Silke the Friesian

Something very exiting has happened. After have shared a horse 1 day a week and riding at the local riding school I have decided that I do not have enough horse in my life. I need my own.
And I do not want one with thin weak legs, I want a sturdy one. But not a heavy horse. Arghhh it has been a struggle but after some browsing I ended up with choosing the Friesian as my next horse.
After browsing and researching for a while I found out they are quite expensive... especially the once that have gone some dressage and are well braked in.
So after looking at young foals and 2 year olds I found the perfect horse. Silke. She was a bit to expensive for me, but I decided to contact the owner anyway. And just like that, she agreed to let me borrow her.
First for a year, and then maybe more.
And last week, that is what happened. Silke arrived.
I must admit I did struggle to find the stable I wanted her in.
Stables around here are plentiful, but I know what I want, and can be a bit picky.
I wanted a warmer stable, no minus degrees indoors with frozen water, I wanter good working conditions with an outdoor or indoor school/arena. I wanted her to be outdoors all day no matter the weather. I wanted to choose the feed she is given. Someplace indoors to wash her. The use of as much wood cuttings as I wanted. No drama, I prefer older people to young once around the horses both for the quiet and the no drama. Wow, I sound like a bitch now ;)

Well I found the stable and now the Friesian Silke is in it.
She is soon to be three years old later this month.
I have found a girl that will help me train her. She is trained in The Academic art of riding and will help with the ground work preparing for breaking her in after this summer.

This will be the most exiting year to date!!!

Me and my giraffe

So this last weekend we did a whole weekend adult riding class. 5 lessons in 3 days.
I was soo exited and had looked forward to this for 2 months.
We arrived on Friday after work and I could not believe my luck getting one of the private horses. This riding school sure has a lot of good horses and I have tried a few of them, always so happy with them!
She was suppose to be a gentle lady and I was flattered to be seen as good enough for her. And yes she needed the gentle touch. She was light on her feet, very pretty and had a good step / pace.

But her head... was in the sky all the weekend long. She looked like a giraff. My instructor was as desperate to get her head down as I was and the entire weekend was just one long fight about keeping my hands in the perfect way, to make her want to go to the bit. And with no success.
I felt I tried everything.
Normally I do not have problems getting horses to take the bit, but this lady was different.

After five hours desperately trying to get her to carry herself properly I finally had to cave in and go home deeply unsatisfied. I felt like a failure, and it seams I do not have the stomach for long lessons like these once.

I know I need the horse to carry herself correctly for her to stay healthy, but believe me, a long hack would have done this horse so much more good than five hours of me struggling on her back.
I think we both would have preferred it.

In retrospect I am not sure what I have learned...
No gallopp, no jumping, no fun stuff, just hard work with moving my hands one cm forward and backward, staying as still as I could in the saddle not to make her flinch and go all giraffe on my again.


Not sure I will go back.
I really need to get my confidence back before going there again!

Being an instructor

The first times my Hubby rode a horse with no instructor I was very busy with getting to know this new horse I was riding. Me myself and my horse.
I did not take much notice of Hubby.
That was until he was almost thrown off 4 times in half an hour...

As an experienced rider it is off course my responsibility to make sure he has a good introduction to the sport. I am not sure why I did not see that before...

As a 20 year old I worked as a riding instructor for kids learning to ride, but it is such a long time ago, and the ponies was slow and tired of the arena.

Now it is a grown man and a tall proud young Irish Warmblood.
Something entirely different...

So I did what I always do... I googled!
And I found a very useful tool, a lesson plan!
This brilliant web page har quite a few blog posts on instructing, but most importantly, when assigning to the news letter you get a lesson plan template.

I filled it out and had this planned:

In the stable/prep: 
* Learning about the horse boots and bell boots. How they are fitted and why we use them

Warm up:
* Riding out against the fence, not cutting corners in walk
* Round volts/circles, not square

Main part:
*Working on posting trot, low silent hands
* Riding in slalom/ weaving game

Cool down: 
* Talk about next time, plant a seed to go hacking soon
* Ask him to let out the rains (this was what brought on the first buck that almost sent him in the ground)

I felt very prepared, had a clear goal and all went to plan!
So pleased!