Kvicka Nickan

Standardbred, mare born 2005.

Nickan was one of those "here, you can have her" horses. She kinda got lost in the shuffle at the breeders´ and she gave her to Annelie as a 2-yearold. A stikingly beautiful filly, built like a stud with plenty of size on her, pitchblack with grazeful moves. We started her handling, driving and working her in the roundpen. But as with most of our projects we just didn´t have the time...

After putting her in a cart and jogging her all of last summer, she got spooked and threw Annelie and took off in to the woods, cart bouncing behind her. She didn´t get seriosly hurt, but was shaken and we had to start over with line driving and such before putting her in a speedcart again.

Annelie finally surrendered this fall and leased her to a trainer in southern Sweden to give her more of a chance. She´s doing great down there and should, if all goes well, be able to qualify and start this summer. She seams tallented enough, and if she holds up she should have a shot at some money on the track.

Calendar

Be sure to check out the calendar presented on www.4corners.se (linky down on the left) It will be presented month by month, just to keep you hangin...

All the holliday´s and such are Swedish but much of the events and stuff are US and International.

Brady

Quarterhorse, gelding born 2003.

Tender Reply aka "Brady" is one of those horses you love one day, and just want to tie to the railroadtracks the next! We´ve been hangin out since he was two and it´s been "a one step forward, two steps back" deal from the start. He´s pretty heavy linebred on Skippers´King, in manys opinion the best son of the great Wiescamp legend Skipper W. He goes back 4 times to "the king" and one time to his full sister Skipperette. He´s a powerful horse with a lot of grit and I´m pretty sure I could run him through a brick wall if I asked him to (It has crossed my mind some day´s...)

He relies more on his power than on athletisism and style but shows flashes of that too at times. He´s got a studs mind and temperament, though he was gelded at three. When you work cows on him he shows real interest and some ability, but as for the reinwork...
Brady on a cow
To be fair though I think we kinda rub eachother the wrong way, this is a horse that really tries my patiens and I know alot of times when we have our meltdowns, it´s on me as much as him. On his good day´s he´s a great, great horse with a big heart and serious try, the bad ones?...see above about the traintracks...

Still, if I look back at our years together we´ve come pretty far considering the limited time, and lack of arenas, cows and modern training aids at our disposal. In our part of the world the ground is either frozen or covered with snow 5 months of the year, so we do our training out in the pastures or the little schooling pen we´ve got set up. He´s in the two-rein and doing decent. We go back and forth though between bosal, snaffle and the two-rein as he stops paying attention if I keep him in the same rig for too long.

Anyway, the few times we´ve been on the road he´s been excellent and performed admirably. We showed in a Herdwork schooling class for the first time ever a couple of weeks ago and he did really, really good. So the goal for 2010 is to show him in a regular cowhorse class and take it from there...

At grandma´s

Spent a few day´s at Annelies moms place up north, cold, even more snow than at home but really beautiful!! Looked at a few ranches for sale up here. You get a pretty nice spread for about the same monies as you´d get an outhouse for back home, amazing. It´s a mountainus region with thick forrests, steep valleys and rivers. Really pretty but some 300 miles from what we call home now...

Ida playing around in the snow with one of grammy´s dogs Vicki

Merry Christmas!

Justa Bita Pep

Quarterhorse, mare born 2001.

Peppy joined our band in 2008. I bought her sightunseen from Kenny and Michelle Scueller at the Veta Grande Ranch, Il, in March that year. She was in foal to Kennys stud Silver Royal pistol, an unshown son by Smart Little Pistol. I got a 3 in 1 package as she was bred back to Pistol before being shipped over here. The shipping deal is was a dissaster and to long of a story for this blog but lets just say I wont be using the services of Ingstad &co anytime soon!!!


Peppy is by Bad Peppy Lena, a Peppy San Badger stud who earned $40.000 in the cutting pen. I liked her breeding and boy has she given us some nice foals. The are very good minded and their looks...I couldn´t ask for anything more! Our first foal by her came at her side from the US. A gray colt we named Ima Peppy Pistolero, the second foal was a little filly Ida promtly named Molly.

She´s in foal to double bred Royal Blue Boon stud Peeka Pep, by Peptoboonsmal-Peek A Boon, by Smart Little Lena-Royal Blue Boon!! Peeka Pep´s oldest are 4-yearolds and he has already thrown 3-Futurity finalists from a very limited number off offspring. We are very excited about this one.

Peppy is a really sweet mare but it took a while for her to get acclimated. She was pretty withdrawn and not one to come up and be petted. She´s more at home now though and seems to be very happy and content in the mare band.

Fiffilina

Shetland, mare born 2002

Ida´s first horse Fiffilina is a cute little bugger. She´s also a very gentle and kind pony who let the kids do justabout anything with her. Not the best ridinghorse in the world as she pony´s up at times, refuses to move, dives at the tuffs of grass by the road and just not all that willing.

You better watch her when opening gates to her turnout or she takes off like a rocket! Likewise If there´s no power in the fenceline. Food´s her middle name and when she takes off you know you´ll find her in some other horses box stall eating their grain.

She´s a sweet little horse though and we´ll never part with her.

Now, that´s Cowboy!

Did some playing around with the Highland cattle yeasterday! It was getting really dark so the pics are a bit...


Had a lot of fun cutting and holding them in the snow. Annelie did great getting any pictures at all in the dusk.(You cant really tell by the photos how dark it really was!) Brady was a bit fresh as he´s been mostly off after getting home from the show two weeks ago.

He´s enjoying the cowwork though. The Highlands are a funny bunch though as they don´t have much of a bubble, but once you enter it watch out, Stampeede!!! They have a lot of run and it was hard getting Brady of `em as they took off.

Spanish Sue Reed

Quarterhorse. Mare born 1994.

"Mexicali" is one of the sweetest horses I´ve ever been around! I leased her from my dear friends Göran & Marianne Larsson when they were downsizing their broodmare band. The plan was to breed her to cutting stallion Wild Thing DNA. I wanted a cowhorse, and really liked Mexicalis looks, the graceful, floating way she moved and her good legs and bone. Her pedigree is really quite intriguing with a damside that goes back to some pretty great, albeit "old time" horses. That, coupled with the modern, super cutting pedigree of Wild Thing is something I really wanted to base my breeding program around.

We had some bad luck on our first try to get her in foal as she got seriously hurt and we were very close to having her put down. Fortunately, Annelie convinced me to give her one more chance and we took her to a third or fourth vet who suggested a special treatment. It all worked out and with the final doze of Wild Thing DNA seemen we got her in foal. Last Year (on my 40th birthday) I got a call from Göran and he told me he and Marianne had descided to give the mare to me outright. Thank You so much guy´s!!

She came down with a sorrel, rabiciano filly this year who´s getting better and better looking by the day. Mexicali also is an outstanding mother! Not only does she care for her own offspring in an exemplary fashion, she also takes all the other weanling foals under her wing. She´s the last mare we remove from the foals as she really keeps the weaned ones feeling safe and calm.

Elton

Gotlandsruss. Gelding born 1987.

Our most recent addition Elton, is a Gotlandsruss. The descendants of the horses the vikings brought to the island of Gotland of the coast of southeastern Sweden, are a hardy little pony used for just about anything. They are still raised in big herds at Lojstahed, Gotland in a semi wild state.


Elton is a 22-yearold gentleman Ida got from a ridingschool a few months ago. He has that "been there, done that" attitude you crave in a kid horse, but at the same time he has plenty of go. We spent the first few weeks stopping and backing just to make sure Ida could handle him and find the brake if she had to. Now they trot, lope and change leads with ease and we´re going to introduce some smaller jumps for them to fly over.

In the barn!

Thought I´d do a little more in depth presentation of the horses at the ranch.
We´ll start with the King:

Avenir
e.Fakir du Vivier-Qriccolina
French Trotter.Gelding born 1987 in France. Starts:102 24-19-12 2.039.000 Sekr($270.000)


He came to Sweden from France and to our premiere Trotthorse trainer Stig H Johansson as a 2-yearold in 1989. Annelie was working for SHJ at the time and got Avenir in "custody". He was known as a stayer type horse on the track who never got tired. He could go three-wide over a two mile race and still beat the competition.

A great, great horse! Annelie and Avenir camped together for 10 years at Stig´s before he put his harness up for good and the owners gave him to Annelie as a gift. He´s been with us ever since. He´s a great individual and he really earns his keep. We lend him to mentally challanged kids during the weekends and hollidays and they use him as a pony horse. He takes great care of them and would never do anything foolish. Just mosying along. When Annelie climbs aboard though he´s two again and I guess, never broke! He also gets to school our weanling colts and teach them a thing or two about life, manners and who´s the boss.

More Winter

As I said yesterday we´ve finally gotten some SNOW.
Here´s what it looked like this morning
.
This is the little rascals winter pasture, the barn in the backround. Spanish Sue Reed or "Mexicali"is still their Nanny. We´ll move her to the other mares next week. She´s great and really takes excellent care of all the weanlings. The other day she had Cat (her own foal)nursing from one side and Molly nursing from the other. The other two were looking for somewhere to nurse as well but she only has two teets!

Winter pasture

Winter!

This is what it looked like at the racetrack last night! I was working, photographing the races. It was cold, windy and this white stuff all over! Seriously, my state of the art camera with it´s autofocus was going nuts trying to find something to focus on. It aint that easy to begin with trying to determin the winner in a race as they´re heading for home, going 50 mph! With the flurry of snowflakes infront of the lens, the camera didn´t know what to focus on, snow-horse-snow-horse...had to shut it off and go old-school with manual focusing!


Feel bad for our horses at home in weather like this. snow is fine, cold is fine but when you add hurricane strength wind to the mix they´re really not that thrilled!

I´ll try to get some pics from the ranch up this weekend, should be some pretty Chrismassy stuff.

Rockin W wins the Futurity

Rockin W
Well looks like it´s a Dual Rey year! Rockin W and Tony Piggott won the finals with a remarkable run scoring 229! Second was Yadacat with 226. The stallion, by Dual Rey-Boon San Kitty, makes it a futurity double with Reymanator winning the NRCHA Futurity in september. Of the finals 28 horses, 7 were by Dual Rey. Of course you also find the usual suspects, High Brow Cat(6) and Peptoboonsmal (3), well represented. Some pretty descent mamas had offspring in the finals too: Boon San Kitty LTE $565.000, Chiquita Pistol $550.000, Nu I Wood $427.000, Playguns Desire $124,352, Moms Stylish Pepto $117.000, Catsa Movin $100.000...speakin of Catsa Movin her Peeka Pep colt Peak Easy placed 14 with a 214,5 and brought home close to $60.000.

Ima Peppy Pistolero saddled

Saddled the long-yearling P.J. for the first time today. He tried it a littlebit. No major blowups just a few bucks and then he was cool with it. It was my old slick fork wich is fairly small with both cinches snugged to let him feel it and get accustomed to `em. He´s got such a great mind and nothing really fazes him.

The Peeka Pep colt Peak Easy made the NCHA Futurity Open finals tonight. Thats two years in a row with a Peeka Pep in the final. There´s some pretty stiff competition though with Cats Hitman leading the charge. He scored 224 in the semis and the colt by High Brow Cat and out of Smart Lil addition looks really strong.