I recently volunteered for a Pony Club testing (rating?). PC is now open to adults.
If I were to join, is there a way to test to your level of experience? I have decades of dressage and horse management.
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I would connect with your local PC in your area for answers, I know a few adults who are in adult pony club.
Get the Pony Club manuals! Or borrow them from your local library!
They are great reference materials to have around, regardless of the PC testing.
It is axiomatic in PC that most horsepeople have a higher skill level in the ridden portion than the horse management portion.
Horse management and textbook knowledge are very, very serious business in PC.
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Our PC has all these enthusiastic hard working teens whose parents get them appropriate horses, and they are absolutely developing into good riders. But studying and reading and memorizing horse facts they haven’t experienced yet might be challenging or too much like “school.”
Whereas some of us older riders have life time of horse trivia, hoof clinics, vet calls, feed shopping, etc and actually know a lot, but might not be able to keep up with the teens on the cross country field!
I’d also recommend having a look at the PC books if you want to participate because they have some ideas of their own. 95% is good solid timeless horse management. Of the rest some is a bit outdated and some is obviously aimed at kiddie safety.
And there’s not any room for the more complicated questions we mull over on COTH. Am I feeding enough copper and zinc to make up for iron in well water? How do I fix run forward heels? Should I use boots or shoes, and if boots, what brand? Etc. PC doesn’t over complicate things 
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How good a pony club is for learning and lessons and training totally depends on the leaders of that specific pony club, this applies for adults and kids.
Adults test for ratings just like kids do. Typically the same requirements. (When I did my first rating test they did not require the older adults to actually do the emergency dismount at anything more than a walk.)
Most of the rating requirements are easily available online, just google it.
You technically have to test through all the rating levels, but all the rating that are locally tested I am sure you can get done in one day if you have the knowledge.
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Except where it does over complicate things.
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Yes, very true. I would never be able to follow all the tack and care rules for a Rally.
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I recently joined as an adult member and just did my first rating.
My understanding is that you have to start at D1 (lowest rating) and work up, regardless of previous experience.
You only need your D1 to start doing rallies, etc.
Let me know if you join - I’d love to connect with other adult members!
ETA - my club looked at trying to offer both D1 and D2 the same day but couldn’t make it work with the rater’s schedule. I’m doing the D2 horse management prep now for a rating next month and it’s a decent amount of studying. I think it would be a lot to get through multiple ratings at once based on the horse management component.
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You can do rallies as unrated, they will consider you a D1. (At least where I am located.)
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Oh man, I want to do PC as an adult! The closest was taking jumping lessons with a Pony Club trainer when I was in my twenties. I used to have the manuals, which reminds me I need to buy them again.
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Are there other adults, or are you the only one in your club?
Also, do you know if you used to be in pc as a jr, can you continue from the rating you left off at, or do you have to start over?
I rejoined Pony Club last year, and participated in a regional Quiz competition. So much fun! And, I still have my original Manual of Horsemanship from 1976.
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@The_Entertainer - We’re a new club and I think I’m the only adult so far, but hoping for more to join!
I think I heard your ratings stay forever but as I said I’m a new member so please confirm
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Yes, this is how it works.
Your rating from before is still your rating now.
The club I am in is all adults.
There is another club in my region that is mostly kids with a few adults.
For those wanting to buy the manuals, they are available on Amazon too (if that makes it easier for you to purchase them instead of going to the pony club website).
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The ratings ARE your way to gauge experience! You have to test for them all, starting with D1. We usually offer qualified people the option to test for the D1 and D2 at the same time, as it’s pretty easy to combine the two sets of standards in a single test without skipping any of it (for instance you can still name 10 parts of the horse while you’re naming 15). Starting with D3, it gets more complicated and the ratings take longer, so I’d never recommend trying to test for more than one level at a time.
All of the standards for each rating and the test sheets are available to you online. You will know exactly what they’re testing for and can use those resources to prepare.
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Your ratings are forever. 
We have had some people opt to do D1-D2 in one go; I think this can be managable for some but the knowledge component once you get past D2 gets pretty intense. I wouldn’t advise rating more than one level a time either.
I recently rejoined (as of 2 yrs ago) as an adult also. Happy to chat about my experience.
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As others have said, you do have to test through the ratings, and need to pass the HM part before the corresponding riding level. D-1 and D-2 are often done at the same time for adults that have some horse knowledge (D-1 is the “no fail” introductory rating). Once you get to D-3, you have to have a Record Book with months of data (increasingly detailed by HM level). If you already have a horse you care for and keep decent records, you may already have all of the data and be able to fill this in, but if you’re starting from scratch that’s where the delay in “rating up” is going to occur. Some adults (and most kids I’ve encountered) hate the Record Book part. My own trainer hasn’t gone past D-3 because she can’t be bothered to keep up with it. I don’t mind it, except the part where I have to add up all of my annual expenditures. 
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Where I am, they do not require the adults to do that.
Thankfully.
Edit to clarify. Yes, we have to do a Record Book. They just do not require us to add up all we spent for the year on our horse. We are told that we can skip the whole cost section, they feel the cost part of the book is there for kids to realize how much their horse actually costs and that we adults already know that because we are paying the bills.
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For anyone going for your D3, don’t forget to bring your actual letters to landowners! I can’t tell you how many times kids come to ratings, totally skimming over that item in the “land conservation” section, and for some reason don’t think they actually needed to write letters, and bring them with them to show the examiner! So many were hastily scrawled in the parking area so they don’t fail the entire rating for something so silly.
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Are you the only adult in the club, or how many others are there? Do they have separate meetings and activities for the adults?
