Monday 5 November 2007

One day, two horses

Yesterday I visited a coule of friends in Alentejo and revisited a yard where I had been many years ago.

Hebraico the horse I rode so long ago was still there, older but in very good shape. He is a true gentleman.

I had the chance of riding two different horses: Nobre (Noble) - in the morning and Herodes – in the afternoon.

Nobre is the Yard keeper’s horse. A typical Lusitano stallion with the oldest Lusitano horse physical outline. Very round shaped and very easy to work in collected movements.

This horse peculiarity is that he only started cantering at 11 years old, because he is mainly used for driving, so his canter is still very unsettled because he didn’t had the chance yet to give it a really good stretch.

First I rode him in the indoor school to see how we would go with each other. He is normally ridden in a Pelham but as soon I started I had to give up using the curb, and ride only in the snaffle rein. The Pelham is a waste of time on that horse!

He is a little cold to leg aids, but that also got better during our short workout.

Fantastic extended trot… disgraceful transitions from trot to canter, but he is so easy and honest that in the end he was already cantering to the leg aid.

To see how good he was I even tried a little Working Equitation / TREC trick that is open the gate of the outdoor school, get out, and close it… all done mounted. And he didn’t stress a bit!

And to a perfect ending I took him to the gallop track (1700 meters) and off we went … it was absolutely great and I think he enjoyed as much as myself!

What a nice horsey! I’ll keep him in my good memories!

Herodes is also Lusitano and stallion. He is about 18 and when we look at him we can feel that his life wasn’t always happy. He is black and he must have been a very beautiful horse when young.

We just took him for a hack with his long time companion Hebraico… and these two oldies were really on a Springtime mood… showing themselves off to the mares and competing with each other!

It was a pleasant moment, especially for them and the landscape was gorgeous!

Unfortunately this time I didn’t have my camera with me, so… no pictures!

2 comments:

Funky MeerKAT said...

Lucky you, getting to ride two Lusitanos in a day lol. We would be lucky to have two of them in the whole of NZ! Lmao.

An I bet it was nice for Nobre to get out and have a really good canter!

Anonymous said...

Foi realemnte um dia muito bom. Pena ter acabado depressa. :-(
Espero que dentro em breve possamos repetir o passeio. ;-)
Su