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!)

Great to turn 30!

Saturday I had a great time with my family. We were eating nearly all day: breakfast, brunch, cake & coffee and my favourite dish in the evening. Between cake/coffee and supper my sister and me went shopping in Hannover and had some ice-cream later. It was a very funny time as we started to take photos of every garment we tried at P&C. Now after checking the photos I know that I have to go again and buy everything I tried :o))))

On Sunday we drove to Baga to do a walk with her. We met Simone who asked me suddenly "Baga is very coloured, isn't she?" And I was wondering, "Huh? Baga is bleikvindótt (red silver dapple dun), she is always special coloured." but then I saw what she meant:



All my tack was also decorated with balloons and paper streamer and I had no chance just to go pick up my horse and ride like she and my tack was. But of course I did :o)

Baga was a little bit unhappy with the balloon on her head so I removed it soon. The next days I will try to get the colour out of her coat. Luckily the summer comes and she is losing her winter coat but maybe I will take water for help :o) Now I have to go to work. We'll see if anything's happening there... anyhow it was a wonderful birthday and I have not one bad feeling about getting 30. Quite the opposite: I feel better than ever before!

SSSól Revival Playday

Isländischen Aschewolken zum Trotz feierten wir am Sonntag den 2. SSSól Revival Playday. Knapp 20 Teilnehmer hatten sich eingefunden, um sich im Trail, Fahnenrennen und Best of Dreigang zu messen. Bei der Parcours-Begehung gab es zwar noch großes Staunen, vor allem das Besenpolo mit Gymnastikball erfreute die Gemüter, aber in der Durchführung zeigten sich teils wahre Perfektion und Einfallsreichtum. Mit einer Mischung aus Gehorsamkeits-Prüfungen und Geschicklichkeit gab es für jedes Pferd-und-Reiter-Paar positive Ergebnisse zu verzeichnen. Das Reiterstübchen war gefüllt mit unzähligen Köstlichkeiten und sogar Gäste aus Island (Menschen) und ein echter Cowboy hatten sich als Zuschauer eingefunden.
Auch das Fahnenrennen fand schnell Anklang in der Startergemeinde und plötzlich folgten jede Menge spontane Nachnennungen. Siegreich waren am Ende Kira und Bjalla, die im Rennpass und Tölt ohne Sattel durch die Bahn flogen. Und während die Kohlen im Grill schon glühten, machten sich neun mutige Reiterinnen auf den Weg zur Ovalbahn, um dort die drei besten Gänge ihrer Pferde zu präsentieren.
Mit vollem Bauch, gebräunter Haut und einem alkoholischen Kaltgetränk in der Hand ließ man langsam den Abend ausklingen. Zum Abschluss hatten wir sogar noch das Glück, Zeugen eines mittlerweile selten gewordenen Phänomens zu werden. Wie gebannt starrten wir in den Himmel, unsicher ob den Augen noch zu trauen sei. Doch tatsächlich...ein fliegendes Flugzeug!

Hier der Link zu den Fotos:
http://skinfaxa.net/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=29141

Baga confused - too much ash in the air?

Hey my friends,
today is the Playday-day and I am hopefully ready with all arrangements! I wrote a time-schedule and starting-list, created notes for the judges Bettina & Petra and painted a plan for the trail-parcours. Actually Baga and me would be a hot favourite for the trail but anything happened with my little horse what makes her confused. It started with the day as the ash from Eyjafjallajökull came into our country. Maybe Baga is smelling her home? Actually she is acting like a horse on the right side of the brain (parelli language = RBI). She is having fear about everything. On Tuesday she was rather normal but some kind of stubborn, on Wednesday I was wondering why she was not putting her feets on the pallet (pedestal). One of our favourite tricks at normal days. But this day she was acting rather fearful. But on Thursday everything was over and I could hardly touch her head, she was in fear about EVERYTHING including me. On Friday we had a riding-lesson with Teresa and I learned that best is to give continuity to the horse, so I put more self-confidence and leadership in myself and let her feel that there is no reason to be fearful. She was still freaky but it was getting better after she used her head to listen to me. At the end of the riding-lesson she seemed to have forgotten that she was fearful before :o) It was similar yesterday as I was riding at the oval-ground the first time this year (after the snow-season). She had fear about the tie of the new fence which was laying on the ground. But after some rounds the bad feelings were nearly gone. Now I would say we are no hot favourite for today but of course will we take part at the SSSól Revival Playday! It's just a new chance to show her that there is nothing to have fear about.
I am very excited if the flight situation in Germany will change soon because actually I have to fly to Vienna tommorrow. We'll see?!
Have a great, sunny day my friends! Now I have to rush...

Für Hara

Stjarna gestern

No time to blog, just new pictures

Dimma, 05.04.2010

Baga, 07.04.2010

Two weeks later

They sales-show in Hestagard and Hestabakki was great and it fell not one rain drop down on me. The weather forecast is always only as real as you think it is ;o) My favourite horses at the show were Svala vom Lordsee - 5 years old red dun mare (V: Hjalti vom Blitzberg, M: Bitta frá Hliðarbergi) and of the unridden horses it was definetely Tibrá v. d. Prignitz - 5 years old red dun pinto mare (V: Tindur von Adlerhoop, M: Rósa frá Stokkseyri). Luckily I had enough time on Sunday to look through all the pictures and uploading them immediately. That's much more than I have yet done with my pictures from Iceland but I hope that this will happen in the next days.
After the sales-show I drove to Baga immediately because I received my brand-new "Quittpad" and could not wait to use it! Baga seemed to like it and I found some tölt-scenes in the video. Often I am filming my riding or play-sessions because it helps me a lot to see my faults but sometimes it also useful to see improvements (or finding tölt steps ;o) The days after we had a mixed program of jogging together, playing at liberty or online, riding "naked" (I had my clothes on!), climbing on a pedestal, pushing a ball or eating grass!
After a great week with Baga and early finishing times at work I decided to take photos on Circle-L-Ranch in Wenden (27.+28.3.). I came home with ~ 4000 photos which I am uploading now in every free minute (not this very minute but the next again - I promise ;o) The competitions were fine and the weather much better than the weather forecast announced. There were many beautiful horses and nice people to meet. In spite of all my photo-work I could spend some minutes with Baga this week and went on with my training about collection. At the moment I could swear that Baga is tölting every day few steps. ANYTHING seems to work :o)