Easter update

Fillies
Easter´s come and gone and we did get a lot of work done with the horses. Worked Brady on the cutting machine as you saw. Worked him yesterday on the Highlands too. Boy them suckers run now that the snow´s gone! He did good again and we were able to work from a distance. Last year he needed to be up there and have the cow in is face to really put in the effort. As soon as the cows were out a bit he lost interest. Yesterday not so! We worked one steer from 25 yards out and he was focused and on his toes all the time.
Avenir



The fillies have been handled some during the weekend. Longeing, trailerloading and will have a "pedicure" today. They are really good to be around and work. Molly is showing the same great qualities as her brother P.J. Calm, easygoing and a very quick learner. Cat is a bit more high strung. Or maybe just more normal come to think of it. Molly and P.J. are exceptions I think.


Their mama Peppy is looking more and more like a "Hippo" and moving like one too! She´s due April19, but I wouldn´t be surpised if she foals earlier. Her bag is filling and she´s starting to show the "signs".

Speaking of P.J., or Pistolero as he´s called now, he´s been started under saddle by Styrbjörn and he´s really, really high on him!! Feels really good to hear and though I knew when I sold him he was a good one, it still makes you proud when they do good.

Pistolero

Love this time of year when the sun is getting warmer, kids are full of jump and bounce. Even the cats spend more time outside than in the barn.

Ida handstand (or something...)
Keso n Tiger

Brady and Norsten

Annelie got the camera out to take some pics for a new article series I´m doing for Lucky Rider, a Swedish western horseman type magazine. It´s about the bridle horse process and the first part covers the Hackamore. Will let you know when it´s out.
(I really like this set up, 5/8" 16plait bosal with a 3/4" 6 strand mecate)

After the photos for the article were taken, she got some of me and Brady playing with Norsten, the cutting machine.



(Could use longer pants...or shorter legs, I guess. Thank god it´s not a beauty contest)

(He´s got a serious "motor", no?)

(I know, Norsten looks lame in front. Vets coming...)
It sure feels like he´s getting better and more distinct in his stops and turns. He´s never going to knock people dead with his athletisism and catty quickness, but as long as he has the fundamentals down he´s going to be ok I think.




As you can see he´s using his hindquarters more in his stops now and not bouncing around as much. That´s the key to keeping his possition on the cow and turning over his hocks.




We´ve still got aways to go but he feels really good considering the limited time we´ve spent working on theese things.

(You did good, pard...)

We´re Getting there!!!

The snow is actually melting away!!

The horses are finally out of their ski-boots and are putting on cleats as we speak! The pastures are more of a greenish brown than fluffy white too.
Pastures

The arena is ridable again and I dusted of Norsten, the pro-cutter, and took him out for a spin. Brady did good considering it´s been awhile since our last go. A bit pushy so we took things really slow and easy and worked on the basics, stop, draw and turn.

Arena

Old pic but same deal

Finally,
seems there was a clinic down at Hanaskede that turned western again this weekend. This time the fellas had a cow jump through the glasswindow separating the café from the arena! Worked a few to exhaustion aswell, Way to go boy´s! Keep it up and we´ll soon have the government banning working live animals. That way we could save some on the cattle fees at the shows though!! Nationals working the cutting machine, wouldn´t that be something!!

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.

Trolltapp

This guy was a very special horse with the odds stacked against him from the start. I´ll leave you with a bunch of pictures as he ment a lot to us and still do.


Standardbred trotter born in 2002.
Sire: Tap In dam: Rosatrollet.

We got him from his breeder as a yearling in the summer of 2003. He´d fell over and hit his head during the winter as a weanling and had been held in a boxstall for 6 months. His owner was a kind, elderly gentleman but with a disoriented colt full of energy he couldn´t handle, so he just kept him stalled up. His coordination was off, his head tilted to the left and as you can see in the picture his "hat" was on crooked.


The first thing we did was have his neck, head and back x-rayed to make sure there was no structual damage to the skelleton. That was one condition for us taking him and the breeder complied.



After the x-rays came back clean we concluded that the damage was probably neurological. We hoped that by letting him use his body and muscles the damaged nerve-ends would be stimulated and hopefully heal some. We let him out in a paddock and boy did the little horse run. After the first wobbly, disoriented steps, he soon got to trust his body again and just went tearing upp that paddock!! Both me and Annelie had tears in our eyes when we saw just how happy the little bugger was to be let out again!

Trolle let out for the first time in 6 months

After a few weeks he was stedy enough to be let out with the other colts and that did him even more good. He got to play like the rest of them and by the following winter the only thing wrong with him was that tilt of the head and his stooped ears.






One pretty funny moment was when I was out in the pasture one morning with the camera, trying to get some pics of the horses with the sun rising in the background. All of a sudden I hear Trolltapp coming, full throttel, on a ridge heading right to the spot I wanted them. When I raised my camera to take a wonderful picture of a horse flying with the rising sun as a backdrop, he stumbled and fell and came crashing down, sliding to a stop in a cloud of snow right smack in the middle of that sun! He got up, shook of the snow and took of again. That was Trolltapp in a nutshell!






By early spring it was time to break him to drive. He was a high energy, possitive horse but a bit studdy, if you just took your time with him and was deliberate he was fine though. Everything was going good and on schedule. He was in the speedcart and had been jogging for a month or two when tragedy struck again.



We had a pretty bad storm early that summer. A bunch of big trees fell all over the place. One of them in the colts pasture. Before we had time to cut it up and remove it, the little horse got his foot caught way up in the rootsystem of the fallen down tree. None of us were at the stables when it happened and a neighbour saw the horse stuck and called Annelie right away. When she got there the horse had fallen down with his hoof still stuck way over his head. Another neighbour showed up with a chainsaw and they were able to cut him loose. The vet was called emediately but it took a few hours to get to our remote location. In the meantime he was put in his stall and given some painkillers to relieve him somewhat.

When the doc got there and started looking at him he quit his examination after finding his elbow broken in three places, not much use continuing...

He was put down then and there.

Still makes us sad thinking of that brave little horse...

A lookback...

Thought I´d pass the time `till the snows gone and we can get to more fun things around here with a look back at some of the horses we´ve had here over the years.

Not in any particular order of importance, height or number of bitemarks left, I´ll start this odyssée with Laritz Fighter.



I bought Fighter from a family friend for an astounding 10 sek ($1.50 ) in 2000. He was a 5 yo standardbred trotter who had pretty much failed on the racetrack. He´d never won a race and been to 2 different trainers. He had some problems with cross-firing (hitting his backlegs with front) and didn´t really want to be a racehorse. He was pretty frail mentally to begin with too.



At that time I worked alot with trotters (the main equine event here in Sweden) helping trainers with problemhorses and such at the track here in Stockholm. I broke Fighter to ride and didn´t really have any goals with him other than to make a decent saddle horse out of him. He stood 16.2 or there abouts and was pretty stout for a standardbred. He came along pretty nicely from the get go, and we got over some of his kinks, spookiness, trail freight and stuff.
working him in the indoor at Solvalla racetrack.

Later we moved the horses to a new farm were we had an abundance of pastureland and we let him out over the summer with the mares. Boy did he get beat up that first week! Gelded at 4, he was your typical boring gelding without any attitude or much personality. After that summer with the mares, he was back to being a stud again! He was full of life, alert and had developed a possitive attitude towards everything.

Milking-time

Moving the horses to another pasture.

I started working the cows alittle, some roping and wrangling the other horses. He really liked it and that fall I started working him alittle with an eye on the track. We had a great, sandy stretch of ranchroad about a mile long ending in a cul de sac. We started loping intervals with him there twice a week. And mixed with a lot of trailriding and jogging he got in great shape. Annelie did a great job of shoing him to keep him from cross-firing. She flipped the front shoes and put them with the opening forward and cut of some of the toe. This helped him and gave him a quicker rollover in front and thus clearing the back legs.

Early 2002 he was ready for a comeback on the track. We started him in a comeback race at a smaller track. They looked at me kinda funny when we showed up wearing boots, spurs and chinks. And just shook their heds in disbelief when we warmed him up with some loping and flexing exercises on the speed track, next to the racetrack in a stocksaddle and hackamore.

We had a catchdriver drive him in the race for us and I think he thought we were kinda exotic.
The horse did really good and though it was a handicap, Fighter starting 20 meters behind the others as he had won some money before, he managed to go clear around the field and win the race by a quarter of a length. He hadn´t raced for almost 2 years and I just couldn´t believe it! He won!

Laritz Fighter´s win!(nr 10)

We started him 12 times in all that year and though he didn´t win any more races, he set a new record and placed in 8 of the 12 races! The last two starts though he showed he didn´t want to race anymore so we retired him permanently from the track. In total he made 36 starts (12 for us) and placed: 1-0-6 he earned 108.150 sek ($15.000).
After a race at Eskilstuna (that´s Ida in Annelies harness)

He stayed with us as my saddlehorse for awhile and then I gave him away to a good home on the condition he was never to race again.