping and dressage where the rider is judged on their seat so that will be different from here
http://www.pferdesport-kirchwerder.de/ponyreiten.html
http://www.reitstall-eichenhof.de/schulbetrieb/index.php
http://www.freiberger-ruehmann.de/Home.html
http://www.meinshof.de/
http://www.horseflyer.de/index.php/main-unser-hof
http://www.reitverein-wilhelmsburg.de/reitschule/schulbetrieb
http://www.reitstallkruse.de/schulpferde/reitschule/
http://www.boberger-reitverein.de/index.html