The Art of Natural Dressage

Joined this forum a while ago and up till now I have done some reading and posted only once. Shame on me that I still haven't introduced myself properly , but here I am !
I simply love this forum and all the knowledge it's spreading throughout the world! I am 'drinking in' everything that's said here en am trying to give it all a place in my grey cells . Step by step I am trying to train my horses more and more in the way that's presented here, because I am convinced of the fact that a beautiful relationship with horses can only be realised if you let them take the initiative of working together. Force is a dead-end street... (and force has many faces, also faces that seem friendly but are not).

My horses... Together with my 'hubbie' Richard I am the lucky owner of eight Icelandics:

Randver, 33, red chestnut, gelding, 5-gaiter, 'retired'
Frosti, 20, grey (in fact white), gelding, 5-gaiter, not ridden or trained anymore (has a tendon calcification and rather severe sweet itch)
Birki, 15, grey, gelding, 4-gaiter, Richard's riding horse and the leader of our 'pack'
Ánægja, 15, brown (is that 'bay' in English?), mare, 5-gaiter (in my avatar), I ride her
Kría, 5, black piebald(?), mare, 4/5(?)-gaiter, we have begun training her a little, she's a real clown
Sægola, 5, grey, mare, 5-gaiter (in my avatar), I am training her, she's very intelligent but also strong-willed; a real teacher
Sefja, 3, grey, mare, 5-gaiter, our lovely 'baby'
Safír, 1, brown (bay?), 4-gaiter, he's growing up in a herd in the 'wild' until he will be 3 yrs old

Some pictures of our 'bunch':


(left to right) Randver, Kría, Birki (funny nose), Ánægja, Frosti, Sægola


Sægola, Ánægja, Kría


Randver, Frosti, Ánægja


Sefja, Kría, Birki, Sægola, Randver, Ánægja


Safír (in the middle), living free with his buddies in a wildlife reserve

I have a website, http://www.gydjulind.nl, but... it's in Dutch... However you can probably understand a whole lot of the page 'Paddockparadijs' (Paddock Paradise) by the pictures; this page is about how we keep our horses.

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Marja
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Hi Marja!

Welcome!

Oh, my, your herd is utterly adorable!!!!!!!!!

And I'm so excited to hear that we've got another Paddock Paradise person on board -- my husband and I are planning a move to land (right now I board at a commercial barn because we have just a little back yard), and I'm trying to soak up everything I can about Paddock Paradise before we go!

Yay!

Am looking forward to hearing lots more from you about all things equine!

And I love your statement on force -- beautifully put. (In fact, I think I'm going to quote you in my diary so I can remember where to find it!)


All the best,
Leigh

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"Ours is the portal of hope. Come as you are." -- Rumi
www.imaginalinstitute.com

Welcome, Marja!!

What a lovely herd you have. So great that Safír can grow up in the wild and your paddock paradise looks wonderful too. I hope you will enjoy our forum.

Warm Regards,
Romy

Welcome to ANd. You have a fabulous herd....what wonderful pictures. I look forward to hearing more about your horses!!

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Welcome

And what a wonderful herd!!!

Kind regards

Bianca

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Hi Marja,
I am even more guilty than you! I have been here a while and still not posted an introduction I will soon.
Welcome to this totally unique forum.
I absolutely love the photos of your herd and very detailed photos of your paddock paradise on your web page. We made a paddock paradise in our last place but are temporarily in a rented field at the moment so cannot do one but certainly will when we find our permanent home
I wondered about your hay "boxes" Im not sure if Ive seen them before or not but they look very interesting. Also is the pole for Frosti and his sweetitch?
All the best
Colette

Your paradise is very well planned! I love the hay feeders! They have to work at it a little and can't just eat like gluttons. Lovely!!!!

Do you cut hay from the center of the paradise, or just let the horses there to graze a little?

How cool is that! Marja´s horses get hay or grass from the center of paradise... WOW!

Oh, I love this setup of your pastures where the horses can run all the way around the pasture. I wish to have a big rectangular pasture one day where I can build them something like that, too! Wonderful paradise, Marja.

hi Marja
nice that you are comming over here.
So good that there are also icelandic owners who do different kind of working such as AND with their "ponys"
welcome

inge
who owns just one icelandic, so have a very good strength to keep it by one *LOL* but have a shetty
so i mini icey hahaha

Welcome Marja,
I hope you'll love this forum, I think you will!
I just read some things on your website and it really sounds like you live in a paradise. The beautiful path, the paddocks, the pasture, the horses (I've always had this thing for icelandic horses, they look like life is one big party for them, love it!), your thoughts on training, enz... WOW! I'm really looking forward to read about you and your equine friends.

I'm glad you joined us
Kind regards,
Els

WOW, your reactions really give me a warm feeling, thank you all!


@Colette: Frosti probably loves it the most, but all our horses use it. After all they are all itchy now and then . The great thing of these poles is that a horse (even one that suffers from sweet itch) can rub his body against it as much as he likes, without hurting himself.


@Karen: we use the hay feeders mainly in winter, when we're out of grass. We fill them twice a day (morning and evening) and they are never empty, so you're right, our horses are busy all day and in fact don't eat all of it at once, but take many breaks during the day. We harvest the hay for the winter from our own land, but in summer the horses can graze twice a day for 2 or 3 hours with strip grazing (YAY, food from the center of paradise !). The rest of the day they fool around on the paths to pick a blade of grass here and there.


Hi Inge, are you on 'IJslanderforum' as well? If so, what's your forumname there?


@Els: yeah, my thoughts on training sound nice, don't they . I can't always put them into practice myself yet, but it helps to have them. I feel like I'm on the threshold of a new 'era' in my training, it's like a plunge in the deep. I'm not very experienced yet, but am beginning to get the feeling of it. I work a lot with clickertraining (use my voice, "Ex!") which works amazingly well!

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Marja
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Welcome, Marja. I will be following your writings with a lot of interest - I think Icelandics are very special.

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Glen Grobler

Words that soak into your ears are whispered...not yelled. Anon

Oh, Marja, I just finally looked at your page on the Paddock Paradise and your photo album.

Wow! This is so helpful! Thank you!

Best,
Leigh

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"Ours is the portal of hope. Come as you are." -- Rumi
www.imaginalinstitute.com

What a super pictures of your herd, and how free and lively they look!

I really love Icelandics, they're just the big brothers of Blacky and Sjors, also look like wild boars in the winter (but a lot more elegant in the summer ). And they just look so natural and like how nature intended horses to be. Forgive me my rambling on, but they are just so beautiful...

I'm also very, very, extremely curious to see if it's possible to train gaited horses at liberty and actually improve those gaits. Lots of forummembers already improved the trot, walk and canter of their horses and collect it and make it more balanced, but every Icelandic trainer I know who is into natural horsemanship or groundwork, still says that you have to use reins in order to get a good tolt or telgang (sorry, don't know the english word ). And the competition horses I have seen were ridden with quite a strong contact through the reins, as if the riders held the head up in order to give the frontlegs more space (that's how one trainer explained it to me).

It would be so interesting to see if the same could also be done without reins! But I don't know a single thing about those extra gaits, so I'll just wait and see.

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New horse book: Mandala horses!

Never stop making mistakes! Natural Dressage

hey Mirjam i did not know that, that you were interested in that.
I have my horse never ridden with a bit, so your chance to see something...
he prefer trot and do now some very slow tolt.
I am trying now to start teaching the tolt through collect the horse in walk with my seat, not hands always a long rein. I make some progress very slowly but there is some difference comming now.

But most icy people wanted a quick reaction the same as the "normal" horse world, so thats why the people have to pull the reins sit awfull far backwards on the saddle to pull down the back to try to lift up the front.
have some terrible pics from the Landsmot this year from people who sitting far backwards in the saddle etc. So not very nice for the horse, but no-one seems to bother that, its normal...

Thats one of the reasons that i almost never go to such events. Can't see the pain from the horses.

Marja
no i do not like the "ijslanderforum" just read once a year?? because someone tolt me that they have a topic about bitlessriding then i read some topics and leave quicly