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Little girl, big horses.
I grew up with three siblings in Meiringen - in the middle of the Swiss Alps and surrounded by animals. We kept chickens, rabbits, a cat and a dog, with whom I spent every free minute. Every time the neighbor rode past our house with her horse, I ran over and was allowed to pet it. When I was six years old, my parents gave me my first riding lessons. I often saw that riding school horses were kept tied up in boxes and did not have a nice life. I felt sorry for them. My love for horses grew, and year after year I wished for one of my own. But unfortunately, there was never a mare, a stallion or a gelding under our tree at Christmas. 🙂
The horse ranch in the USA.
At the age of 17, a turning point came in my life. In Arizona, I was allowed to help out with a horse trainer. There I learned how to train different horses. Some of the animals that came to us were traumatized - one even had an ingrown halter. You could see the helplessness on many of them. But with our help, they slowly got better. And when they had the worst behind them, I felt great gratitude and genuine trust. That is what touches me deeply and what counts in the end.
Nobody is perfect, we all make mistakes. That's another reason why I constantly questioned my training. Little by little I got better. But again and again, new horses came along that did not respond to my system. I kept at it and learned. In the meantime I followed the call of my heart and returned to the ranch countless times. So I was able to train several horses over the years - young as well as traumatized ones.
"Blutschi," my first horse, cost $3.
"You need your own horse. You waste your time if you don't work with horses," ranch owners Twister and Sandy Heller told me in 2011. They let me choose one of their horses. And since I had no money, they let me have "Blutschi" for a symbolic three dollars!
This is our story:
Even when riding, you never stop learning.
I can learn new things at any time. Provided that I remain a beginner at my level.
That's why I'm interested in many types of training offered by different trainers around the world. Among other things, I completed the co-trainer program at Pro-Ride in Germany. I also won Swiss tournaments in free dressage and was asked for various projects, for example for movies or horse fairs. I was also co-founder of Delfin-Horsetraining GmbH, which focuses on positive horse training. My specialty is the mental satisfaction of horses: If the head follows, the body follows. A well-trained horse has everything it needs to stay healthy in the long term. And so I learned and still learn from Manolo Oliva and Jeannette Jenny from Portugal.
There is something else ...
Incredibly happy I am in nature on the road - as far away as possible from any civilization. So I have already several times not saddled a horse, but packed my backpack and went off into the wilderness.
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