A little bit about our Haflingers

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Mel and children

The more we work with Mel, the more we fall in love with him! He is such a willing and gentle horse! A few weeks ago, when our trainer, Jamie was here, he brought his wife and 2 of their horses, and Jim and Billie rode Mel & Sunny for a trail ride. Up to this point, we were uncertain how Mel would react to outside horses and working side by side with them. He has been, of course, fine around any of our horses, mares included. Mel turned an interested head towards the new mounts, but never tried to pull out of Jim's control. For our trail ride, we rode down our dirt road about 1/4 mile to the township property. This property has several trails weaving through it, as well as a crick that borders the far edge. We rode through the trails, with the crick as our destination. We've ridden our horses back here before, but this was Mel's first time. He crossed the crick with no problem! He even had to walk over a rather high log that was across the trail in one spot. We've taken some video of this event, and are currently working on making a DVD of Mel.

This scrapbook page is of two of our granddaughters, ages 3 1/2 and 18 months. All of the grandkids love visiting with the horses and love riding them. Here, you see the two girls being friendly with Mel (large picture). Hannah is hoping to grab a handful of grass and feed it to him. As you can see the girls and stallion are not the least bit afraid of each other. The second, smaller horse, is Makenna trying to get close to Atta-Boy, and they are just looking at each other. I bent down to Makenna's height to take this picture, and boy, do these horses seem much bigger from this angle! You should try it sometime! To read the journaling, just click on the picture for a larger picture to come up.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Frame-able Haflingers



The picture on the left is of our gelding, Atta Boy News. It was taken on his way from the pasture to the barn/pen. I love how this captures his flowing movement as he rounds the gate! The picture on the right is taken of our stud, Mel (For Sale!!). He is penned closely to our other horses, and stays fairly calm. Right now, he's watching the other horses coming in from the pasture. This time of year, his coat is just so beautiful! It glistens in the sun, smooth as velvet, taking of the rich chestnut tones characteristic to Haflingers. Jim has been riding him daily, and has ridden with the trainer for several weeks now. Jim comments often, "The stuff I'm learning is like common sense!" Jim has been working with horses since he was a teen, and working with his own Haflingers since the early '90s. Our trainer, Jamie, has a philosophy of training riders to become great horsemen, so that they, in turn, can teach their horses the learned skills. Some of the skills that Jim has been learning have to do with teaching the horse to yield his head on command. With the slightest touch of the reins, the horse with pick up these subtle cues from the rider, hold his head in proper tucked position when being ridden, and will be unable to run away with its rider. The best part of the training that Jim and Mel are doing is that Jim is able to take these techniques and use them on the other younger horses he is working with. Currently, that would be a 3 yr. old gelding, and a 3 yr. old mare.

For Sale: Melroe, registered Haflinger Gelding

For Sale: Melroe, registered Haflinger Gelding
Scroll through blog to check him out!

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About Me

Hi! We are Jim and Billie Jean of Rocking Horse Farm. We raise and train Haflinger Horses to ride English and Western as well as pleasure drive. Contact us at jnewsted@ncats.net