In 2002 8 year old Rachel Chowanec won the youngest age group of Training A at NEJYRC. In 2003 she received a scholarship to attend the Pony Clinic with the German FEI pony trainer Cornelia Endres. Here is her journal from the clinic.

PONY CLINIC with CORNELIA ENDRES
August 6 - 8, 2003
Rachel Chowanec

I was fortunate enough to be selected by Dressage4Kids to receive a scholarship to ride in the clinic with Cornelia Endres held August 6 – 8, 2003. This is the journal I kept of my experiences.

August 6, 2003- Today I met Cornelia Endres. She seems as nice as people get. We worked on bending and leg yield. She had me mostly work on gentle horizontal bend - keeping everything quiet and calm. For the most part my pony and I did well considering it was the first time with Mrs.Endres. She was a very calm person who seemed not to mind that we were kids. I rode with Annie and Isabel and she seemed to give us equal time. At the end of the ride we each got to show her something special that each of us had worked on. I showed her my pony’s lengthening. She really liked it! Wow that was a great lesson.

August 7, 2003 - Here I am day two. I can’t wait. First thing she said: “I can’t wait”!! It is so nice that Mrs. Endres is as enthusiastic and as excited as I am!! For the new day, it seems like a nice day. We worked on simple changes. The simple changes weren’t so simple. You would have to do a serpentine at canter, then in the middle walk or trot and then canter again. It was hard to keep the figure and the bend. My pony likes to be rushy. This was a good exercise for her. The only bad thing about the lesson was that one of the other riders ran her pony into Boots. I was mad and worried about Boots. I guess I learned from this as well. At the end, we worked on leg yield. This seemed easy because the ponies were relaxed.

August 8, 2003- I can’t believe it’s already the last day. We worked on simple changes again, basic bending, lengthening, and leg yield. I think it was good although less steady today. Every time I asked my pony to leg yield she threw her head up or thought about it. My pony did very well with the lengthening. We did better with the simple changes. I think I found the rhythm better with them so Boots could also. All in all, I loved Mrs. Endres. I was a little disappointed that Boots was a little less steady by the clinic’s end. I like the simple changes exercise. I think it would have been better to be in a group that was more experienced at training. Then we could have worked on the pony more, since my pony needs to learn.

I really appreciated the opportunity to train with Cornelia Endres and I would look forward to doing it again some day.