Blogs

I took a day off from lessons just to give Carrara a simple walk, trot, canter hack and practice just a small amount of the major information I’ve learned the past few weeks here! With an ever busy schedule Anky had to depart today about half past two to be the “ribbon cutter” for the grand opening of a combination tack shop about an hour from Erp this afternoon. I was asking her about her clinic that evening and she said I could just ride with her if I wanted to leave as well at half past two. Sounded great to me as I thoroughly enjoyed riding along in the lorrey with Anky and Willeke to the reining competition!

Arriving about 15 minutes early I see the lorrey pulling out and thought I’d missed the ride but I ran into someone who said Anky was driving separate and would be leaving in just a few. Whew! I hadn’t miss the ride and it was really fun visiting with Anky (in between her phone interviews and business calls) on the drive up in her too cute yet a tad longer than your average Mini Cooper!

The people at the opening were wonderful. The place is called Countrymill and it was a combination of three existing companies as one was western, the other english and the third sold horse boxes and carriages. They desired to create a one stop shop and the place looked amazing. They also had a 20×30 arena in the back so people could bring their horses and try the products they are interested in buying! Nice!

Here’s the crowd waiting to get autographs from Anky…



They allowed the kids up in group and this was the first and cutest little girl I’d seen in a while. Her mom was just as excited as she was!



This picture is for Ex. I had to laugh and think of him as I rounded the corner of saddle pads and the digital camo was right there in my face!



After the opening, some window shopping (I tried on several styles of Anky apparel they offered there of course), and chatting with the nice folks we headed for a very nice yet quick dinner then on to the clinic. When the food server asked if I’d like a menu in English Anky replied “Nah, nah” so I guess I’m learning Dutch now! Haha! Good thing I’m not a picky eater. I was asked do you like fish or meat. I said both and I ended up having the fish. It was salmon and it was great! Gotta love being flexible!

Here’s Anky chatting with one end of the crowd. They had the arena with audience at each end (stands full of course) with the clinic riders in the middle.



This is Claudia and I near the end of Anky’s clinic.



Here’s Anky getting ready to ride Nelson to demo her training style to the audience after teaching 4 students.



The pony club kids engulfed Anky at the end of the clinic for a photo! Too cute!

It’s like Christmas every day at the stable. You never know what’s your going to get when you drive up and at first I was intimidated by it but this is actually like being in a show environment everyday so the horses will be bomb proof when traveling! There’s so much happening and changing daily with the construction and it’s quite exciting to watch it grow and change!



It was a great start to October riding alongside Hans Peter not to mention just watching Sjef and Anky training at the same time.



It’s a bittersweet week this week for me tho as the Danish rider, Bo Høstrup, who arrived the same time I did is leaving. He has two great Grand Prix horses and is such a kind and fun person to chat with. He’ll definitely be missed. It’s been really nice to get to know better all the girls that are working at the stable as well and everyone is so incredibly nice here! Here’s Bo after his last lesson (on this trip) with Anky.



Great lesson today as usual and they finally got the new solariums setup so Carrara enjoyed a nice sunbath after getting hosed off with (yeah the hot water is now working) a nice warm spray. This is definitely horsey pampering at its finest! I think we could easily work some heat lamps into the stable aisle back in NC tho!

This is HorseGirlTV’s latest PR piece with lots of fun new material being launched all the time now!

Gemert, The Netherlands October 01, 2009 Tune in. Tack up. with HorseGirlTV. There’s much new material and new happenings at HorseGirlTV this month!

Training With Anky: HorseGirlTV’s, Angelea Kelly , has relocated to Gemert, The Netherlands (Holland) to train with one of the greatest dressage competitors and trainers of all time, Anky van Grunsven at her facility in Erp. Keep up with all of Angelea’s adventures in her blog online at http://blog.HorseGirlTV.com to take a peek inside training with a top Olympian abroad.

Author Jessica Burkhart: HorseGirlTV launches a new webisode in its standard 1st and 15th monthly series interviewing tween author Jessica Burkhart. At only 22, Jessica Burkhart is leading the way for tween horse lovers with her skillfully crafted series Canterwood Crest. Jessica flew down from NYC to talk with Angelea about a passion for horses, overcoming challenges that life hands you and the development of her writing career. HorseGirlTV was honored to host Jessica and hope all the fans, tween and otherwise, find her story as inspiring as we did! Check out the latest webisode at www.HorseGirlTV.com.

New Weekly Content: HorseGirlTV has launched new weekly content. Still offering its traditional semi-monthly webisode series on the 1st and 15th, this leading edge production company adds HorseMail Minute every 22nd of the month in which host, Angelea Kelly answers fan mail directly via video replies to viewers. Further giving back to the fans, HorseGirlTV has dedicated one week to HorseGirl Of The Month with an online interview of both professional and amateur HorseGirl’s (and guys!) alike!

Giveaways: Anky Remy Carriet Dressage Saddle http://bit.ly/F2SzB AND Jessica Burkhart Canterwood Crest Series http://bit.ly/oZj3s

A local was kind enough to give me a mini tour of Gemert this afternoon after finding out I hadn’t done anything but walk to the square, the Lidl market, drive to Anky’s, a horse show and Eindhoven thus far. Gemert totally reminds me of Ashland, Oregon and definitely makes me home sick (home for me has been Ashland since I moved there in the mid 90s)! It’s this cute little town with shops, restaurants, a complete little town living experience yet with cobblestone roads, a church from the 15th century and a great deal of sad history from WW2. There’s so many neat stories about Gemert that I’ve heard only in a short time but here’s a few pictures of my little walking tour yesterday.

The vast majority is Catholic here. I’m guessing typical none practicing Catholics except for high holidays kind of Catholics tho. This is an amazing church in the middle of town. I can see it from my flat and hear the bells chime on a regular basis. It’s quite soothing actually.



This is a tomb in the very old cementary adjacent to the church. Many of the graves were dated 1800s!



This is the inside of the church. So it’s not Notre Dame but it was quite a lovely building. They were about to have a funeral so we quickly exited.



I don’t know the Catholic term for this but it’s the pulpit where the priest stands. As per the course, beautiful stained glass.



What would my mini Gemert tour be without a final stop in front of the flat where Anky lived for 10 years while residing in Gemert. The building is a flower shop on the ground floor then the apartment above.

So I has just finished filling up my super compact car hire with the cheapest petrol per litre you can buy here and I spent 37€ (approximately $57.00). I paid and pulled out of the station to follow this vehicle. Of course I would imagine you can’t get these from the car hire and it only goes max 40km per hour (about 25 miles per hour) but I bet the fuel economy is GREAT!

Being so lucky as to have my stable, arena and horse right in my back yard it’s an event to go to Anky’s twice per day (and keep up with HorseGirlTV’s current minimized production schedule). The drive from Gemert to Erp is lovely and only 15 minutes but still it consumes fuel even in my tiny, tiny two door super compact Ford Ka!

I remember driving in Spain, Germany and checking out petrol prices in England while touring the countryside and vowing never to complain about USA prices again. How quickly we forget. Perhaps if our prices were this high the massive trucks would quickly come off the roads? Nah, perhaps we’d just have even poorer rednecks if that were the case? Haha!

Well the car was cute even tho it didn’t have much “get up and go” and it definitely made the SmartCars look big!

It’s been a long and short weekend. Is that even possible? Yesterday seemed like it lasted forever but today is going by so quickly. The dedication was yesterday then Anky did a clinic in the afternoon so I gave Carrara the day off with some hand walking and hand grazing. There were large crowds of spectators at the stable and it was really cute to catch a few little girls patting Carrara on the nose as they toured the stable. Future HorseGirls right there! Here’s Carrara doing a tiny bit of digging before she gave herself a good roll!



Traffic was backed up due to an agricultural vehicle on the road so I had the chance to snap this beautiful view of a portion of my drive to the stable lined with trees.



After a long day at the barn I met Marien Hendriks. I just thought this was interesting lighting between the glass and the candle. I was joined for very interesting conversation by a famous local artist, Martien Hendriks, (http://www.ruimtelijkeverbeelding.nl/) who’s not only been commissioned for sculpture at Anky’s stable but has had the honor of the Queen on The Netherlands sitting for him not once but TWICE! Not only with Martien but others here the intellectually stimulating conversation is sooooo welcome. It’s something I didn’t realize how much I’ve missed (apart from conversations with Ex) since leaving Ashland. How fun to be able to openly express your views knowing you’ll create conversation and not stifle someone into fearing your opinions! Awesome! Back to Martien, he’s a very interesting person and some amazing works!!!!! Do check out his website and make sure to see the rearing horse piece! Wow! I’m hoping he’ll give HorseGirlTV an interview as listening to his creating process is very inspiring.



Later at home there’s no explanation for this other than I just thought Picollo was too darn cute in this moment and had to snap a picture. The intensely red carpet is such a nice juxtaposition again his coat.



On the other end of the spectrum of life in the The Netherlands, they do have join the military commercials as well and they too try to make the military look glamorous and action packed for youths. Of course they roll ever other commercial break on MTV! Of course!



And last but certainly not least yesterday evening I went with a friend to Eindhoven to see the downtown nightlife. Eindhoven is an interesting city and, I believe, one of the first ones leveled (in The Netherlands) by Nazi Germany in WW2. Coming round the bend of a small alley this church appears in the city center and of course I had to play tourist and snap a shot. They walked me up to the base to show me to look down these thick clear windows revealing human skeletons of adults, youths and even babies. The whole area was a cemetary packed with people who died from the great plague in the 1300s!!! It was interesting and sad all in the same time to remember the history of knowing it killed about 50% of the entire population! And we thought swine flu was rough!



So no lessons today at Anky’s and I’m off to review my notes from lessons this past week and work hard to train solo today and be even better prepared for my lesson tomorrow!

I’m not sure of the specifics but there was a dedication with the representative of the Queen of the province at Anky’s stables today. They had a reception. Anky gave a speech. The representative gave a speech. They placed a inscribed stone at the front of the new offices being built onto the indoor and gave a tour of the stables to the guests. Even not speaking Dutch it was quite interesting morning. My highlight was getting to meet Tineke Bartels! I asked her if I could come to see her stable and her reply was of course, bring Anky and we’ll have a coffee! Oh my goodness! How nice they are here! Here’s some photos of the dedication event.

The garden reception…


Anky giving a tour from her private stable…


Tineke looking on at the new stalls in the training barn…


Picollo saying hello to one of Anky’s dogs…


This looks like Sjef is showing some aspects of their quality construction.


The dedication…

I went with Anky, Willeke and Whiz last night about 1.5 hours north from Erp to attend/watch/video Anky’s first reining competition. It was so so cute to see the Dutch walking around in western wear with country music piped through the intercom system. There were some really nice horses there and per Dutch style, everyone was very friendly! It was like I was a child back in Texas again in many ways. Here’s some fun photos. This first one was just odd the see the Oregon Trail in The Netherlands!

I took this one for Chris @ Equestrian Collections!

I started having flashbacks of bad handbags from my childhood at this point!

Yep! That’s a dually in The Netherlands!

Getting ready for warming up. I told them both the Texas saying “Wrangler butts drive cowgirls nuts” and got smiles. 🙂

More getting ready.

Practicing the slides before the class starts.

Sliding stop practice. Whiz is really good at these.

Leaving the pen. I’m wondering if they call it a pen or arena over here?

It was a very fun evening overall. I must cut this short now and get ready to depart for my lesson today! So much fun here!

One last thing, here’s a quick vid clip I took with my iPhone.
[flashvideo file=http://blog.horsegirltv.com/movies/anky_rein.flv /]

Here’s a few photos of the Kermis going on in Gemert right now. This is the downtown area. The carnival ends today and I can hear the workers outside tearing down the rides and booths. It was quite a cute little carnival (I’m not sure on the translation of Kermis because they call carnival something completely different). Anyway, here’s some pictures and now I must run get ready to head to the stable.










Here’s a photo of the building I live in.


Here’s a photo of the Gemert church. It’s hugely Roman Catholic here. Doug and Patty you should come visit!


This is my workspace.

All of this took place, depending upon what time zone you are talking about, between ten in the evening on Thursday the 17th through Saturday evening on the 19th.

The horses were loaded in cargo. Here’s the cargo door closing. Yes it’s blurry but at that point in the trip so was I. Haha!


This is the front door/ramp of Carrara’s container.


This is me and Carrara inside her container.


This is Carrara in her container. All of these are before take off.


So then there was take off. I was stressed having never experienced standing up, facing backwards as a jet liner took off so I wasn’t certain what to expect. As soon as we started going up it was soooooooo amazing! Carrara was standing leaning forward like one of those long jump skiers as the jet ascended into the sky. I could only imagine how good of a stretch this could be for them! Wow! She was quiet through the whole thing but breathing with deep breaths which I understand is standard. We leveled off and all was quiet. She began eating hay. It sounds so simple but being my first time it was simply too cool of an experience. After over 24 hours on the road from North Carolina to New York we were finally in the air and coasting along to Holland. The official KLM groom for the flight was very kind and wonderful to speak with. He raises Dutch Appaloosas which is something I’d never heard of. This of your typical American Quarter App then add the magnificent confirmation of the DWB with very nice movement! The flight seemed so short. The KLM groom offered to sit in the jumper seat (saying he preferred more leg room) and gave me his seat so Olivia the Swiss girl, Ricardo the Columbian guy and I could have more space between one another to relax. I think we all quickly fell asleep! I woke to breakfast being served and knew I needed to go back and check on Carrara to give her some water. She drank some but after almost 48 hours of travel I am sure she was getting dehydrated. She was mellow. Just hanging out and occasionally taking a bite of hay so I didn’t linger as to not keep her up. It seemed so quick that the landing came and just the same as take off, I was in her container standing facing away from the motion. Landing was even more smooth than take off and I recommend standing backwards than sitting forwards for landing on flights. It was very fun. Again, Carrara was a rockstar just being mellow even after landing and during the taxi. We then needed to de-board but the attendants were kind enough to let us watch the cargo people work a bit from afar. Like typical passengers we left out of the plane and went to the car hire. I can’t explain how I felt walking out of Schipol that morning other than I felt like I was home. This isn’t something I’d felt in a long time except when in the presence of Ex. A fun side note on the car hire… Humberto told us to take the red bus as it would take us to the cargo area where we could meet up for customs and taking our horses so Olivia saw a red bus as we were pulling out the parking area and said “follow that” so I did but we ended up going down a buses only area, people were staring at us and it was hilarious. I jokingly stated we I could just smile and apologize for being a dumb American and hopefully they wouldn’t arrest us all but then the Columbia jumped in that we might not have the best of luck with him in the car! Haha! It was hilarious but I am thinking you’d have to be there to fully understand the lack of lucidity in the moment. We arrived to cargo, got our visitors passes and they allowed my car (a cute, tiny Ford Ka) inside. We’re talking cargo as in cargo for many different things including animals. The horse boxes were already inside waiting for us and all we needed to do at this point was to have the vet look at the horses and approve our customs paperwork to be allowed entry. There was plenty of fun conversation, unpacking our gear and Picollo was let out to run around in his cart. He immediately made friends with everyone that came by and the dutch are so nice for dogs, they gave him a disk of water and many, many pats. This is Ricardo wrestling with Picollo while we awaited the vet at the animal hospital KLM cargo.


Oh yes. One very important moment upon arrival to the cargo area is a massive banner with Anky and Salinero was in the area of the horse containers. I couldn’t pass the opportunity to take a photo with the banner.


We offloaded the horses from the containers. Again Carrara was a superstar. We all walked to the vet for a quick inspection, boarding straight on the Dutch side ground transports and the waiting for customs began. Picollo quietly waited in the car.


I hired Marcel Jordon (http://marceljordan.com) per a recommendation from Karin Offield and he was fabulous. His lorrey was super and he was so kind to talk to me about the special features and some of the customizations he made. He was definitely pro and unlike anything I’d ever worked with stateside. It was like a Rolls Royce for the horse world. Here’s Carrara inside the transport.


Here’s the outside of his lorrey.


This is as we were driving out of customs.


And now on the road to Erp!




Being a Friday at about four in the afternoon it was a long drive which typically takes about an hour and one half. We finally arrive to Erp and the Stal Anky but I was completely exhausted by this point and far from conherent so I have no photos of this. I got her settled, with food and the tack trunks in line. The new barn is still under construction but it is quite nice. The outdoor has the old roof removed and the new roof is waiting to be installed as it’s sitting in pallets in Anky’s outdoor. The mentalities are so different here but in a very good way. I’m exhausted at this point but so happy!

My eight in the morning alarm was shut off and I rose about eleven instead but the sleep was welcome! My first full day in The Netherlands was spent organizing my tack boxes, hand walking Carrara several times, a sandwich and fries in the afternoon (I took this photo with my iPhone from an indoor table next to the open window. Yes they are as good as they look and yum mayo!!!),


and working on the laptop looking out at Carrara grazing in the pasture for a few hours. This is Carrara meeting the horse next to the pasture I placed her in.


It’s quite green and lovely here with tall trees lining the road. I was surprised to see they have not chopped down their corn fields yet (you can see some of the crop in the right side of the this photo)!


Here’s a few photos of the new stable which is almost complete. This is from the opposite end of Carrara’s stall.


This is the door leading out to Anky’s outdoor arena which is now home to the pallets of roofing materials waiting to be constructed.


As the stable is not complete, neither are some of the stalls so the stall opposite from Carrara is where I was told to place my tack boxes. Hey… It’s close by so quite convenient and I do most of my tacking in her stall.


This is further back showing my tack boxes in a not yet completed stall and the stall opposite is where Carrara is living now.


There’s much more to follow but we’re all here, safe, sound and I’m loving my home in The Netherlands!