Geschafft!

Die Steuererklärung ist fertig und abgegeben und wie immer habe ich mir vorgenommen, die Buchhaltung künftig zeitnah zu bearbeiten (wie immer wird das wieder nix, aber es schadet ja nicht, es sich immerhin vorzunehmen ;o)
Mit meinem Führerschein (BE) bin ich noch nicht groß weitergekommen, aber die Planung steht bereits. Mein Auto fügt sich auch seinem Schicksal und möchte plötzlich Bremsen und irgendeinen Teil des Auspuffs erneuert bekommen (es hat wohl gehört, dass ich gerne etwas Größeres mit Anhängerkupplung hätte und schmollt nun).

Die Bilder vom Cowwork Sunday sind schon eeeeeeewig online, für alle, die nicht selbsttätig meine Galerie durchsuchen, hier der Link.

Auch ein paar Rinderfotos von den Deutschen Meisterschaften der Paints habe ich hochgeladen.

Am Wochenende darauf wurde meine Mutter 60 Jahre alt, deshalb kein Fotowochenende. Zur Schockierung aller Anwesenden habe ich mir zu diesem Ereignis sogar einen Rock angezogen. Ihr hättet mich nicht wiedererkannt :o) Selbstverständlich werden Fotos davon aber unter Verschluss gehalten!

Am 30.7. war ich dafür direkt nach der Arbeit schon in Wenden und habe ab 16 Uhr fotografiert. Die Cutting Night war wieder super, nur leider waren die Tribünen so überfüllt und das Licht zu schlecht, so dass ich keine erwähnenswerte Chancen hatte, schöne Fotos zu schießen. Nach einigen Pferden habe ich die Kamera auch gänzlich weggepackt und nur noch die Vorstellung genossen. Cutting ist einfach nur geil!

Samstag hatte ich eigene Termine, deshalb war ich erst Sonntag den 01.08. wieder in Wenden, dafür aber den ganzen Tag! Hier der Link zu den ersten Fotos vom Ride of America.

In der Woche ist nichts Großartiges passiert und Bagas Training verlief mehr oder weniger unspektakulär. Ab heute werde ich aber wieder etwas ernsthafter an die Sache gehen, da wir nun sicher wissen, dass wir am 20.8. zum Rinderkurs in die CUTTINGARENA fahren!!!!! Ich kann es kaum noch erwarten und zähle schon die Tage! Für heute Abend 18 Uhr habe ich mir bereits eine Kuh namens Britta reserviert. Um mein Pferdchen bei Laune zu halten, gehe ich heute auch mal wieder Futter für sie kaufen. Die letzten Wochen gab's das immer nur sporadisch :o)

Am Samstag den 7.8. war ich auf dem Hof meiner Freundin Sandra und habe verschiedenste Pferde und Hunde fotografiert: 2 Tennessee Walker, 4 Quarter Horses, 1 Isländerin, 2 Berber, einen australischen Nackthund und einen australischen Schmutzfink. Es war ein wundervoller Tag und selbst die 30 km Stau auf der A7, die ich umfahren musste, konnten mir nicht die Laune verderben. Im übrigen haben wir an dem Tag den Pakt zur Eroberung der Cuttingarena geschlossen!
Abends hat Britta (meine Aushilfskuh) in ihren 24. Geburtstag reingefeiert. Glücklicherweise wurde ich gefahren (Vielen Dank an Christa's Ehegatten Andreas und Bea!), so dass ich auch 2 oder 7 Fläschchen Frauenbier leeren konnte :o) Voll wird man von dem Zeug zwar nicht, aber immerhin schmeckt's. Am nächsten Tag hatte ich zwar den Eindruck, eine der 7 Flaschen wäre nicht so gut gewesen, aber vielleicht lag es auch am Anstoß-Sekt...
Also fuhr ich guter Dinge in Richtung Harz, um meine liebe Freundin und Schwägerin Annette in Northeim zu besuchen und anschließend nach Clausthal-Zellerfeld zum Rinderkurs zu fahren. DAS war vielleicht schön. Leider kann ich mir nicht gleichzeitig Notizen machen und fotografieren, deshalb habe ich größtenteils vergessen, was ich mir merken wollte, aber spätestens in 2 Wochen kriege ich ähnliche Bemerkungen an den Kopf geworfen, dessen bin ich mir sicher :o) Auch hierzu der Fotolink.

Nachtrag: Meine Freundin Silla hat nun das langersehnte Fohlen von Sokkadís und Glófaxi bekommen. Es steht zum Verkauf für 150.000 isk und ist ein Braunschecke namens Skildingur. Bei Interesse schaut doch mal auf ihre Internetseite.

Fotos und letzte Rinder

Ab sofort sind die Bilder der Ranch Horse Competition online. Hier der Link. Um die Bilder des Cow Work Sunday kümmere ich mich so schnell wie möglich; mal sehen, ob es noch vor den Deutschen Meisterschaften der Paint Horses klappt. Im übrigen finde ich es äußert unpraktisch, dass die Islandpferde und Paints am gleichen Wochenende Deutsche Meisterschaften haben. Hätte ich doch beides gerne gesehen.
Samstag Abend bin ich auch noch zu einer Hochzeit eingeladen, was meine Wochenendplanung nicht gerade unkomplizierter macht ;o) Meine Steuererklärung liegt in den letzten Zügen und muss noch irgendwie dazwischen gequetscht werden. Ist fast fertig, nur das Ergebnis will ich so nicht akzeptieren...

Ansonsten gehen einige schöne Rinderwochen nun zuende, und obwohl ich manches Mal dachte "Jetzt kann ich erst mal ein paar Wochen/Monate ohne Rinder leben.", frage ich mich schon die ganze Zeit, wann und wo sich die nächste Gelegenheit bietet. Zudem würde ich auch unglaublich gerne mal in die Cutting Arena nach Hertefeld fahren...wie dumm, wenn man selbst keinen Hänger und das dazugehörige Auto hat. Ich werde das Thema nun aber verstärkt angehen und habe bereits eine Anfrage bezüglich Erlangung der Führerscheinklasse BE laufen. Dann brauche ich nur noch ein neues Auto und alles ist schön :o)

Aber rindertechnisch haben wir wieder viel gelernt, doch Trainings-Defizite habe ich auch genügend gefunden ;o) Nun heißt es also wieder üben, üben, üben... Stoppen, wenden, antreten - und das ganze bitte auch noch gerade und in Versammlung! Na, wenn's weiter nix is'...
Auf die englische Sprache habe ich ausnahmsweise verzichtet. Zum ausländisch Denken fehlt mir im Moment echt die Zeit. Gehabt Euch wohl und habt eine schöne Woche.
Immer frei nach dem Motto: Take it isi and go cutting!

Böser Blick

Tölt? Pass? Galopp? Ich steig hier nicht mehr durch.

Kuhabtrieb in Hannover

Baga-Cam

Nach links drehen klappt schon ganz gut.

Turnback

Cow Work Sunday

We had a lot of fun yesterday but we didn't got a place in the ranking. It doesn't matters for me because I am satisfied with our performance and very delighted about Baga. She worked very good and gave her best. Unfortunately they didn't had "our" competition "Cutting" in their program. They only offered calf sorting, team penning, cattle penning and ranch sorting. We participated in calf sorting and cattle penning but both times we failed at the "punching". The goal was to punch the cattle into a pen but our cows always escaped ;o) I'm not disappointed about this because our cutting performance was fine and my main goal is to learn cutting and not punching!

Baga's leg is also very ok, she was not limping or showing any second that she has a problem. Quite the opposite! The gas pedal was working very good yesterday - only the brake was a little bit stuck from time to time :o)

That's why I decided on the fly to let Baga at the Seven-Gate-Ranch one week longer. Klaus has the Cowboy Week starting today and I will take part on it evenings. This day we start with a really cool happening: we fetch the cows by ourselves :o) We meet each other in Hannover with six horses (Baga is with them) and sort 12 cows out of a herd of 60. This sounds endless cool in my opinion. Real cowgirl work!!! I don't know yet if I will see Baga tommorrow but I know that she has a break on Wednesday evening ;o)

Training

The training with Baga was fine and we exercised riding onehanded at six times. After the first lesson I thought I would never ever manage this (it's not as easy as it seems!) but the progress came ;o) In future I will ride with both snaffle and bit. I have to get routine with one hand but also go on with the constant connection with the snaffle (for collection).

There is more and more tölt coming. After our return to Bagas home and her full healing we will take riding lessons with Teresa again to work out the tölt.
Today I haven't much time for blogging because at 10 o'clock the Ranch Horse Competition starts and I want to see Baga before. That's why I have to rush... But soon I will continue my blog with new photos from the Ranch Horse Competition for example.

Cowwork in tölt

My trip to Slovakia was fine and also the cold which I got there is getting better. As it was a business trip I was not seeing many places or doing any sightseeing-trips but one day we attended a colleague to a river-rafting-station and the next evening we drove into the mountains.


The return flight was wonderful because I could see the landscape during the whole flight.

On Saturday I went to Stolzenau immediately where Baga was still waiting for me. In the afternoon we worked with the cows and I was satisfied with the result.

After it we integrated Baga into Dimma's herd and I was taking photos of it the next two hours. Baga was very impressive like always in similar situations and Dimma was obviously very interested about her and always tried to get in contact with Baga.


One picture for showing you the proportion between Dimma (1 year) and Baga (10 years).

On Tuesday and Wednesday we had the next chance to do our cowwork. Every day we had new success and great experiences. On Wednesday Frank was taking videos and at home I could see that Baga was even tölting during the cowwork. That's just great!

Now the time has come that Baga have to learn to work with the cows alone and my job will be to LET her do this. Further we are now starting to move the cows - not the other way round as yet. I am very excited about the next week - fresh cattle will arrive on Thursday. Until then we will practise, practise and practise :o)
Baga had a break yesterday and I took the opportunity to go into the zoo with Jens and friends. It was very funny and a great day.


Now I will take care about my actual photo-orders and drive to Baga around midday. I get a riding-lesson of Klaus today and possibly we will practise some trail-obstacles and my wish was to train riding one-handed so I am terrible excited :o))))

Photos, parties and cows

Like I told you in my last blog I was working on my pictures all Whitsun days. Then followed normal days with my main work and having fun with Baga. On Saturday and Sunday (29./30.5.) I was in Soltau at the Northern Supreme Show and took many photos of beautiful Paint Horses. You can find the link to the pictures here.

After the show I made a quick stop at our soccer club house where our team celebrated the advance into the next higher league (sorry, aber ich finde keine gute Übersetzung für Aufstieg in die 2. Kreisklasse). I'll try to upload some of the pictures which I took at the celebration today and I can share the link with you also if you are interested in party-photos :o)

The next two days I had free time to edit and upload the pictures of Soltau but I am not yet ready with this. Today I will continue. I was riding every day from Monday until Wednesday and had great experiences.

On Friday and Saturday was I doing the feeding and cleaning at our horse stable and I can tell you that I love to spend the morning hours with the horses. I also took Baga for a small bareback ride at the riding ground and she was brilliant!!! After that I met my mother for dinner and drove to Stolzenau because Klaus and Gudi had their birthday party! I arrived there early enough to take Dimma (and Janine + Kate) for a walk. Our first walk! By the way Dimma is having her first birthday in few days :o)

It was a wonderful party but I left my friends at 23:48 o'clock because I have many things to do here at home and wanted to start early with it ;o)

(v.l.n.r. Horst, Ilona, Patrick, Schmitti, ich)

But soon I will be back at the Seven-Gate-Ranch like I was told yesterday by Klaus! He will order a bunch of cows (jippieh) for next week and also a week later if I understood right. The fact is that Klaus will pick up Baga on Thursday and she will stay with him until beginning of July. During weekends I will always be there and the most time we will have cows to work with. Yeah!!!!!!!!!! The rest of the time I can use all the trail-obstacles which they have and meet my friends who live in this area. That's just great. The last weeks I was only thinking on when I will have the next possibility to work with cows and suddenly I will have some weeks with cows!

The finish of this cow-month will be on 04.07.10 at the Circle-L-Ranch with the Cow Work Sunday where we will participate. I checked the tendering of this tournament and I will probably choose the cattle penning as my competition. Now I have to quit my blog because lots of homework and photo-work is calling after me - further I want to see Baga today (last chance for training)! Tommorow I will fly to Slovakia again and stay until Friday while Klaus is picking Baga up for me! I can't wait to have the cows around me soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooon! Furthermore I am very excited about Baga and Dimma meeting each other the first time. In my opinion Dimma isn't much smaller than Baga now and it will be very exciting to see them together.

Photos, photos, photos

Now after 4 weeks I said to myself: "Sabine, you will not manage to finish all your work tonight, so why hurry?" That's why I can tell you with showing some pictures what happened the last 4 weeks. Actually I could not remember everything but having a look into my photo-folders could be a help, so let's see how I spent my time.

On 02.05. I made some ground-work with Baga and used the balloons from the week before. It was an interesting experience - also to crush them while Baga was standing beside me.

Later at the same day I went to Stolzenau visiting Gudi and my lovely youngster. Dimma found many friends in her new herd and enjoys her life on the green grass.


Few days later I went to Osterbyholz to take photos at the Euromót. There were approx 100 horses at the breeding-show and I gave my best to get good photos of all them. The horses above are Garún fra Kolneset (from Norway) and Bjartur frá Leirulæk (Iceland). You can have a look at the pictures from the show here. I went home to upload the first pictures on Sunday the 8.5. and made me ready for the business-trip to Vienna + Slovakia.

Slnečné jazerá (deutsch: Sonnenseen) in SK - Senec

It was a nice journey and I came back late on Tuesday (picture above: view over Vienna). On Thursday we had a bank holiday (Himmelfahrt) and I worked 12 hours with my pictures on the computer, Friday I was working at work (you know: my main job ;o)


Saturday I drove to Wenden and took photos of the Himmelfahrt Open, same on Sunday. You can find the pictures here.
On Monday and Tuesday I spent some wonderful time with Baga and was very excited how great she listened and acted after many weeks of break (I often said hello to Baga in the last weeks but we can really not talk about "training"). On the spur of the moment I decided to take a vacation from Wednesday this week until Friday in order that I have enough time to edit and upload my pictures of Osterbyholz (13 horses and one sport competition are left) and Wenden (34 competitions are left). My plan is to have everything ready until Monday evening :o)
But just sitting on the computer can also get boring so I wished good weather for yesterday and agreed a date with Patrick because he wanted to get brandnew pictures of his beautiful stallion CS Special Trick. At the moment he is in training at Jörg Pasternak so we drove to Herzberg for the fotoshooting.


Of course it was wonderful weather and everything worked like I planned. Good light in the riding-hall and as the icing on the cake I found some arabian mares with her foals right at the same place. Not forgetting the Alpaca which crossed my path from time to time :o) You can find a link to this wonderful breeding farm named Arabergestüt Hägerhof here. Actually I could say "What a wonderful day." But the day wasn't yet over! Around midday we went on the return trip and decided to say hello to Klaus and Gudi. Further I could not await to see Dimma again.


She is a real beauty in her summer coat and friendly as ever. By the way she is a giant for her age! Now you are really up-to-date reagarding the happenings of my last 4 weeks. So I'll keep up my work immediately. Have a nice Whitsun (Nein, das ist keine neuartige Kampfsportart sondern das englische Wort für Pfingsten!)