When the Northeast Icelandic Horse Club held their 2006 Breed Evaluations at Mill Farm, professionalism was rampant. Everything was tops. The top breeding rider/trainer in Iceland was flown over to train horses. A top Icelandic farrier was flown over from Germany to do shoes. Top horses, too. Stigandi, Pegasus, Klerkur, well-known stallions who had been evaluated in Iceland. And new stock, as well as domestic bred. And, of course, Mill Farm itself, 2,000 plus acres of beautiful riding just for the Icelandic horse.
The event ran like a Swiss railroad.
It was as professional as could be.
Almost. Standing apart was an amateur horse owner who would actually present and ride her own horse! Not only that, but she was only 14 years old. And from Kentucky, chaperoned by her dad, a statistics professor. Fortunately, she lives not far from her mentor, Gudmar Thor Petursson, an Icelander who has started a horse center in the U.S.
I had already made a how-to video of the evaluations of 2004 in Wisconsin and I knew that there would be "official" photos and a video of this event (*Special Offer for Hestakaup Subscribers Only* Order by January 31st, 2007 and recieve $10.00 by using instant savings code B7QD8Y5H at checkout.). So I felt free to shoot this story that I really wanted to show my guests at hestakaup.com.
First, Carrie has to present her horse for conformation. Then the next day she will ride for evaluation of the different gaits.
Now the time comes for Carrie to actually ride her horse! She will go out on the track all alone, everybody watching her and comparing her and her horse to the pros. She will have to show all the gaits her horse has, (either 4 or 5) and she will have up to 10 passes on the track. She will not get a special score because she is only 14!
Would that make anyone nervous? Watch Carrie.
By the way, this sequence will show all 5 Icelandic gaits. See how well you can identify them...
Then, as if this were not enough, on the next day she will have the chance to improve her scores by riding with some other riders on the track with her.
She did well!
The details: Carrie rode Ögrun frá Grafarkoti, IS1999255417. Ögrun was bred at Grafarkot which is featured in hestakaup.com in "What Comes After 'frá'?" videos of how young horses are raised in Iceland,
The evaluation scores are immediately posted in the international database of the Icelandic horse, World Fengur, and then published in Iceland. Here are the results (In Icelandic) as they were published online.
A complete listing and chronicle of the event is published in the Winter, 2006, edition of TÖLT NEWS. For information, go to the Tolt News website.
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