Young braucēju School

Thanks to the support of the municipality of Rezekne, an unusual, azarta full-time opportunity to acquire the foundations of the dravings for children since 2011 is offered by the association “Latgales rikacnieks”, in collaboration with the owners of the z/s “autumn foal hills” Ipower and Yelen Stasui, who have bestically handed over their horses and their equipment to the children.
Also this summer, as in previous years, the interest in a group of “young riders” has not diminished. Unfortunately, the specifics of the group significantly limit the number of participants, and there were only 10 the most courageous, patient, and disciplined children who regularly visited the group and took over the wisdom from their treasure, Christine Stashule, with great interest. Often the members of the crowd were also accompanied by relatives and friends who were visiting them in summer.
Due to favourable weather conditions, the crowd's visitors were able to learn a lot of new knowledge and skills. In parallel to practice, children could also obtain theoretical knowledge: learning how to distinguish horse sports, the names of the equipment needed for work. While in practice lessons learned to saddle and draw horses, ride, drive, feed, clean, take part in the nursing and training of a newborn fool.
The hardest lessons were the ones in which children were studying without saddles and riding in the saddle. This lesson took more time than others because of the highest concentration and discipline.
There was also, after the children's reviews, the most pleasant lessons – hours when they could “return” to the old times and learn to do agricultural work with horses. Several works were traditionally performed in Latgale by children, such as land echoing etc.
But the biggest impression in the small children's hearts was the swimming of horses in Razna Lake – emotions and feelings that are difficult to compare with something else.
With a lot of interest, the participants took the events that took part in the farm horses' presentations: “Rikshaker competition in Dagda” and “festival together with horses in Krustpils District”. Latvian traditional horse breeds also participated in these events, but there were even these horses in Krustpils.
In the autumn, at the end of the lesson, a girl from Rezekne, Aleksandra Mochenoka, was visiting the children, whose hobby is to make fantastic beauty and original models of horses and harnesses from plain paper. Over several years she created whole stables with a lot of horses and everything needed: saddle, harness, boxe …. Alexandra showed her models, told her who inspired her and how she made her works. With Alexander's children, they tried to create their own horse. It turned out to be not easy.
 
Margarita Ignatjeva,
Member of the board of directors of the association “Latgales rikacnieks”