Finally Friday

Friday is the best day of the week.

An evening to relax. The horses often get free this evening too.

On Thursday we had a show-jumping training session.

Every time I jump I remember why I stick to dressage.

Carrying all those jumps in and off the arena is hard work.

Can't understand why people go to training studios and pay a lot for it too. They could help me out for free instead. Carrying jumps, mucking out...getting fresh air too!

But on the other hand, I suppose I only benefit from it myself.

I have spent the evening browsing Amazon for some new horse books.
I got inspired by Di to re-read my Mark Rashid books, they are so good.

So Trudi, I am finally ready to order some of the books on your list!

I will definitely order Anja Beran, and Paul Belasik. I would have liked his book "Dressage for the 21st century" too, but it was only available as second hand at a stiff price. I will add the book by Kathleen Lindley that Di wrote about too.

My favourite book about riding is Mary Wanless: Ride with your mind - Masterclasses.

I bought that book on a visit to London some 15 years ago.

I remember coming back to the hotel room with that book, and a couple of others. I was just planning to quickly leaf through the books before going out again, but already when starting on the foreword that book hooked me.
I believe her descriptions of the interaction between horse and rider are very good, and I keep returning to it.

At Easter one of her instructors, Elaine Butler, will visit Norway and I am seriously contemplating on participating. We'll see.

What are your favourite horse books?

Lots of fun stuff in my horse life coming up!

Next weekend it will be Jimmi-training again.

The week after Kyra Kyrklund will throw a clinic at Arctic Equestrian Games, an hour's drive from Oslo.
We are going there a bunch of us, and having dinner afterwards (like last year).

And on the Friday we will drive to Sweden to watch Gothenburg Horse Show - again a bunch of us. It will be great fun, and I am really looking forward to it.

Fame has been such a treat to ride lately, and after all the antelope sessions this autumn it really makes me happy.

Last Saturday I took a trailride with Hjalmar and Tarzan.

Coming down to the creek the ice edges at the shores were quite high, especially on the other side.

Where the edges were low, we also had a flake of thinner ice reaching out into the water so I thought that would be difficult to pass.

Horses don't like ice. Any surface that feels a bit insecure is scary.
I guess I would feel the same if I was a prey animal that had to rely on my feet and legs to stay alive.

We had to try where the edge cut off clean, but that was quite a high jump straight up out of the water.

Without hesitating, Fame jumped up on to the ice, throwing me slightly off balance in the process as I was riding bareback and it was limited place to land; we had to turn sharply after the jump.
Good girl!

Further on at one of the smaller roads, Hjalmar and Tarzan trotted while Fame and I had a collected canter side-by-side with them.

Fame was quite relaxed and it did not seem as if it was too hard work for her. She kept it for quite a while, without any encouragement from me.
I was very, very thrilled about this as we were struggling with the collected canter before Christmas.
She sometimes changed behind when collecting, so I have tried to slowly build strength, not asking for too much and not for too long.

Seems as if she has gotten stronger! Yippeee!

When I left my old company, I got a gift card.

I have been saving it, thinking of what I was going to buy.

And last week I purchased.....ta-da!

An espresso machine!

I am becoming a coffee-holic.

Of first degree.

Mmmmmm.....can you feel the smell?