Equestrian: Farao is Improving

Our young horse project "Farao" is going well still. He is very social and clever and really wants to be ridden and to learn. His body is very young for his age so the joints and muscles and all are not very strong. It s difficult when you feel that a horse could do more advanced things at a young age but has not got the physical condition to do it. The solution is often to show the horse a new movement and as soon as he begins to do it, stop and reward. This way we have managed to introduce sidewards movements and turn on the forehand. Farao's flying changes are still just as lazy and heavy. The last couple of tries he only changed with the front legs. His owner probably wonders if it is all right but from experience I just keep trying occasionally, knowing that the changes always work out sooner or later. In Farao's case it is purely a matter of a very cool and calm horse with less muscles and not bothering to put in the effort because it feels like hard work. So I will just have to wait for him to get stronger. Farao is also typically uninterested in the riders leg aids. Same thing, it means work, so he does not respond very well yet. On the other hand, he can not resist his instincts, so when I carefully just tickle him on the sides in the rythm of his pace with light lower leg aids, he takes off forward anyway. This is a bit technical to do, so I'm still working on his leg response to make it easy for other riders. One day last week, the coin fell down a bit and I got a great forward free trot for about ten seconds at the end of the ride. This was in the indoor where Farao always runs out of fuel as soon as he enters it. I rewarded him a lot and wanted to establish it one more ride before giving him a rest. Lena took him out of work straight away since he was generally tired anyway. When he was brought back to work after five days he went forward lighter and more powerful than ever. The owner and I are still discussing the reason. I believe Farao got the message the last ten seconds before the break and his owner claims it was mainly the time off that made him go so well. I took some photos of Farao being ridden before the break and I think that they already show how he is more forward than on the earlier videos.

Equestrian: How does the world work?

A talented young rider educated his horse from fairly low dressage level to Grand Prix and became the flavour of the month in the country. Everybody turned to him to promote their horses. They assumed that he would be successful also with young horses. It turned out to be hard for him to calm the horses down and to control them as well as to stay nicely in the saddle. Both video and still photo are of the "Sitting Trot".

What I can not understand is how the world works when the only DVD produced lately on training for a perfect rider position and seat is by the very same rider...

Off course I'm just jealous but had I been in his shoes, I would not have experienced the beauty of young horse riding.

Stockholm views

I often spend time with my friend Ronnie in Stockholm and surroundings. He is an interior designer who turned into a boat mechanic, event rider and farrier. If I help him pull off some horse shoes, he drives us around to nice places and events between jobs. This means I save his back while I ruin mine, but that's what you do for friends(?).




One day we took the ferry over to an island called Ornö in the archipelago and had lunch at a beautiful harbour.







The Swedish shrimp and egg sandwich with mayo are not to be found anywhere elsese in the world and I had to have one. After luch we were picked upby a horse owner in her small boat to go to a remote island called Kymendö (the Swedish word for island is "Ö"). Most days with Ronnie I also get to meet my lovely god son Victor (named after me off course) and his little sausage dog "Bettan".



While Ronnie was trimming hoves, me and Victor looked at the sheep, the cows and the amazing seaview around the island.
Almost all houses and farm buildings here and in Sweden in general are red, painted with a by-product from the copper mines in the city of Falun. Hundreds of years ago the Swedish king decided to inspect his entire country. All farmers were ordered to renovate and repair their buildings and the only paint they could afford was"Falu red paint".

The only question mark with my relationship with Ronnie is that when he drives us around he also manage to talk on the phone, eat, check his calender and adjusting the stereo at the same time. I, on the other hand am off course an excellent driver...the fact that my rap sheet of traffic offences i Sweden was 1.2 m long and the Australian one is probably the same does not change anything..And Ronnie has actually had a traffic offence in his 30 years as a driver.

The other day I had lunch with Sara, who you may have met during her visit in Australia last christmas. We off course went to a fancy juice bar in the city centre with outdoor tables.
Lately the Swedes have become so desperate to become "International" or perhaps the word is "continental", that everybody has to sit outside and drink Latte and look like some mediterranian "Guido" or "Bella" or any young rich italian yuppie in designer clothes.
The problem is that it is normally far too cold so now all chairs have blankets for teh customers to use, so they stay for more than five minutes. I think his kind of defeats the purpose a bit.
This fenomenon gets worse at night, outside the discos. Owerwhelmed by the arrival of spring after seven months of ice, all the young girls queue up by the bars and discos in high heels, short skirts and lace tops. Some even smoke just to tighten their capillary veins further and really secure their annual urinary tract infection. This is off course great for all us boys but I wonder what it does to some of our muslim citizens, at least those with a different view on women.

This was the last day at high school for most Swedish kids. By tradition hte y rent a large horse carriage or a truck to take them around the city as they drink, scream and throw beer on everybody. This is what´s left of an old tradition of students marching through town after passing their very diffiult "Student Exams". At the time, if a student failed the exam no kids were allowed to throw their characteristic white student hats out the windows before thy ran out of the school building cheering and singing. I can not imagine the pressure on those failed students and their families who most likely had to vontinue their lives in a small village or so and face everybody else after for years. The student exams were removed in 1968.

Boiling anxiety

It is amazing how few single men actually cook well for themselves.
Subconsciously and out of old habit I have been dining out or using my great friends to keep me with nice food.
Cooking has always been an absolute struggle for me psychologically and I don't know why. Any time I had to cook or thought that I should do it, my heart almost stopped from anxiety. Here in Sweden my friend Lena has no intention to cook for me every day I stay at her place and I soon had to do something about it.
I went to the supermarket and asked the first housewify looking lady I could find to help me. I said it was an emergency and I had to find something easy and good to cook immediately. Plus, she aso hd to tell me how to make it. It turned out her husband was standing next to her and he was not too impressed by me. Luckily the lady had a great idea straight away. She helped me find the ingredients to fried fish with potato and a caviar-dill-creme fraiche sauce. Somehow I not only managed to cook this but the fish was perfectly fried and my anxiety disappeared as in some religious vision. It was like I had seen the light or Jesus or something. Only God knows what happened that day but I have made dinner for us a couple more times since then and enjoyed every minute of it. This is a very strange phenomena that I will have to ask all the psychologist friends and relativest hat I seem to be surrounded by.
For some reason they are everywhere in my life but that is another story...
The trick will be to learn what to stock in my fridge when I get back to Australia (or perhaps I should just get myself a whife).
My healthy diet, which started six months ago, went straight out the window as I arived in Sweden. This was serious, so I decided to give myself two weeks of Marabou chocolate, Hot Dogs with shrimp salad, Ballerina Chocolate bisquits, Licorice pipes and other Swedish delicatessen unavailable in Australia. Now I am slowly returning to the horse diet I was put on before: Water and Hard Feed (A 40 Kilo bag of Horse Mix should provide muesli for my yogurt for approximately 3 years at a very reasonable price).
I am able to go to the gym regularly and I mix my organic supplements daily too.
Sometimes I wonder; at what age is it considered that a nice health concious man who eats cabbage for lollies, pushes himself hard at the gym and continues to dye his hair, has become an old freak?

Mother is doing well

After getting worse from the pain in her legs, my mother is actually getting slightly better. She is 84 years old now and spend most of the time in a wheel chair. The walker is very hard to use for her but during the month I have seen her now, she has improved the way she walks with it. She is able to excercise with the walker for longer and she has a straighter posture now than earlier, at least when I am with her. The difficult thing is offcourse to judge how much excercise is god without damaging joints or other parts of the body at her age. Being a dedicated coach with German training, I off course don't bother too much and continue yelling at her every time she wants to quit..."Comon Mum, You can do it...you move like an old lady...No Pain, No Gain!!!.... She has removed me from her will but I think she is just teasing me and that she really like our sessions... Anyway, I am very happy to se this improvement.

Euestrian: Faraos first rides

EQUESTRIAN:

The work with y friend's 4yo warmblood Farao is going very well.

My first ride May 11 is on the video above and the owner is riding him on May 23 on the other video.

Farao is one of the few horses I have come across that does not need correction and can begin his education straight away.

The only thing that was an issue was that Farao wants to look at things a lot and then rush off forward. To make him safer I tried to address it straight away. I yelled and slapped his ears every time he took off and now after 4 weeks it is almost gone. He is a very cool minded and confident horse so he handled it well. I believe that normlly they grow out of running off more or less anyway.

Farao is still looking at things but since he stays on the track he is asked to be on and he keeps the same speed, I allow him to accellerate slightly and "half" look at things when he wants to.

Farao actually did his first clean flying change yesterday. I have tried them a couple of times per week and only got lazy-disuniting-too late back-changes, until yesterday.

We have also jumped him over low jumps succesfully, until he saw a small gate jump with strange colouring. After standing by the jump for a while he cleared it at the next attempt.

Farao is by the Westphaler stallion "Farwell" and his mother "Fine Dame" is a Hannoveraner by the stallion Fabriano.

The Trip

After over three weeks in Sweden my schedule is organized and I have finally time to work on this blog. The trip from MEL to STO went excellent since I had a full row of chairs to sleep on during the first 13 hour leg to Qatar. To fly with an Arabic airline was just as good as with any other but still, it generated some mixed feelings. The service was perfect where we got free bottled water regularly and the meals were good (probably because they were prepared according to islamic traditions). The Qatar airport was a disappointment with its location in the desert and rubble everywhere. It is a very small airport, I guess because it is mostly for passenger transit. The city lies next to the airport and is completely covered with yellow smog. I asume not many travellers would stay there. Many arab men were dressed in beautiful white traditional clothing and looked like Osama. I wondered if there are any women named "Omama". (What I do know is that the president is "Obama"...sorry)! If this technical challenge works, you will be able to see the airport and the city on the video. After the stop in Qatar it was only six hours left to fly to Stockholm. More about that later...