Late but interesting post

So. Sorry about the big delays between posts. I’m sorta lazy. I’ll make it up to you by making this one longish.

Anyway, Sunday the 4th. I’ll start there. It was quite the sight-seeing adventure. Mr. Held took me to some really cool places. We first went to Königswinter, where there are shallow mountains surrounding the city. On top of one of them is an old castle and Mr. Held and I climbed to it. The original plan was to take the train up there but it was closed and Mr. Held was determined to get up there. So we drove halfway and then hiked up the rest. It wasn’t so bad for me, but Mr. Held is an office man. But he wasn’t going to give up. We reached the top and the castle itself wasn’t impressive, but the view was fantastic. The old European houses nestled comfortably in the land that lay across the Rhein River. It was beautiful.

We then started to climb down the mountain. There was a little restaurant that we decided to get lunch at. Mr. Held ordered me potato pancakes (which is served with applesauce to put on top. sounds weird, but it’s really good!) and French onion soup along with an espresso. It was a great German lunch with a very kind guy. :)

We made our way to our next stop--the Bridge of Remagen. On the way there, we went across the Rhein river via toll boat which is something I had never done before.

We made it to the bridge. It is a beautiful landmark. This is where the Germans and Americans fought during WWII.

Then Mr. Held drove me through gorgeous valleys with grape vines surrounding us. The grapes were being grown for wine. It was an amazing sight. We drove until we found a small Christmas market where all sorts of trinkets and Christmas treats are sold. We walked around but didn’t buy anything. Then we went home.

It was so nice of Mr. Held to take me to see those things. I know I’m in a really special place with very kind people. I will be forever grateful for their generosity.

That week, Wilander went away. He was sold. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. :)

Last weekend I went on a road trip on my own to Frankfurt to see the international horse show. I took the hour and a half train ride and (eventually) found my hotel, which was just across the highway from where the show was being held. I got up the next morning and hurried inside the hall. It was a big indoor arena and decorated in an xmas fashion. I found my seat up in the balcony and watched the first of the Grand Prix tests. I took pictures and video and observed. It was great to see so many amazing horses and riders and muse with the possibility of me being in a ring like that someday...

After the morning session was done, I went and walked around Frankfurt for awhile. I walked for three hours window shopping and being a tourist and eventually settled down at a coffee shop where they had internet to let everyone back at home know that I was still alive. Then I walked back through the big city full of great people watching and shops to the evening portion of the show. I watched some jumping and it made me miss it. That thrill of flying over a jump on a 1000+ pound horse is not something you get in dressage. When I have my own operation going, a big part of my program will be cross training. In dressage, we ask for collection. When a horse launches over a jump, that is one of the most intense ways for a horse to achieve collection.

I also got to watch the young riders. Most every one of them made a mistake, but it was cool to see young people excel at their sport. I was impressed. There was one girl from the US who got 2nd place with a 69%!

The next morning I got to watch the Grand Prix freestyles with a front row seat. They were so amazing to watch and looked like a blast to ride! The music for each horse matched perfectly and the patterns were creative. I want to ride a freestyle so bad, it looks like a lot of fun.

The last rider I got to see was Isabel Werth. Her horse didn’t do great. He spooked and even kicked up his heels during the extended canter. But nonetheless, she got a 75%. The winning horse from Italy, which was also my favorite freestyle, got a 79%.

After that was all done, it was time to go home. The last few days of work I have been exhausted. It snowed for the first time today but only a couple inches.

Noelle and my mom come in 4 DAYS. YAY!

Wilander = :)

The days are so repetitive here. I muck stalls, lounge horses, turn horses in and out, have my lunch break, clean, etc., etc.. But every day I get handed little bits and pieces of trust. After being here for a month and a half, they have let me ride numerous ponies. But all of a sudden, I was climbing onto a horse. Not just any horse, though.
His name is Wilander. I immediately became fond of him a couple weeks ago when I walked into his stall and he greeted me with a smile and a lick. He likes to lick people. He's the color of smoke. He isn't what people would think of what a warmblood looks like; he doesn't have much of a tail and he's not what you'd call elegant because he is very round-looking (kind of like Hollywood) instead of lanky like a warmblood. But when he moves, he floats.
As I climbed on board this amazing horse, I thought maybe they were making a mistake. Maybe in a few minutes, Marion would come in and shout at me to get off her horse. But no. She came in and watched me ride him with a genuine smile. Every once in a while she would give me some advice. But holy crap. I was having the time of my life on that horse.
Unfortunately, Marion got a call in the middle of my ride about someone who wanted to come see him the next day as he is for sale. So Marion rode him for the rest of the time. But it didn't matter. I am so happy that they let me ride such an amazing horse. My thighs still burn from sitting his big trot. Hopefully I'll get to ride him again.
On Sunday, Mr. Held is going to take me sight-seeing along the Rhein river. I'm super excited. I'll make sure to blog about it. :)
16 days until Frankfurt and 23 days until Noelle and my mom come visit me! :D

11/21/2011

I’ve been meaning to blog in the past two weeks but haven’t gotten much of a chance. They are keeping me busy here. The week before last, Katrin was gone, so Peggy and I had to do everything on our own. I worked five horses a day in between turning horses in and out, feeding, sweeping, and getting horses ready for Marion. Last week was almost as busy since then Peggy was gone. Some days I even skipped my lunch break so we could be finished on time.

I have been lounging horses a lot, which I like. And I got to ride two new ponies. They are a blast to ride. Especially compared to naughty pony, who kept switching back and fourth between getting better and getting worse, so Reinhart had her sent home and we admitted defeat. I tried the best I could, but in my opinion, that pony isn’t meant for dressage. She just mentally couldn’t do it. If a horse isn’t willing to do their job but you make them, they will never be happy and able to perform up to your expectations. So I was glad to see her go and I hope she goes somewhere where they understand that.

On Friday evening, a woman who has two horses here asked me if I would like to come with her to another stable where they do vaulting. It sounded interesting, so I said yes. We went and I saw some amazing things. This wasn’t Washington County Festival Under the Stars vaulting. This was the real deal. They once had four people on a horse, stacked up high. The girls were very athletic. The barn was half gym, half horse barn. I guess they are international competitors, which was apparent because they were really impressive. I’m allowed to go anytime, so I will be sure to take pictures next time.

Yesterday was my day off. I decided to bike to the nearest tack store because my gloves are what Mindy would call “ratty”. I got there at 2:15 but it closed at 2:00. So I biked around for awhile trying to figure out if there could be another nearby since I was one on a map but soon gave up and biked to the Rheinpark shopping mall. It was enormous. It had four floors full of shops and the fifth floor was a theater, I think. I didn’t get anything, just people watched, rested, and wandered around. At around 4:30 I got back on my bike and started to make my way home. I passed by some things I remembered passing by on the way there and started to look for signs that pointed to the Skiihalle since the horse farm is right next to it. It’s the easiest way to find my way back home. I looked and looked but I didn’t find one. I biked into deadends, wrong ways, loops, and soon minutes turned into hours and it got dark. I realized I was lost and wasn’t going to be able to get back on my own. I found myself at a truck stop of sorts where there was a McDonalds. I went in and asked the workers if any of them spoke English. They all did, fortunately. They gave me a free coffee and a warm place to sit while they called a taxi. The taxi was barely big enough to fit into the car, but the driver was very nice and the bike and I made it safely back to the farm at 6:30. I looked on Google maps to find out that I had biked 10 miles. Hopefully that won’t happen again...

The weather here is really nice. When I wake up it’s somewhere around the upper 30’s and gets to the 50’s in the afternoon. I’ve been wondering when it’s going to snow. I guess the norm is around Christmas. So not used to this!

This morning was the first time I overslept. I woke up to Katrin calling my name at my apartment door at 7:15. oops. I am so not a morning person. But I made it out in five minutes and everything was fine.

This week, Josef, the stall mucker, is gone. He got a replacement, but he is very lazy. The stalls are still partially dirty and underbedded and he left a whole barn unmucked and the three of us had to stop what we were doing and quickly muck it out.

I recieved my Frankfurt International horse show tickets in the mail. I get to see Totilas! nah nah nah boo boo! ;)

In two days it will be exactly ONE MONTH until Noelle and my mom come to visit me!!! Soooooo beyond excited. :)

11/5/2011

The past few days have been a lot of fun.

On Wednesday, Mr. Schleypen decided to have me ride a new pony who had just come the day before. She is older, around 15, so we all thought she’d be an easy ride. We were so wrong.

I got on her and she immediately took off into a crazy fast walk and I struggled to hold her back. When I picked up the trot she was better but very resistant in her poll. I flexed her and bent her but she wasn’t giving to me at all. Reinhart had Katrin come in and help me. Katrin had me let her go more forward (I was holding her back) and she became a bit softer in the mouth but she was still very stiff I didn’t feel comfortable on her, so my equitation was all over the place. It was a mess. But I felt we had made some progress. The pony was surely one of the hardest horses I had ever ridden. She wasn’t dangerous, just terribly resistant in every way.

The next day Katrin helped me again. Now that I knew what I was up against, I felt more confident but we still didn’t make as much progress as I would have liked. The pony still threw her head in the air and ran away any chance I gave her.

Then yesterday I tried riding outside because it was a nice day but the pony wouldn’t have any of it. So I headed inside where Reinhart was riding. He watched me and I could tell he wanted to help me. There were some other people in the arena who spoke English and he had them translate some but I was still not clear on what he wanted me to do. So finally he showed me. Turns out he speaks English just fine. We were able to work things out with a mixture of English and German and he told me that instead of letting her go forward like Katrin wanted, he wanted me go nice and slow with her. He then had me walk on a circle and leg yield in and out of the circle with lots of flexion until she softened. This seemed like a better solution for the pony.

I’m glad Reinhart is still letting me ride her. Although she is a challenge, I feel like I can fix her with time.

Today was my day off. I slept in and then set out to explore Neuss some more. I biked for 40 minutes until I ran into a big shopping center. It was like an outdoor mall with tons of shops and stands. There was a guy playing an accordion for tips. It was busy and people watching was prime. There were countless clothing shops, cafés, fresh fruit stands, bakeries, and other assorted stores. It was a really neat place.

After wandering around for awhile I noticed it was starting to get dark so I biked home and hung out in my apartment for the rest of the day. Tomorrow, it will be a nice easy Sunday. :)

10/29/2011

This past week has been what you might expect from a working student; mucking, grooming, tacking up horses, turning horses in and out, cleaning tack, sweeping the barns, etc, etc, etc..

BUT. Yesterday I got to clip a horse. I have plenty of experience in body clipping horses, but I’ve never had to worry about whether or not it looked good. This horse hadn’t been clipped before, do he was antsy and I knew they probably didn’t have high expectations because of this, but I wanted to please, of course! :)

So I turned the clippers on and started and all of five minutes into it the clippers stopped shaving. I took the blades apart and put them back together several times with no avail and gave up and let Katrin figure it out. I was then on a roll. Since the horse hadn’t been clipped before I would shut the clippers off every fifteen minutes and give him a break. He was being really good, but the flies bothered him more than anything else and made it hard to clip with him moving around so much. So I guess the breaks were for me, too. I eventually got everything done but the legs and face and by that time the horse was fed up. I don’t blame him. We had been clipping for an hour and the blades were getting hot. But I tried his legs and he kicked my hand twice. Not hard, but still. I have been kicked one too many times to know how terrible it can be. It could escalate and I’d have yet another stitched up hole in me!

So Katrin put a twitch on him and we got the job done without too much fuss. Then I was off to do the rest of my evening routine.

This morning I got up early to go cheer on the Neuss Grefrath Reitclub team at a nearby horseshow! It was a lot of fun. They do a lot of things differently here than in the US, but I expected that. Like, for example, they got their horses ready at the trailers because there was no stalls to put them in. They didn’t wear that weirdo skirts over breeches look you see at Washington County Fairgrounds, but jeans instead. In the warmup ring, everyone goes in one direction at all time (someone asks to change directions if they want to go the other way). Three or four horses show in the arena at once (they all ride the same test and line up single file, except for halts, where they come down the centerline side by side). Even though it was a small show, there was an awards ceremony and they won prizes like saddle pads, polo wraps, and horse treats (jealous!). The levels and patterns are different. And they had a jumping portion of the show that added onto your score, but it was only for people under 21.

Our barn did really well and they all looked spectacular!

We made it back home in time for me to have my lunch. After, I went for another walk around Grefrath. I didn’t feel that I had enough time to go downtown so I stayed close by the barn.

When I got back I made some yummy risotto, watched tv, and talked to Chris and mother until it was time to go to bed. :)

Sonntag

Today was my day off so I slept until 8:30 and then woke up and finished the rest of another novel I was reading (My Name is Memory by Ann Brash, a really thought provoking book). I then made myself some breakfast, showered, cleaned my apartment, watched German television, and with nothing else to do, set out on a journey to explore Neuss.

Neuss, as it turns out, is quite small. It’s mostly made up of houses and apartments, but there were some shops I walked past. There is an aquarium store, a salon, a travel agency, a bar on every corner, a little food stand with candies and snacks, a cafe, a pizza place, and some gift shops. Although none of them were open because it was Sunday, it was good to go for a walk and see what Neuss had to offer, especially since it was particularly good weather for it.

There is also an old, enormous church. I saw that behind it there was a path and I walked onto it to discover a huge graveyard. It was like nothing I had seen before. Every single grave was well kept and beautiful. Even the oldest plots looked as if they had been there for all of a week. They were decorated with fresh flowers, stones, candles (most every one was lit), and vines. It was obvious that people didn’t forget about their loved ones buried deep in the ground. They came back and remembered and continued to take care of them even though they didn’t have to.

I ran into a squirrel while walking around the graveyard. He was a big red one, who climbed up a tree to my eye height and just sat there and stared at me. I stared back until he decided to go on his way up to his palace in the treetops. As he made his way up, I couldn’t help but smile because his grunts sounded like they were in a German accent.

I slowly made my way back to the stables, where I went back to my apartment and thought about what else a person could do on their day off in a foreign country. There wasn’t enough time to walk myself to Dusseldorf and back, so I decided that that was for next weekend. And it wasn’t time to start making myself dinner yet. So I went and talked to Jess and mother! Hooray. :)

Freitag und Samstag

Yesterday was normal except for two things. One, I got horses ready for Marion. Two, after work I went to a party with all of the girls from the barn. We went to one of their houses. Of course, they spoke exclusively in German, but I still was able to catch a drift every once in a while about what they were talking about. The food was quiche...with pork in it. And some sort of potato cake...with bacon in it. *sigh* So I was served streusel. And to drink? Wine and shots. Lol. I didn't have any, nor do I ever want to. The party was still fun though and I got to know some of the people I see on a daily basis better.
This morning I did my normal morning routine. Peggy has the weekend off so I volunteered to muck out mine and her barn, which is eight stalls. I thought maybe good karma would come around...
Turns out I was right! I tacked up Angelina and entered the arena, where Marion was riding. As I warmed up, all of a sudden a voice, in English, came across the arena, yelling at me to make my hands vertical. Little did I know it was the start of my first lesson. It turned out to be mostly on my equitation, which is good, because I admittedly do have poor equitation at times. Some things I need to work on include keeping my hands vertical, my legs underneath me, half halting with my seat more, and looking in between the horse's ears and not down to the inside. Marion was hard on me, but that's good. Those are all things that need to be fixed quickly.
We did lots of transitions. This place is obsessed with them. Why? Because not only does it keep your horse light on your aids, it shifts their weight onto their hindquarters and builds their abs. A horses abs are what make a horse lift their back. All good things. We never went around the arena once without doing some sort of transition, whether it was in-gait, trot to walk and back up, or a lateral movement. It kept Angelina thinking and building muscles. By the end of the lesson, she was rounder in her back and fluid and my eq improved. Hooray!
Then I did some other silly things, like mess around with enormous bags of carrots. Did I mention that they feed a bucketful of carrots as a meal?! Yeah. Pretty weird. It makes me giggle every time I think about it. :) Also, since we're on the subject, they normally feel hay once a day, but some horses are exceptions, and the grain looks like a mixture of cereal, some sort of mash, oats, and pelleted feed.
Afterwords I went for lunch where I ate more soup. I'm eating a crapload of soup lately. At least it's all yummy soup. And German bread is super yummy. You can buy fresh breads at the grocery store. They make it right there. So I ate all of that, sat there and felt awesome, and had a long lunch since it's Saturday. Wootage.
Then the rest of the day was pretty normal. But it was awesome. :)