Pony Magazine – Spring 2026

Summary

PONY magazine's Spring 2026 issue – Issue 941, on sale 4-31 March at 4.49 pounds – sends Team PONY's own pony Polly out on a complete hacking adventure, then hands readers a stirrup-free riding plan, a 15hh Horse of the Year Show champion called Hugo and a 15-point laminitis checklist.

Issue 941 runs 4-31 March and is built around the cover promises: a care guide, posters and quizzes, horsey BFFs and 'You can ride without stirrups!'. The riding block opens on p8, where Team PONY takes its own pony Polly out through a gate, along roadwork, onto a common bridleway for a long trot, then home for carrot stretches. Pages 12-22 add a polework alphabet, a dressage crossword, Phoebe's cross-country clinic quiz, a five-pole grid and the no-stirrups guide.

The care section answers the spring grass problem head-on: p42 covers mucking out and haynets, p46 lists five laminitis signs plus eight risk-cutting changes, and p50 quizzes readers on how to tell a pony is actually happy. Further back, p28 introduces Hugo – show name Sea Warrior, a 15hh Irish Draught cross who won the 15hh working hunter final at HOYS 2025 – and p30 rounds up horsey book series, including Clare Balding's The Racehorse Who… and Amanda Wills' Riverdale.

Regulars sit where you'd expect them: PONY Squad on p37 carries the Royal Windsor Horse Show charity news, five polocrosse facts, reader cringe confessions and Charlie the pony's comic strip. p58 runs a first-person story about Sweetie, the grey pony in Aunty Tracy's garden. The trade's finger is firmly on the scale elsewhere – Dengie, LeMieux, Horslyx, Holland Cooper and Valley Farm all take full pages – so the features do the heavy lifting.

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Content Guide

▸ Cover Story

p.8 · ADVENTURE AWAITS: Come on a hack with Polly!

Team PONY's own pony Polly leads this ride-along: brush off the mud, check the bridle and saddle don't rub, tack up with high-vis leg wraps and a tabard before you mount. Then comes the real sequence – waiting to the side of a gate, signalling left with an outstretched arm, thanking drivers, picking around tree roots and rabbit holes, and a long trot up a sandy incline. When a squirrel spooks Polly, the team praises her for standing still rather than turning her away. Copy that: ride a route you've planned, keep the faster work for familiar ground, and finish with the carrot stretches your physio set.

▸ Riding Skills

p.12 · TO THE LETTER

Personalise your polework with an alphabet of poles – the team builds a letter 'M' from six poles and works it in hand or ridden. Straight runs of parallel or angled poles train the head and neck to stay straight; curves inside your letter become turns, ridden with an inside leg and an outside rein closed towards the wither. In hand you bend the pony with your body position and a turned head rather than with legs. Try it tonight: pick the first letter of your pony's name, walk it both ways, then swap the side you lead from so your pony stops relying on you for straightness.

p.14 · MOVES IN MOTION

A dressage crossword that doubles as a flatwork revision sheet. The clues cover leg-yield ('sideways while still moving forward'), medium and extended trot, piaffe described as trotting on the spot, flying changes, shoulder-in, renvers and the three-loop serpentine, with answers checked by QR code or at bit.ly/PNY_QUIZ_ANSWERS. Every clue is a definition your instructor will use in your next lesson. Work through the 'across' clues before you ride, then test the same moves on your pony in walk.

p.16 · THE CLINIC COUNTDOWN

Ten questions wrapped around Phoebe, who has booked a cross-country clinic after a long break. Readers answer on flags, why tack gets checked (stitching, buckles, fastenings), what to pack, which jump is which – roll-top, house, trakehner, tiger trap, palisade – and what not to wear. Questions 4 and 6 need more than one tick, so they catch half-knowledge. Use it the week before your own clinic: check your hat is non-fixed peak, add a body protector and cross-country boots, and learn which side of the flag you must pass.

p.18 · GRIDWORK GOALS

Five poles, three sets of wings and a bounce-to-one-stride line, ridden on the centre line so you can approach off both reins. The build is deliberately progressive: start with poles on the floor, raise the first bounce into a small upright, add a cross-pole or upright after the one-stride, then match the second bounce to the first. Heights stay around 40cm because bounces are hard work. Position pointers carry the useful information – square turn on approach, eyes up, light seat over both bounces. Ask your instructor to measure the distances for your pony's stride before you raise anything.

p.22 · LEG WORK: Reap the many benefits of riding without stirrups!

The cover line 'You can RIDE WITHOUT STIRRUPS!' cashed out as a step-by-step plan. Warm up with stirrups, halt, cross the right stirrup over the front of the saddle, then the left – that's the dismount-friendly way. Benefits are listed plainly: core strength, an independent seat, no knee gripping, better feel. Trot comes in short bursts, canter only when your instructor agrees, and no-stirrup work is capped at 10 minutes so you don't strain your pony's back. Safety rule worth repeating: only on a steady pony in an enclosed area with an adult present.

▸ Pony Care Guide

p.42 · HANDS ON: Make light work of stable tasks

A stable-chore manual for the jobs nobody photographs. Mucking out is ordered properly: droppings out, dry bedding pushed to the banks, wet bedding lifted, floor swept and dried before the bed goes back. Bed depth gets a test – drop the fork prongs and if they hit the floor, add more. Wet haynets drain outside before they hang, or the floor turns slippery; haynets get made up in batches at the weekend. Finish with the five daily field checks: secure fencing and gates, no poisonous plants, poo picking, clean troughs, and a walk for rubbish.

p.46 · 15 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT LAMINITIS

Five warning signs spelled out – weight shifting between the front feet or a rocked-back stance, reluctance to move or short stiff steps on hard ground, a strong digital pulse behind the fetlock, warm hooves, and reluctance to lift a foot. Then eight ways to cut the risk: lower starch and sugar, mature or soaked hay, a grazing muzzle, strip grazing or a track system, exercise, weigh-taping and condition scoring every fortnight, no over-rugging, and no turnout on stressed grass. The feed rule to remember: combined starch and sugar of 12% or less, ideally 10%.

p.50 · HAPPY AS A HORSE: Do you know the signs?

Ten questions on reading a pony's mood and body language – soft nostrils versus a wrinkled top eyelid, a droopy bottom lip, pricked ears, loose droppings, box walking or crib biting, and what licking, chewing and yawning during a massage actually mean. It also asks how you'd spot a balanced diet and a settled turnout routine. Scores are banded: nought to three points points you back to old PONY mags, eight to ten crowns you a happiness expert. Use it as a yard checklist this week – if your pony is unhappy or stressed, the advice is to call the vet.

▸ Meet the Ponies & Reads

p.6 · PONY LOVES… BEACH RIDES

A short, cheerful argument for getting your pony to the coast before the crowds arrive. The reasons stack up: golden-hour gallops for photos, the sheer space for a forward-going schooling session, group rides where a confident friend steadies a nervous pony, and walking through shallow water to cool legs and build core stability and balance. Spring is the sweet spot – longer days, quiet beaches. Practical starting point: find a beach that permits riding, check tide times and local restrictions, and line up a buddy pony before you book.

p.28 · GET TO KNOW… Harlow and Hugo

Harlow meets Hugo after watching him win the 15hh working hunter final at Horse of the Year Show 2025, then take the overall working hunter pony championship. He's Sea Warrior, a seven-year-old 15hh Irish Draught cross, the opposite of Harlow's mud-loving Panda: he avoids dirt and saves hours of grooming. Because Hugo isn't a native breed, Harlow has had to learn mane and tail tidying and plaiting to the showing rules, and his longer stride took adjusting to over fences. The White family travelled seven hours just to view him. Copy this bit: check the turnout rules for your breed before show day.

p.30 · BOOK CLUB

Pitched as a national Year of Reading round-up, with horsey series sorted by age and reading level. Clare Balding's The Racehorse Who… collection follows Charlie Bass and Nobel Warrior; Amanda Wills' Riverdale series runs 11 books with Poppy McKeever and her Connemara, Cloud; Stacy Gregg's Spellbound Ponies sends Olivia to save the ponies of Pemberley Stables. There's also a Harlow's Ponies strand retracing her route from first pony to HOYS. Take the list to a library or bookshop and match the series to your reader, not the other way round.

p.58 · True friends

A first-person short story rather than an advice piece: a child sent to live with 'Aunty Tracy' – actually her granny's younger sister – in a cottage where a grey pony called Sweetie grazes outside the back door and wriggles through the fence to eat the lawn. Too big to ride her, the narrator brushes and plaits her instead, and the pony's calm, unconditional company carries her through a new school and a hard year – it's Sweetie who introduces her to her best friend, Ella. The issue's emotional peak.

▸ Regulars

p.37 · PONY SQUAD

The news and gossip pages: Royal Windsor Horse Show names Warrior Equine as its 2026 charity for the 14-17 May show, and Redwings launches the Black Beauty Pledge with the University of East Anglia to turn young people's kindness into action. Five Fast Facts explains polocrosse (six players a side, three on the pitch at once, Australian origins), Fess Up! collects reader cringe confessions, and the comic strip follows Charlie. This month's film and book club pick is Pippa Funnell's Goliath the Rescue Horse. Sign the pledge at redwings.org.uk, and work through the worming and lameness links while you're online.

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Editor's Take

Spring 2026 is PONY doing what PONY does best: turning a magazine into a lesson plan. The hacking feature and the no-stirrups guide are genuinely teachable, and the laminitis spread is the strongest page in the issue for anyone managing a native on spring grass – five signs, eight fixes, one starch-and-sugar number. The weaknesses are the two quizzes, which pad the riding block without adding much beyond a crossword's worth of revision. And the ad density is real: Dengie, LeMieux, Horslyx and Valley Farm take whole pages. Who it's for is clear – riders aged eight to fourteen who muck out and compete at 60cm, not adults hunting deeper training theory.

Strengths
• The p22 no-stirrups guide gives a 10-minute safety cap and a real progression
• Laminitis spread pairs five warning signs with eight risk-cutting changes
• Hacking feature walks through gates, roadwork and spooks step by step

Weaknesses
• Two of the six riding pages are quizzes – useful but repetitive filler
• Full-page ads from Dengie, LeMieux, Horslyx and Valley Farm interrupt the features

Verdict: Recommended — Strong spring care and riding content for pony-mad 8-14s; thin if you want training depth beyond quizzes.