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Færslur: 2013 Janúar

27.01.2013 18:33

Lazy Sunday

... or not? It was a partly lazy Sunday, having an easy morning, Hjördís and her friend Sigrún playing, Ingólfur preparing lunch and me looking out of the window. Guess what I saw there! A gyrfalcon, the biggest falcon in the world. It was just sitting on the fence close to our flat, endangering some ducks in the harbour. I was lucky enough to have my camera ready and walked out with the girls to have a closer look. The falcon had a good look at us too, before it opened it's wings and took off. I'd guess it was a young female regarding size and blueish-grey colour on the upper beak around the nostrils.
After lunch we went to Saltvík to start the not-lazy part of the day. Hjördís asked to ride Farsæll and was happy to get a Yes from us. I thought it was time to teach them a bit and show Hjördís how to ride trott better. They did fine, especially after I took Farsæll on the longe and Hjördís was able to concentrate completely on what she should do. So nice to watch how much Farsæll is taking care of Hjördís.



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27.01.2013 10:43

Weekend...

... and stormy weather. At least it's not too cold so it was "just" rain and not snow pouring down and being blown horizontally over the road yesterday. The outsidehorses got their hay inside the windprotected area, so it wouldn't blow away straight away. The insidehorses were not too eager to go outside yesterday and happy when they were allowed back inside after rolling over and stretching themselves.
Saturdayafternoon 8 riders met on the ice at Kaldbakur and had a good time trying their horses. It was not as stormy there and we used the opportunity to take a few pics. There were 3 riders from Saltvík: Bjössi, Hrund and Jón Óli. Think it was Hrund's first time on ice.
In the evening the owners of the 2 new stablebuildings in Húsavík invited everybody to come and celebrate with them. We have been helping Berglind and Vignir a bit the last days finishing and of course stopped by to celebrate a bit with them. Think the last guests went home very late.
Today looks like an insideday. Too stormy to go for an outsideride, so maybe we just have a lazy day and go to the stables later in the afternoon.




Magnús and Farsæll
















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21.01.2013 00:08

Update

... no, not our homepage, just a small update on what we are doing and what is going on.
The foalmares and foals are well, eventhough their meadow looks more like a skatingarena than a place for horses. Now the motto is: move carefully and no running! That's a pitty as the foals really could use a good racetrack to get stronger and even more surefooted. Well, at the moment they are training there skills on ice. Same story at the place where our ridinghorses are. Think Kátína really is happy about having shoes with spikes at the moment. No slipping and sliding!
Our insidehorses are doing fine, List got a fancy haircut and isn't sweating as much as before, Farsæll is taking his first steps on tölt and the others are always looking forward to getting their haynets.
Yesterday we put up a huge heater, which is supposed to keep the stable frostfree, and it seems to work really fine, already increased the temperature from 5 to about 10 degrees.
After a very good ride on List (inside and outside) and a longer ride on Farsæll (yes, he has to work a bit inbetween) we went to Helluland to have a look at Nökkvi and shoe some horses. I had planned to video and photograph Nökkvi, but the conditions there are very much the same as here: ice, everywhere. So no use trying to film a young horse without shoes and spikes. And we are definitely not going to shoe a horse on it's 3rd winter to just take a video and some pics! Instead I had a look at Kiddi's herd and watched him a bit when he went for a ride with Askur, who had been at our place for his basic training. I liked a lot what I saw, Askur seems to be a really promising gelding, high and wide movements, enough power, but soft in his gaits.





Nökkvi, just looking better everytime we see him



Kiddi and Askur going for a ride
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14.01.2013 00:11

We proudly present...

...Farsæll and Hjördís! It looks like we got a new horse-rider pair in Saltvík. Hjördís has always been very fond of Farsæll, being proud to sit on his back, give him treats or just brush him. When we went to the stable on Saturday, I offered her a ride on him, knowing he'd take good care and wouldn't do anything stupid with his precious freight. It went very well, they tried walk and trott, stopp and go, left and right. Today it was easy to say "Yes, you can ride him again!" and I took a little video of this cute pair. Farsæll is only 5, but very secure and does his best to understand the signals, Hjördís is sending. She is not yet a very confident rider, her hands still shaky and unsteady and having difficulties to sit in the saddle on trott. But that's something to work on and I think, together with Farsæll we'll manage to teach and learn a lot. Hope she wants to keep going and comes more often with us to the stable.

The other horses are fine, Embla was taking a walk outside the fence, so we put her with the broodmares and foals to our "prisonfence". Hope she'll stay there. Our warmwaterpipe is obviously getting into the nerves of somebody in the new stablearea. We know it is not isolated too well, but tried our best to fix it. It is melting the ice off the way and there comes a small icefree part on the road, which wouldn't be a problem if the road was cleaned properly. Anyway we discovered on Saturday that somebody had turned off the water, which was the drinkingwater for our outsidehorses, without telling us. Now the whole pipe is frozen as we had no chance to empty it. Probably it is now broken somewhere on the way to our fence, which is unpleasant as it wasn't cheap to make it. We turned the water on, hoping it would maybe melt it's way through again, just to discover, it was turned off again when we checked in the morning. Now we opened and taped the tap. Hope whoever had his fingers on it understands that message!


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06.01.2013 17:21

What's new?

Enough to do here, so little time to write.
Þeysir is doing fine, when we got the vet to check him, he was already so much better, he could even run away. He's getting antibiotics now, 2 more days to go. He'll be really relieved when we stop catching him everyday. At least he's so well behaved, he's not doing anything stupid. Þyrnirós is always watching what we are doing and starts to come when she sees our car arrive. Today Ingólfur finally was allowed to clap her, too. We think she's going to be big and beautiful in spring when she has changed to her summercoat. At the moment she's more like a huge furball with her thick mane not being able to decide to which side to lay.
Their mothers are well, eating as much as they can, Vordís of course always cautious nobody is getting too close to her. Perla doesn't at all look like 22 and she's not behaving like that either. Always ready to show new horses their place in the herd...
The stable is filling, just room for one more horse in our part. 

Horses we are training at the moment:
Freyja frá Krossi: she's inside to refresh the things she learned last year and go on in her training.
Rökkvi frá Hellulandi: refreshing his skills and further training as a ridinghorse
Katla frá Hólmavaði: further training as a ridinghorse (think she's the secret favourite of Ingólfur)
Ösp frá Húsavík: further training as a ridinghorse
Farsæll frá Vatnahjáleigu: further training as a ridinghorse, more work on his tölt 
List frá Hellulandi: further training as a ridinghorse

The last free place is for Magnús, who is still in the countryside on holiday. Think you can imagine, that there's enough to do for us. But in fact it's better to have something to do than just hanging around and not having any hobbies!
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01.01.2013 17:28

Happy New Year

to all of you! Hope you had a safe travel from 2012 over to 2013. The weather here has been not too good, so there was no big bonfire and no big firework, I think people bought less firework, too. Short after midnight we took a drive to look at our horses, which were just calmly eating.
Today we decided to take our ridinghorses inside and move some other horses. Bjössi and Maggi came with us as they were taking inside, too. I was afraid it would be difficult to catch Flugar and Blöndal, but they just came and insisted on getting some treats. In no time we caught all the horses in the upper fence and then moved Flugar and Maggi's Glói to the lower fence, where we took Farsæll, List and Ösp and walked them back home. We had to walk on the mainroad, which was not sooo much fun as there were some drivers not taking much care about us walking there and passed rather fast. After climbing the last huge snowpiles we had to jump down on the already cleaned way up to Saltvík. I had the impression that the horses were rather happy to get inside and get something nice to eat. 
Afterwards we had a look at our mares and foals. Þeysir managed to injure himself and has a small wound on his left frontleg, which is rather swollen and he's limping. So it's vettime for him tomorrow. Þyrnirós starts to be very curious about people and came to have a look what we were doing with Þeysir. She even allowed me to clap her and got some treats instead. Amazing how big she is... Hope I can take some pics the next days.
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