Month: October 2009

I’m always greeted with a smile and hello from the great folks at The Tack Factory. Currently their offices are located in this temporary building while the construction is going on but the new offices at the front of the indoor arena appear to be coming along quite nice and sound like they will certainly be worth the wait.

It’s just so easy to feel at home around such fun and positive people. They definitely know how to enjoy life!

There’s tons of building activity going on at Stal Anky and this crane was working today to put more of the arena roof on. It’s great practice for showing and bomb proofing your horse! Again, again, again… such a great lesson today with Anky and Carrara. It’s really starting to gel now. I’m getting a super soft feel and today we even starting getting into some more schooling of the quality of gates within the half-pass, shoulder-in and flying changes. Her canter is getting soooooo super and the walk, so flipping light!!!

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I was getting ready to go out to dinner with Sjef, Anky, the family and some great folks from Australia, Sweden and the UK and Picollo was just too cute so I snapped this shot. It’s blurry but I love that he’s sniffing me! So cute! He’s having a great time and everyone seems to really like him here but what’s not to like about the best paralyzed dachshund on the planet?

I snapped this as I was walking past Salinero’s box. It was just too cute as he was hanging his head out chewing on some hay then I looked down and noticed all the hay outside his box window! LOL! Too cute!

I had the most amazing goat cheese salad the other afternoon. The people are great and the food fabulous! Yum!

I just thought this was too neat. This brings a whole new meaning to road work when you’re talking about cobblestone!

I am so glad I brought my Draper cooler and anti-sweat with me as I use them both daily after my ride. I’ll finish my cool out, untack, wash/liniment, time under the solarium and then on to a final relaxation under the cooler with the anti-sweat holding it on in her stall! Thanks guys! I have to say I love using the wraps overnight as well! Please, please consider making a sports bra from the holofiber technology!

A colleague/friend here in The Netherlands had his first PSG in Europe (having show previously and extensively in Australia) yesterday afternoon near the border of Belgium and The Netherlands. I was very excited to come and support and just spend time with some fun people and had to explain myself when I mentioned I would “come and be a good cockroach” for him.

When I competed about 4 years ago in Washington state with my first Grand Prix a super nice lady at the barn said she would come and watch. I told her it will likely not be that great as I was just hoping I could pull off the 15 one tempis and not completely screw up my passage to piaffe transitions. She quickly told me a great story about a research piece she’d read and I’ll share it with you guys here. She stated the article said that two test sets of cockroaches were given tasks to complete. One set was left to do their tasks solo and the other set had an audience of other cockroaches. It seemed the cockroaches with the audience watching performed their tasks better than the ones without the audience and there in is the cockroach theory that I’ve been using since! Thanks Karen!!

It seems that Geoff had quite a few cockroaches there supporting him in his ride and it was a very smooth first ride out showing this great gelding (PS – I think the sweetie might be for sale?!). Here’s a nice photo of Geoff and Olympic after their ride! A very nice pair that can only go up from here!

I took a day off from lessons just to give Carrara a simple walk, trot, canter hack and practice just a small amount of the major information I’ve learned the past few weeks here! With an ever busy schedule Anky had to depart today about half past two to be the “ribbon cutter” for the grand opening of a combination tack shop about an hour from Erp this afternoon. I was asking her about her clinic that evening and she said I could just ride with her if I wanted to leave as well at half past two. Sounded great to me as I thoroughly enjoyed riding along in the lorrey with Anky and Willeke to the reining competition!

Arriving about 15 minutes early I see the lorrey pulling out and thought I’d missed the ride but I ran into someone who said Anky was driving separate and would be leaving in just a few. Whew! I hadn’t miss the ride and it was really fun visiting with Anky (in between her phone interviews and business calls) on the drive up in her too cute yet a tad longer than your average Mini Cooper!

The people at the opening were wonderful. The place is called Countrymill and it was a combination of three existing companies as one was western, the other english and the third sold horse boxes and carriages. They desired to create a one stop shop and the place looked amazing. They also had a 20×30 arena in the back so people could bring their horses and try the products they are interested in buying! Nice!

Here’s the crowd waiting to get autographs from Anky…



They allowed the kids up in group and this was the first and cutest little girl I’d seen in a while. Her mom was just as excited as she was!



This picture is for Ex. I had to laugh and think of him as I rounded the corner of saddle pads and the digital camo was right there in my face!



After the opening, some window shopping (I tried on several styles of Anky apparel they offered there of course), and chatting with the nice folks we headed for a very nice yet quick dinner then on to the clinic. When the food server asked if I’d like a menu in English Anky replied “Nah, nah” so I guess I’m learning Dutch now! Haha! Good thing I’m not a picky eater. I was asked do you like fish or meat. I said both and I ended up having the fish. It was salmon and it was great! Gotta love being flexible!

Here’s Anky chatting with one end of the crowd. They had the arena with audience at each end (stands full of course) with the clinic riders in the middle.



This is Claudia and I near the end of Anky’s clinic.



Here’s Anky getting ready to ride Nelson to demo her training style to the audience after teaching 4 students.



The pony club kids engulfed Anky at the end of the clinic for a photo! Too cute!

It’s like Christmas every day at the stable. You never know what’s your going to get when you drive up and at first I was intimidated by it but this is actually like being in a show environment everyday so the horses will be bomb proof when traveling! There’s so much happening and changing daily with the construction and it’s quite exciting to watch it grow and change!



It was a great start to October riding alongside Hans Peter not to mention just watching Sjef and Anky training at the same time.



It’s a bittersweet week this week for me tho as the Danish rider, Bo Høstrup, who arrived the same time I did is leaving. He has two great Grand Prix horses and is such a kind and fun person to chat with. He’ll definitely be missed. It’s been really nice to get to know better all the girls that are working at the stable as well and everyone is so incredibly nice here! Here’s Bo after his last lesson (on this trip) with Anky.



Great lesson today as usual and they finally got the new solariums setup so Carrara enjoyed a nice sunbath after getting hosed off with (yeah the hot water is now working) a nice warm spray. This is definitely horsey pampering at its finest! I think we could easily work some heat lamps into the stable aisle back in NC tho!