Winter/Spring 2025

TRMH Club is excited going into 2025 to have its first full year of event planning and member participation. In “old Europe”, steeped as we are in native breeds, thoroughbreds and warmbloods (and the traditional sports associated with all of those), there is a growing appreciation of breeds, trainers, skills and traditions coming back across the Atlantic to us from North America. People who might have never heard of the Rocky Mountain Horse ten years ago are surprising our members by recognising the breed and starting an appreciative conversation about the merits of Rockies.

Sheryl Youens (Chair)

11/1/2024

two brown and one black horse on green grass

Late 2024, and early 2025 has seen our membership grow steadily and we are very pleased to now have members from many European countries, members that are willing to overcome the obvious barrier of language; it seems that the language of appreciating the RMH is universal. Members from all parts of Europe have been out riding and sharing their lives with their horses. We have received photos of trail riding, showing, competing, log hauling, even sharing their campfire with their RMH. Even though our membership is very geographically diverse, and this makes it harder to organise any kind of get together, the advantage of seeing news from members all over Europe is that we can be inspired by ways of engaging with our horses that might never have occurred to each individual.

We have been running a Club Trail Mileage Challenge (even though most of Europe operates in kilometres, we have miles for our program in sync with the RMHA Trail Program) and members are starting to get in the habit of ‘reporting in’ each month with their own mileage. Our 2024 winner with 1116 miles was Yorick Butcher riding

HSF Gun Smoke Superstar, an 11 year old Kentucky born and bred RMH. Yorick also did very well in the RMHA Trail Program, he hopes to do even better in 2025. This is a great achievement as trail riding in the UK and in mainland Europe is a very different prospect than in much of North America, and our riders don’t all have easy access to unspoilt natural terrain. Our horses and their riders have to be traffic-wise in order to share the quiet side roads with vehicle traffic, and indeed some of our riders share the busy highways with the traffic! The calm competence of the Rocky Mountain Horse is a blessing for riders who don’t always themselves feel brave enough to step out into busy

traffic.

In late 2024, the UK had a further training tour by Leonie de Jong-Prins around southern England, which was well received and also resulted in two young stallions being certified. The RMHA registration amnesty initiative was also welcomed and hopefully resulted in additional European youngstock being registered.

Looking forward to 2025, in addition to our normal online activities, we are also holding a mini series of online educational talks that will be advertised soon. We have further training planned with Leonie, in addition to her home-based training in The Netherlands, she is hoping to come over to the UK again in late Spring.

In July, the Club is holding a Showcase event in the UK with Chris and Tara Stone, Marianne Jolley, and Cyndee Davies, our MaL, flying over from the US. Chris and Tara will run gait training for riders new to gaited horses and for the many youngsters coming through and being started. The Showcase will have show training (RMHA rules) so participants can go out with confidence to show their horse in gait. Also, a futurity evaluation is being trialled to help new breeders assess their youngstock, and produce breeding plans that ensure the future with breeding to type and so they can market their foals with a unique selling point. The evaluation also aims to help non-breeders understand their RMH and provide plans for future training needs suited to their particular horse. Marianne is planning to introduce Trail Challenge to the UK and European Rocky Mountain Community. We already have TREC and Working Equitation discipline followers here, but this will be a great new addition for those that don’t want the competitive timed aspect of the trail ride, or the speed challenges in working equitation.

The Showcase is an opportunity we are so very grateful to Chris, Tara, Marianne, and Cyndee for creating by giving us their time and sharing their expertise, it is an opportunity that outside the US doesn’t happen very ofen, and we hope that it will be able happen in many other locations around Europe in future. We are, therefore, very much looking for members in other parts of Europe to create events like this under the Club banner, so if this is you just let us know so that we can put you in touch and support you in any way possible.

Our Facebook page is Transatlantic Rocky Mountain Horse Club, join us, we look forward to meeting you.