All my horses are perfectly ordinary, and totally extraordinary
My horses are leisure horses, and have never won any medals. They are just normal Icelandic horses.
And yet, each and every one of them is or was extraordinary in some small way.
Just an ordinary rider
I, on the other hand, am just an unremarkable person who happens to love horses, and riding.I am not a particularly good rider, but my horses and I manage to muddle along somehow. We don't aim for great achievements, but we do create stories together. Stories of fun adventures, little successes, and small setbacks. Stories to chuckle about, and sometimes cry over - a lot of happy tears and some sad ones. Stories that will be told here, one by one.
For my German-speaking readers:
The story of my current horse's first year of training was published in Hardcover.
Helgis Jungpferdetagebuch can be had at your local bookstore.
This blog is for people like me
A blog for ordinary people who just happen to love the horses in their lives.
Here is the latest blog post:
The stars of this story
The story about those ordinary, extraordinary horses
This blog is about my life with my Icelandic horses, both past and present.
My current horse, Helgi, is best friends with my husband's horse Skarpur. Both Helgi and Skarpur will feature here, of course. They are very different in character, with Helgi being human-centered and open for every sort of new trick, and Skarpur self-sufficient to the point of stand-offishness, and very no-nonsense about everything. They're also 9 years apart in age, but they're still very good friends.
Another hero of this story is Tandri, who was my wonderful companion and friend for 11 years before a tragic accident took him from me. More than any horse I've ever met, Tandri loved a mental challenge. I taught him all kinds of circus tricks, and he loved them all. The more difficult figuring out what I wanted him to do turned out, the more he loved doing them when he finally understood the tricks.
Tandri's best friend and four-legged mentor was Sörli. Just like Helgi and Skarpur, Tandri and Sörli were fairly mismatched in age and character, and just like Helgi and Skarpur, they were best friends. Sörli gave the restless and often hyped-up Tandri a calm anchor, and in turn, Tandri protected the low-ranked Sörli in the herd, and always kept a spot at the hay for his friend.
And then there is Tandri's predecessor Morgunn, who was unfortunately only a short-term visitor in my life. Nonetheless, he left a lasting impression. I am sure that there will be a few stories about him, as well as the other four horses in my life.
And other stories
For those of you who are interested in the writing process of a non-fiction book about horses, I have some blog entries about a book I wrote about the first year of Helgi's training under my trainer Johanna Tryggvason's tutelage. Here, I talk about the ups and downs not only in Helgi's training, but also in the creation of the book.
As time goes by, I am sure other stories will be making an appearance. Even as I write this introduction, some ideas present themselves, for stories from the time before I could call my first horse my own.