This summer two breeders from Denmark inseminated 5 mares with Donoso VII and all 5 was confirmed in foal after first insemination. As my swedish storage was running out they had to share 3 dosis between all 5 of them but these incredible mares was confirmed on first insemination and there are still straws left over for next year!! Super fertile Donoso! Awesome mares! And warm thanks and congratulations to most professional danish breeders and veterinarians!
This result is of course a total sucess for all of us and we look forward to seeing 3 PRE babies and 2 PRE/Knabstrupper babies (yes the ones with the dots) D-babies being born summer 2014 in Denmark!       

But I have not had the best experience with setting up and storing semen abroad. To make Donoso VII conveniently available to the swedish breeders I sent a relatively big storage to Flyinge in south of Sweden some years ago. Unfortunately the breedingstation Flyinge changed policy and I had to move storage to another company called Skåne Semin. I contracted their services and being in Spain I obviously relied on them to do the job with orders and transportation. Still I seemed to be constantly on the phone to mareowners and coordinating emails. This summer there was a incident with transportation and a mare did not have her semen delivered in time. The delivery was not only delayed but actually lost so all the semen was destroyed and the mare did not get pregnant. Disaster and a loss for all of us. When the storage company later wanted to send a bill for this failed delivery I had had enough. I did not ask for a compensation for my lost semen but I wanted the company to at least compensate the mareowner for the veterinarian costs related to this incident. As far as I know they never did.
So now I have decided to keep storage with my veterinarian here in Spain, Vet. Dra Concha Cuetara who is the most professional in her field, she collects, evaluates, stores and transports the most valuable semen all over the world with 100% expertise. And she will never fail a client.       

Studshow at Cuetara's facilities in Aranjuez 2011, Concha Cuetara far left.
 
I am very pleased and proud to be able to offer first class breedingservices from Donoso VII worldwide! Donoso's semen has passed many tests from the TRC and Dra C. Cuetara but most importantly has now proven to have excellent fertility in the field. With these guarantees I have fullfilled my responsability as the stallionowner. I don't consider myself responsable for the status of the mare and I reckon it's the responsability of the mareowner to contract a professional enough veterinarian to do a good job with the insemination. So from 2014 and onwards the semen will be sold by dosis and will be charged when ordered. Like this I can give the mareowner the right to inseminate unlimited amount of mares and they get the oportunity to, like the danish breeders, get more mares pregnant on one single shipment!

Please visit www.vikingapre.com for info on breeding with thee fantastic PRE stallions!
We are happy to be able to offer both Donoso VII and Festivo MR internationally, two exceptional Calificado studs! Donoso is available on FAI to all breeders in Europe, USA and Australia. We distribute Festivo via FAI to all european countries. Halagador is available to mares in Spain. 
Donoso VII

 
Festivo MR

       
Halagador Cen

Monday after a great weekend with best-friend-forever-Anna, yay! We are born and bred in same town, even grew up in the same village, are trained by same ridinginstructors and our parents founded our local riding club. We went to same school and college and I never let anyone ride my horses but Anna trained my mare when I was away studying. We have been training horses under the same conditions, no indoor always outdoors enduring horizontal rain, snow and ice, and with headlights to be able to see in the dark winter, so riding here under the trees in the spanish shade and sun is just heaven for us!
We are definitely soul-sisters and how much more fun can it be to have unlimited time for non-stop chatting, training horses and doing Madrid in summer temps!?!! As you can see Donoso and Halagador are also best friends, they stand next to each other whilst being tacked up and neither says a word, ocassionally D gets bored waiting and leans over to H but just like a mate and without any fuss <3

Here me and A posing ok ok many pics but I liked them all and couldn't choose,
Two very happy and syncronized girls :)
       

 
 
So here she is, Anna riding again after a break of more or less 20 years and doing the spanish walk for the first time under the spanish sun! 

Halagador's trot extentions

And D and me 

Yesterday was time for Donoso and me to do our 3rd Prix St George. We joined our Norwegian dressage collegues Asbi (chef d'equipe, photographer) and Mette that was doing her 4rth level tests on her black PRE Rociero. We arrived friday evening and we really enjoyed stepping onto a super arena again! 
 
   
 
 
 

And I am so super proud of my horse! This time he proved that he can perform despite our limited training possibilities = round-pen and 35x20 paddock which is basically our gym since March. His halfpass, trotextentions and tempis are now rewarded with 7s! He was only 1/2 late behind on one flying change, and yes he added an extra one the finish central line alright but that's ok because his canter-work was great! Trot it is in the remaking and is not strong enough in its new form but that's ok as the rest has improved. So I am happy and D's attitude is simply the best, he's 110% with me at all times, serious, ambitious always doing his best and happy to be out competing. We had lovely temps and fresh air but it was also a serious competition with flags at half mast and minute in silence dedicated to the people and their familys from the train accident last week.
Our PSG test, we had a 62% score and winner got 66%, getting closer!
       

Mette and Rociero got a great 64% score in their first test and a second place, 63% and a third place on their second one, congratulations!
     

Thanks to our scandinavian team mates that helped me tack up and make D look smashing :)
 
Team 'Golden-Girls' with doggy-fanclub.
 
The End. That is only the beginning. 

So finally it arrived, the hot spanish summer, the cicadas are singing away and we are starting to move alittle slower under the spanish sun, today my car showed 46 degrees! 

Slowly and little by little farm is coming together, I have been training boys in the paddocks late evenings, the horses love it as it is a natural setting but I can't wait for the arena to be ready. Mares are inside during the day and outside in the night. I have been super busy preparing as we are expecting clients tomorrow, we will be touring Spain again, visit farms, prestigeous trainers and see fab dressage iberians at a prestigeous dressage competition. So I'll just leave you these pics of my 'superman' from today and get ready for tomorrow, I hope you will enjoy! 
Donoso VII enjoying the freedom in his new home

Look at it, I am going craaaazy over the colours, we said we wanted earthy colours, try this one the guy over the desk said (everytime we try a colour we have to get a whole big bucket of colour as there are no small ones for samples,.. TYPICAL spanish,.. But absolutely NOT this one,..
 
Then we tried to reason to a light and warm colour, sandyyellow, but as the bars are carriage red in combination with yellow we will have the spanish flag,.. so NO. I like grey with a bluetone to the red as it is a carriage red with lots of blue in it, BUT it was too blue and dark,..
 
We tried what they said was terracotta on the outside but,.. TOO pink!

 
So not very lucky so far with the colours, now we are back to the classical bone-white - and mandarin on the outside. Phew, colours are so important to get right, it's a matter of feeling comfortable or not.

As I have been going through a new outbreak of fibro and don't seem to get out of the route medicalcentre-stable-home (with the exception of a swedish midsummer celebration in Madrid yesterday) I am busy focusing on the positive and one good thing right now is the beginning of my arena. Little by litte and with alot of patience the finca is coming together :) 

And here a little midsummer-miracle-beauty, made in Norway by championmare Esplendida and Donoso, here 5 days old and named Antártica! She will no doubt be a lady on the catwalk of campeonas :)     

Still chilly in Madrid, still one-handed but by now I have got the leftie going, Donoso even got a work-out yesterday and I can manage most things. D also got a new booking yesterday, first one from Portugal! And he has 3 Australian PRE girlfriends now, super exciting! Breedingseason does not start until September there so we have to wait abit longer for these wonder-babies, but it'll be well worth the wait!

Here the diva living the good life enjoying his after-work

Picking out THE SPOT..

Found quite a few actually here's one..

Ok now let´s rock it for a while

Enjoying the views quietly

 
In love with my girls!

After a wonderful afternoon of riding Donoso and enjoying a relaxed afternoon Start didn't agree with me trimming his ears and threw me straight onto the new and very hard floor in a blink. I landed on my right female side - head - shoulder - wrist - hip. Got up and noticed REAL pain, noticed I had given away all my Arnica but took the horses' Arnica liniment, wrapped wrist and got on with finishing up. After some excruciating pains which made me faint I gave in and went hospital, Javier drove me which was nice. Nothing broken but got a plaster that was a relief as every little movement was painful.

So I got the challenge ge to see what I can do with one left hand and found it is actually alot, hang laundry, put in eyelenses, type this blog etc so I tried stables aswell. The biggest challenge was to give Pica her hormone treatment orally with one hand but even that went well! I am giving her progrestrone as her hormone levels might be low as she reabsorbed first pregnancy, now she is confirmed in foal with Donoso again and I hope she will keep it this time. We have icy weather here in Madrid, 6 degrees so all horses stayed in, except Donoso that I took for a walk. I am teaching him how to be outside without getting to high in energy and just relax, he always skips alittle but I told him today NO skipping was allowed and he was actually so quiet I could let him loose grazing. Not sure who enjoyed that moment most, probably me, D has never been unhappy inside his stall. And then the happy news that there will be a new Donoso PRE offspring born in Denmark next year!

The King of the finca 

Yes that has been my weekend, a quiet one with my animals. We have had sunshine and I so enjoy our new place. Now the countryside is gorgeous here, lush green fields and singing birds in the trees. I can feel peace now that I have this little spot of nature and freedom to care for my animals the way I want to. In this place it feels like we can just BE and it is just what I needed, my soul can take deep breaths here. I feel relieved when I see my boys grazing and being able to be horses.

Donoso getting used to chilling out after work
 

Start, the girls, Tico and Trueno (Javier's chestnut colt) is outside all day long. Today I saw that someone had been nibbling on Starti's tail, hmmm it looks like it's the 'Tiki-tiki' gangster that has been playing with uncle Starts Grand Prix tail over the fence. Lucky for him his mummy loves him ALOT and I am surprised I didn't even get upset.

Tico has had diarrea since he came back from hospital. He is fine, happy and never had fever or any other symptoms, just a bad tummy. I think it was the antibiotics he was given that did his stomache in so I have been giving him various things to get it stabilized like tummy protection Omeprazol, charcoal, Probimin, antiinflammatory, and a natural paste for bacterial flora. But now he's had enough of stuff he thinks (he is very opiniated and knows what he wants and does not want) and tomorrow I will get results from labtest. Vet's have been out to see him regularly, great vetservice, and of course Tico has charmed Miguel that sits down with open arms and says 'Come to daddy' when he sees him :) This vet is now my mother's (grandmother's) favourite spaniard. I don't want to treat Tico more until I know exactly what is causing the problem, I am not for giving alot of antibiotics as it is a very agressive treatment and eliminates the good bacterial flora aswell as the bad. The other option is that he is lactointolerant and has a inflammed intestine because of that. But he's perfectly happy, looking divine and his breathing is now totally normal, 30/ppm in rest. 

Doggies have their own little beds in the tackroom, Betty sits in front of gate keeping watch all day whilst Viggo is running around the fields playing with Tico and the others. Today I was lounging Start and Viggo at the same time, Vig's new thing is to chase the end of the whip whilst I wave it around and he get's it no problem. Friday evening one of the owners came around to give me a new and safe lock for the gate, a brilliant unbreakable one, nice to have considerate people around you that care. 

Hope you have had a good weekend and don't forget to enjoy spring now when it's here!