Halt! And stand still.

That was what we trained today with Ivanhoe

Videos!

We have had such a great time training with Ivanhoe this week. First the world champion level driver Ben Simonsen came to our stable with some other combined drivers from our area for training. We drove both dressage and the new marathon obsticles we have at our stable and it was sooooo nice to have some folks over to use our facilities. Had the best time ever just to see the other drivers drive here. It is quite a lonely hobby as there is so few drivers nearby and to most training opportunities we have always 150-400 km drive...

 

This is Ivanhoe av Friheten driven by Ben, he was such a star!

 

To get some ideas of how to start driving Thorin Ax, 3 years old,
Ben drove him long reins to demonstrate. Thorin did very well.

 

Lumina in full speed at the marathon obsticle we got 

sponsored by Svaravars Trävaruhandel 

And of course Ben wanted to try Ivanhoe at the marathon obsticle :D :D :D

Yesterday I got suddenly a second chance to training this week with Sanna Tirkkonen. Always interesting to train for different coaches as they look at different things, so got good feedback again for training as she had several things she pointed out in my driving. Ivanhoe was not as good as at home and the riding course was a bit too heavy for a Shetland with a heavy carriage.

 

Ivanhoe yesterday

So Ivanhoe had two hard work trainings this week and today I thought it is best to do shortly some long reining since it is easy and you can do different things than in driving, kind of gymnastics for the pony. Ivanhoe worked so nicely today! I had seen a video of a Finnhorse stallion Friisin Paletti doing shoulder-ins and diagonal yielding with carriage in trot, so as we have done it with Ivanhoe in walk long reining a few times, I thought why not try in trot today. Here you see on video him doing shoulder-in in trot in this direction first time ever, nice work of two newbies!!!???

After such a week you feel really inspired again!