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| Wish I'd had my SLR camera to take nice silouhette pictures of the mares in the paddock |
Laurie had a get together for her clients and students in late September. It was a movie night and a tour of her new facility with a little show by each of the gorgeous stallions. It was neat to meet the other riders and see more of the facility than I have at just my lessons. Plus being able to get up close and personal with each stallion is fun since I tend to keep my distance, more so with Legs since he's very excitable. I’m usually the only one at the stable when I go out for a lesson at Laurie’s, well besides Laurie of course. When I could ride on Friday mornings I often rode before or after Uschi. It was nice to have that camaraderie, and watch another lesson since I learned a lot just from observing.
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| Ponies milling around |
Meeting the rest of the riding lesson gang was neat. Laurie often talks about her other students during lessons, what worked , what didn’t, and relating the same pitfalls we’ve all experienced so we know we are not alone in our challenges and fears. I felt like I already knew everyone in a sense! We walked around the property and viewed the future paddock for Gadiel. The property is fenced but some of it is unsafe fencing or fencing that is not proper for a stallion. Laurie and Dan have been working on getting the electrobraid up for the paddocks, it's certainly a huge task!
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| Pstar bing her sweet and beautiful self |
The mares are in a smaller 3-5 acre paddock, it may be bigger I'm just guessing, that is adjacent to a larger paddock. They spend most of their time eating hay in the smaller paddock and are released into the larger one after their dinner is done. This prevents the larger paddock from getting over grazed or over run. The smaller paddock is what Laurie calls her “sacrifice” paddock. You can tell there has been a lot of hooves in this area as a lot of the grass right near the bottom of the field is pretty beat up; it’s best not to have the whole property get over run. I think Laurie has plans to rotate the paddocks to give each field relief from constant grazing and foot traffic. I would love to have that option when I buy some land!
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| I think this is Sala with Divine in the background |
After the outdoor tour and playing with the mares in the paddock we headed to the barn for some stallion loving…um that sounds bad but I mean to say we got to cuddle the pretty boys. Then Laurie brought out Legs to play in the arena and later Gadiel, I think that was the order of stallion play. Gadiel is trained to rear on a cue, I seriously think he would be a great horse for a movie set! He was gorgeous! I couldn't help but verbalize my awe with a loud "Ooooh!"
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| Legs getting some petting from everyone |
Next we headed into the house to watch a video about the history of the Polish Arabian horse. It was pretty interesting to see how many times the breed strain was threatened with "extinction". We learned about a lot of famous studs and mares that contributed to the Polish strain. The concept of the best representation of the Arabian breed was throughout the movie, it's not so important the strain. Breeders should strive for the best Arabian they can breed whether it's Polish, Russian, Crabbet, Egyptian or a cross of the strains. It's still very good to know the history. Steve and I had to leave early since he was traveling to Mississippi the next day and we needed to get sleep. I hope Laurie has these more regularly since I had a blast and would love to get to know everyone a little better!
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| Gadiel in the spotlight |
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