How to ride an Icelandic Horse

Today (Monday, Jan 18) was a really wet and rainy day so I didn't ride at all. I worked on some school this morning after we came in from doing chores and will probably be doing some on Wednesday because Annette and Bruce will be gone and I won't have anything to do.

We went to the Montery Bay Aquarium, but I don't know what to write about that cause almost all aquariums are the same, aren't they? There was cool stuff there, and I learned some new stuff about ocean life.

We picked up our travel mugs at Petrogliffs and they turned out really good! Annette put a horse on hers and it is so cool. I'll put up a picture of them when I get some taken.

Today we went for a walk right by the ocean because Annette wanted to show me what the ocean looked like after a big storm. Then after that we went to a bakery called Emilies, which was really good. We both had Blueberry cream cheese fold over things that were awesome.

Later, we drove up to the UCSC, (University of California, Santa Cruz) also known as Uncle Charlie's Summer Camp:) Once we were done she took me to her beach house to see how the construction was going. One whole wall was pretty much falling down! She said that if you touched it or if a gust of wind came the whole wall would sway. They got is 5 months ago as a fixer-upper--it'll be so nice when it's fixed up.

For those of you who are interested in horse stuff, I'm going to describe how I'm riding and the cues we use here. Most people think of riding as either English (saddles without horns, black and white uniforms, traditional and precise--think about Olympic dressage for an example) or Western (saddles with horns, lots of leather, athletic-fast-moving games--think of rodeo horses for an example). Icelandic is neither. Icelandic horses have differnt gaits than other horses--the walk, trot, canter are the same, but there is another gait called the TOLT that has the same footfall beat as a walk, but can go way faster than walking. Icelandic horses also have a fast gait called the flying pace (not something I do yet!). Icelandic horses are very smooth and comfortable to ride. They are smaller (and furrier) than other horses, and are extremely sure footed. There are no natural predators in Iceland so the horses are curious, calm and gentle. They don't freak out easily and are very comfortable around other horses, even in confined areas.

I've only ridden Kydee's horses, so I was a little bit curious to see how I would do at communicating and cueing new horses. It's been FUN!! I'll put up pictures of Annette's horses when I get them taken. Annette has a large track and a round pen where we'll ride.

It's important that you need to know that Annette's horse are trained for voice command. So walk is Fett, like feta cheese, trot is Brokk, you roll the "r" and don't linger to long on the "o". Tolt it just clicking your tongue, it's not Icelandic but it works, and finally canter is Schtuk, it sound like the word stuck but put a "shh" at the beginning instead of the harsh "stu" sound.

To warm the us horses up we first bring them into the center of the track. We work on bending and flexing and warming up. We do serpentines and figure eights, circles, shoulder in's and shoulder out's, then we go onto the track and walk a couple of rounds both ways. After they have got a good walk and head position we move on to trot. We trot a few rounds both ways until the horse, again has a good head position and is moving with ease and good rhythm.

The next gait is either tolt of canter depending on the horse. We go from trot to canter on Giefa (Gieva, said like the word guy with a "va" at the end) who is a little bit harder to get to tolt. On Mosa, pronounced like it looks, we go from trot to tolt because she gallops instead of canters:) So we need to work on slowing down her canter to where she can be relaxed and in no hurry to where she is going (which is just in circles around the track:).

The last horse that I ride is Hekkla, also pronounced like it looks. Hekkla is the horse I ride when Ashley, Annette's barn manger's daughter comes to ride and we need to pony or carry alone on another horse. That sums up what I've been doing for riding, I'll be doing more and riding some other horses, but in the round pen, which is to slippery right now because of the rain. Now you know how to ride an Icelandic horse:D

I'm going to start a shutterfly or picassa account so you can see all of my pictures. I haven't taken many yet, but will get out with my camera this week.

Talk to you later!