Gullbarr

Here´s Annelies Gullbarr. He´s a "Nordsvensk" trotter wich is similar to a lighter drafttype percheron or belgium. The breed was the prefered choice for farmers all over scandinavia in the 19-20th century. Small and manouverable enough to work in the forrest and plowing the fields, they also served as transportation to and from church on sunday´s. A race againts the neighbour heading home from church or with the sleds on the lokal ice-covered lake, had the old timers breeding for speed and good gate aswell. Later they devided the breed in a work type and a race type.




This guy was a pretty decent race horse in his day earning apr. $36.000. Annelie trained and raced him in his latter years before giving him away as a riding horse after Ida was born and there was not enough time for him. He was a really pleasant horse to be around, you could use him for justabout anything. I rode him some, packed with him and drove of course.

One pretty funny moment in retrospect, was a Midsummers eve, we were invited to a dinner with my folks and as alway´s running late. I had changed in to nice linnen pants, clean white shirt and some pretty fancy Italian shoes. We were set to go and only had to get a few horses stalled up for the night. Everything went great until it was time for Gullbarr. The darn horse wouldn´t be caught and to make matters worse, he didn´t want me to catch any of his buddies either! He kept chasing them away just as I was about to get the halter on. He had a ton of fun and was just being obnoxious as hell.
Looking at my watch I realised we were running more than a little late and I just lost it. Ran in to the barn, got my rope and headed out in the pasture. Now, summer in Sweden means LOTS of green, plenty of bush and a bunch of Stinging Nettles (brännässlor)!! There´s also a whole lotta manuer in a pasture as I was about to find out.


Anyway, steaming, I head out there swinging my rope, letting it fly and catching the delinquent!! I hadn´t really thought any further than that, so when the happy fellow, fullofbeans gets caught, he just takes off, charging through brush, Nettles and manuer. Me, the nimwhit holding the rope, won´t let go. Now, there´s a limit to how fast you can run in Italian shoes, and we reached that point pretty quick! I tried to dig my heels in and just lean back on that sucker, with the result of him pulling me like a waterskier on the end of that rope. Finally we hit a bald spot on the ground where nothin grew and I got pulled out of my now not so shiny shoes. I tumble to the ground and come to a not so graceful stop in a patch of nettles. I got up, looked down and saw I now had on a linnen camoflage outfit and no shoes! (This was a few years ago, but I think that horse is running around with my rope around his neck still. I think he´s still laughing too.)


Did I learn anything from this incident? Appearantly not as I´ve done the same thing a couple of times after that. Usually I let go though, when I realise my mistake...



He is a darn cool horse though, and we liked him very much.