Hello out there!
It's wonderful to have found something like the AND forum, I've searched something like this for a long time now
So.. My name is Angelika Christiansen, and I'm from Denmark (actually half polish) and I’m 17 years old. I've been riding horses for 11 years now, but about Christmas time (2008) I realized that all I did before was totally wrong (now talking about the "lovely" method of riding, where using the bit as an power tool), so now I’m following a new part with my horse
My horse, Kananka (called Kurt/Curt) is an Danish Warmblood, only 5 years old. He's a lovely and funny horse, really special XD well.. when I got him, in November 2008 he had only been ridden for 2 months, so he was a pretty inexperienced horse. He was bought from a typical show jumping stable, were it all went too fast. He seemed stressed in the beginning, he did.. "throw" is head? when riding and he did grind his teeth. He hadn't learned anything. Mucking his hooves, walking with him and so on was something totally new for him.
But then a got my dressage trainer to ride him once a week, and that didn't make him less dangerous. Dangerous because, he started to buck me of, to rear, and just run. When I walked with him, he tried to kick me and ran off. So I thought.. "It can't really be like this, to have a horse?"
And then "luckily" after a jumping lesson, he got scared of another horse and fell down on the pavement outside = a limping horse, for a hole month. It was in this month that I got much much more "clever". So for a whole month we did work from the ground and since then, things has been better and better.
It didn't take more than maybe a week or two, before Curt started to be calm and so on. He didn't buck me of, he didn't rear and he didn't run off. When walking with him, he stayed with me at all times, it was easy to stop him.. and I could continue telling about all the good stuff XD
In March I got kicked out of the riding club / stable. Because I started to ride with a loose rein. One day, the 3th of March, the chef trainer told me: “Either you bend your horse’ neck or you can pack your stuff!†then I just told him that my horse doesn’t like the bit and gets tense when I use it, “yeah but that’s not of my concern because it could just walk properly!â€
Okay fine! Then I packed my stuff XD now at another stable, the chef trainer says that my riding isn’t damaging the horse at all, and as long as I don’t hurt the horse, I can ride as I want. But.. I have to ride with “somethingâ€, meaning that I have to use a halter, without a bit is okay, but there must be “something†to control the horse.. and I can live with that
For almost a month now, I haven’t been riding my horse, because he isn’t strong enough yet, so it has been a lot of groundwork, to build up some muscles. From next week, I’ll receive lessons in The Academic Art of Riding so I’m pretty excited.
- Angelika and Curt