Skill at Arms training in Nittedal

Another weekend, another training and this weekend it was Skill at Arms on the schedule. Finorio is getting more used to travelling and training with other horses. Yesterday it was so clear that he was a lot more comfortable and able to relax while there were lots of other horses in the arena. Joy! 

Ranch Trail Training

This weekend we attended a Ranch Trail training for the first time! Finorio and I have never attended anything like this and I was quite curious to how he would react. Ranch Trail is kind of a cowboy version of Working Equitation. The different obstacles are created from the different challenges you can meet while working with horses. Going over bridges, pulling logs, going through different narrow passages with things brushing against the horses legs. Lifting things and so on.

Getting ready

Easter joust training

Quite spontaniously riddersport.no, arranged an easter joust/skill at arms training. We weren’t that many due to lack of space to park trailers, but still the arena was quite full with 7 horses and all the targets in place.

Finorio is still a young horse, older in his body, but only ridden properly for more or less a year, he is still very young mentally. We attend these training mostly to get used to training with other horses because that can get quite interesting. As I wrote about in the previous post when training with Unico, he seems to very easily adapt to other horses energy. And not only those with high energy, also the ones who are calm. I talked to a friend about this and he was quite right in saying;

Getting used to other horses, for sure… But also bear in mind… You bought a lusitano… Their normal energy level is set to ’11’.

Thoughts on hips and aids

So this past week we’ve had a weekend clinic with Arne Koets and as always the theroy sessions are quite interessting, especially when it comes to the movements of the hips in the different exercises. So after talking about it all weekend, trying out different stuff infront of an audience, trying to get the movement through the hips on the ground I was going to try once again today. It has been a couple of days since the last lesson, Finorio had treatment so a few days off. I’ve had some days off and been relaxing, perhaps just a tad too much.

Spring feeling and trainings!

As usual I’m fairly bad at blogging regularly, but now so much is happening that I’d like to write some of it down.

This winter has been quite nice with cold temperatures and lots of snow. Unfortunately this has been working against us as Finorio has not been 100% in his body. Some time in January I had a few days of just flying with him. Riding in the snowy outdoor arena was just great, we did passage and the canter was so easy to sit so I could do nothing but laugh as I enjoyed myself. Then it all changed, set off by Finorio making the decision to roll in the snow, close to the fence. He must have caught the electrical fence and got stuck some way. The damage on the fence was not much, and he had only stepped on himself so just a small wound that healed very quickly. But he was very different to ride, the canter was not flowing and no proper connection in trot. 

Snowy arena

We have snow!! For the first time this winter we have proper snow! I wanted to celebrate it by riding in the forrest yesterday, and have a nice session on the outdoor arena today. Finoro was quite “awake” in the forrest yesterday, but we had some nice trot and canter through the forrest. We even managed to go past the field where the cows are in the summer (they are DANGEROUS!) without freaking too much. Last time we spent 10-15 minutes getting past that place. (yes, he is a bullfighting horse, by breed, who is extremely afraid of cows…)

2015, what did we do?

My blogging might not have been as good as I wanted it to be. I might try to get better in the new year, but we will see how motivated I am. Here I wanted to give a recap of what we have been trough the past year.

Back to work!

Long time, no see? Lots have happened since last time. First of all, Finorio is back home again. I’m back at work and mostly back to normal. We weren’t able to do much training before moving him back home, but the week after we had to prepare as much as we could for the weekend. This weekend we had a visit from Arne Koets who has worked as a rider with the Fürstliche Hofreitschule in Bückeburg, Germany.

We had one lesson saturday and one lesson on sunday. Teaching wise it was quite different to what I’m used to, without me being able to actually pinpoint what was so different. As the things we did weren’t really different, but perhaps just the teaching style was new. In the first lesson there were some misunderstandings that made me become quite frustrated. After clearing up my confusion as to the aids and which exercises we were doing, everything became slightly easier for my brain to wrap around.

Finorio moves back home for rehab

After the surgery Finorio had to stay at the veterinary hospital for a few days before moving him. We went to pick him up on wednesday and drive him home to the yard where he grew up and his old buddies.

At the veterinary hospital, the sign says “home wednesday, Attacks!”

Slowly back in action

The past few weeks we have slowly worked our way back into shape. Finorio has not been trained properly with regulartity before. Now we have an outdoor arena, an indoor arena and great hacking possibilities.

This last week he has been acting out a bit and shown that he has too much energy, been fuzzing about doing silly stuff. So I decided to step up our training to an other level.

Today we went on a hack out with another friend, and afterwards we did some work in the arena. Managed to get some film and photo from that little session, it looks like he is improving steadily.

huge neck