Yeeha! Whinny! Canter and jump!

Hehe. Not exactly. Today I attended the "World Championships of Young Dressage Horses" in Verden/Aller. And at the same time the German Championships in Dressage and Jumping. New "Deutscher Meister" is Rene Tebbel/Emsbüren - well deserved. After so many years on horseback he finally scored the national title. And - I don't know if I should call it an insult or a funny coincidence - his winning horse and partner was the Belgian gelding "Quel Homme" from a breeder in Evergem. Ok - funny that he is riding a horse from my favourite hideout. But an insult of course that a non-Hanoverian was winning in the heart of the area of the Hanoverian breeding association.

At least in the Dressage competition the Hanoverians were first, five of six winning horses were out of the area.

Back to Jumping, some of the rider's I favoured as always were Ludger Beerbaum, who seemed to try to get his young and nervous stallion Couleur Rubin used to the big circus, and Meredith Michaels-Beerbaum.

Two of the highlights were non-competition - the Reiterverband Weser-Aller did a furious Jumping Quadrille with stripping off the jackets while jumping and putting it on again on the next jump. And, heyho, they stripped off the saddles in the end and jumped the last row with the saddles high above their heads. Wow!

One of the low-lights was the newcomer competition in dressage. A young girl in a mix between smug and too nervous was drilled by her trainer with a headphone till the last minute. Well, maybe it's a good idea to adapt some training methods from football, racing or whatever. But the picture was not fitting here at all - this is looking weird, if you can hear that this young dressage rider can only breath in and out if somebody is telling her...