Happy sunday everyone! Are you ready for SICAB!!!!!!???????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!??????

Spanish Championships in Sevilla - The biggest horse race competition in the world and all those passionate about the spanish horse get just as excited every year. I hope to see as many friends as possible, please come and say hello if you see me and I don't see you. SICAB is the perfect place to catch up and have some real communication done, not just virtual facebooking or polite emailing. So hope to see you all on thursday to saturday!

After last weeks german waldorf visit I am now getting a swedish invasion and I have been slaving by the stove (for once). I am getting serously vegetarian again and my old cookbooks are now dusted off, I am also trying to eat as much raw food as possible, it's so good for you! Tonight we are having a feast on Creole coconut rice with garlic beans, spanish tortilla and and my absolute favourite dessert from when I lived in Belize, yummy! I Proudly present;
Marengue Key Lime Pie - rude food with thrillons of calories :)

Dogs have had a bath, Start has had his second bodyshave and is looking smashing. Classy king Donut and Halagador doesn't get hairy, they have a skin all year around, just like Pica. Only Start and Nova get a little hairy but of course I don't shave the girly. Boys worked out in the afternoon and Donoso got socialtime with his ladies that he liked very much. Pica is curious but not super interested but Nova fancies Donut big time!
 

Tomorrow lesson for Jessica and Coco. Now off to airport to pick up guest Nr 1, let's look forward to a great November week everyone!   

Coco got his first pessoa work out today. His trot has improved and got bigger and he had a small overpass in the walk.  He's a energetic horse with a very sweet and willing attitude. Steps lightly and swift. Intelligent and ambitious to learn new things and gets it fast. Coco is a very typical carthusian PRE. 

Here's another carthusian, Bejuco, one of my all time favourites.  

Bejuco was fantastic to ride and had the easiest character a horse can have. He could do it all. There is a special and subtle quality to these most original PREs. They are normally the smaller type, around 160 cm. Cartujano's are always gentle and kind in their attitude, agile and elastic in their movements and almost cat-like performing. The high school movements are their speciality.

Bejuco

A cartujano will trot you to the end of the world because they have a heart of gold. They have a high kneeaction and flexible hooks. It is unusual to see a pure cartujano without campaneo i.e with straight leg movements for dressage. We once bought a exceptional pure carthusian 170 cm tall as a 3 year old and with absolutely straight movements. He was a rare find and is now living in California. 

Cartujano's normally have a abundant mane and tail and a shiny silvery skinlike coat which in itself is a sign of purity. Straight nose and perfect physical proportions. Another effect of purity is slow physical development, these horses need time to develop. As they have such ease in bodily balance and a big intelligence it is easy to excel the training too fast. The advice is to go slow and build up the physical slowly even though the temptation is there to advance as they are such fast learners. 

The bloodlines of the cartujano are the main ingredient for the PRE horse, through them the spanish horse get its racetype. So when we see a beautiful typical spanish horse it is really the heritage of the cartujano that we see in the horse. 

Here's Bejuco's young grandson. He is also pure carthusian, born 2009 and for sale. You can see more pictures, info and price on his page;

Nr 613 http://www.horsespre.com/product/product.asp?id=1457&fn=true&scid=3&cid=0

Today Start was well again. No swelling, no warmth. So he got a walk in the rain, firm surface. Rain, rain, drizzling rain, the one with mini-drops but that you get really soaked from. But I am not complaining. Yesterday Donoso got a workout with a snaffle, not because he likes it but because his mum likes to check how he does on it once and a while. But Donut can't stand it, he grinds his teeth because of that stupid snaffle. He only likes a certain material of steel (it's the light golden one can't remember the name of it) and the snaffle is a normal gold but. So I have to order a new one for him if I want to keep 'snaffling'. Today I rode with his double bridle and he was all smiley and quiet again. The bar bit is 1 cm too big but he loves THAT one, and NO other. Donoso has a big personality and likes his details. He always wet his hay so watercup has to be cleaned everyday otherwise he won't drink as it is full of hay. He wants (warm) water after work. He can't stand the shower in the face. When you clean his backfeet he stretches them. If I talk on the phone or with someone else in the stable he pinch me or if I am not closeby he puts his leg somewhere inconvenient like between a bucket and its handle to attract my attention. Just to take it out quietly without breaking or getting stuck in when I come back. The best reweard is to let him canter fast, low and loose (with a WIDE angle) after work. He LOVES his mummy. He does not care for sweets or carrots as long as he has the attention of his person. He accepts she has to go out with the other boys but only because he knows she has to. And because he knows SHE loves him back. Donut got his diagonal of tempi twos today, it was the third time he did them. No new pictures but here's some of my favourites in replay.

Donoso VII February 2012

April 2012  

      SICAB 2009  

Coco the new student turned out to be a cool guy. He showed me what he can and is intelligent with elastic moves. I feel him very much like a cartujano, soft, sensitive and very willing. We like each other and had a good start! The other Start is not as good. He seems to have done something in walker and has a swollen leg. Anyhow I feel I have it under control, he is not lame and it is not a tendon so I have not even called vet. I treat him with laser, hyal-acid, inti-inflammatory, ice and heat and rest I am pretty sure will do it. 

Laser from www.Irradia.com

The weekend has been rainy here in Madrid but we are happy because it is necessary. So saturday all horses stayed in munching their hay. After having done a good week of disciplined work I took Start for a walk in the now green fields, the perfect reward, he was like a frisky three year old!

As my physical condition is now better I have decided to take on two new students, its a black PRE guy and his owner. This week and the following I will be starting by feeling out the horse, presentation of both later on, I look forward to working with them!

Now all horses are tucked up inside their snuggly beds and here is black little PRE guy with his pyjamas on :) Have a great new week everyone!

Festivo has started making his way to the dressage stars in the USA! We follow him with great satisfaction, this is were I imagined him, showing everyone that his natural relaxed movement stands up to all races! Way to go Doreén, Robert and Phil, and well done for being at the right place at the right time giving Festivo the oportunity to get this important merit nailed to his curriculum! 

http://andalusianworld.com/blog/?post_type=post&p=1100

Developing a systematic training method can be tricky. I don't use my head as much as my feeling when I am riding, one day's training is never the same as the next. But it is important to be systematic so I do reflect afterwards and before and each horse has a plan. This works for me and for my 'students'. When I help someone training their horse I use connection as the basis of the work. First I feel in the horse and then the person and last the pair. But we are all different and as many horses and riders there are as many ways there are. But this is also what makes this work so interesting and complex. I have had readers writing me and asking why I am training my horses myself without the help of a trainer. The reason is simply because I have not found anyone here that can tune in to the personal connection that is necessary for me personally, or to the way I like to train my horses. So I had to develop my own training method and do the best I can with help of videos and photos. 

In Spain there has not been any professional education for horse trainers so everyone has had to develop their own way, or they have followed the way of a particular teacher (maestro). I have learned alot from observing riders training and competing their horses. But observing has not always been a positive experience. Some spanish riders train their horses out of authority from fear of the rider and controlling the animal in this way is very old fashioned and the opposite of my training philosophy. As long as the horse is dancing away in a nice piaffe and passage the rider being at times even brutal is excused. As you can probably imagine the horses trained in this way often get leasions because of too much pressure in relation to their capacity. I have seen horses looking terrified competing high levels of dressage, bloody flanks from whiplashes and attacked horses flying in a yes, spectacular trot. But to me this is not art nor is it sport. I am not for a whimsical training attitude, I do think being strict, disciplined and consequent is absolutely fundamental. But in Spain being rough and sometimes even brutal ok and not very criticized at all. On other hand it is not at all constructive to meet agression with agression. So I get on with my way and let other's get on with theirs. We are all responsable for what we do and in the long run the happy horse, trainer and student are the good examples.  

Today I got a greeting from beautiful abundant hair-lady Donita VIK! (born 2010) 

This is the girls today living the good life under the spanish sun and trees. The temps have dropped during the night so I tried their blankets on for first time and they were cool with them.

   
Baby black, a very playful little guy
 

After medical visit today I decided to award myself with some swedish sweets that I have a constant have craving for. Arriving to the shop I did not see a sharp curb, hit it hard and exploded my tire.. But luck was on my side and polite police (local, not guardia civil) actually helped my changing my tyre after a 20 min search for tools that were hidden in strange places in my car. But what great good guys! So swedish sweets became a expensive story since I am having swedish version of tyres really great for all climates and for pulling the trailer in crappy weather conditions, of course impossible to find in Spain so needs to be imported from Sweden. It's crap I know, but better with a explosion on a curb than explosion with a horse in the trailer,..

The other day we went to visit Donoso and Halagador babies born in April this year, they were both incredibly tall and very beautiful. Halagador got a filly and her mum brown/black, around 165 cm with 3 white feet and a star. The filly is jet black no white markings, tall and very feminine. She did not get Halagador's beautiful head, her hook angle is alittle bit too wide and her movements are not very powerful but she is a elegant, adorable and a very pretty lady. This breeder sells all male offspring and keeps the females for breeding and riding :)

Maestranza

   
Donoso's boy is a copy of himself and even though his mum has white legs and star he came out totally bay no white markings. He has powerful movements and a beautiful totally correct conformation. He is closely related to Donita VIK as her mother and the mother to this colt are also halfsisters, both sired by Delegado MAC. This is a incredibly cool guy that rolled himself around in the grass next to our feet, lot's of personality and selfconfidence. A mini-Donoso, one of the two only male D-offsprings and most certainly a future campeón - FOR SALE :) 

Both are 6 months now and now weaned from their mums. 

Don Donoso

Neither are not yet registered, there are a few Donoso's offspring not yet registered;

- Yeguada Windy Hill in Sweden has 1 black filly from 2011

- Yeguada Zorro PRE in Sweden has 2, one grey 2010 filly and one bay 2012 filly 

- And this bay boy in Spain 

Makes a total of 8 PRE Donoso VII offspring. 

Halagador has 10 offspring.