Horse training

We take on horses for training all year round.  In Geirastaðir we keep the training horses together with our own horses on the vast pastures. We bring them into a paddock daily for a few hours to take them out for training. The training horses learn fast by seeing the experienced ones, to be driven into the paddock, being taken out and trained by us. Down to a lot of movement and the social contacts within their herd, they are well balanced, with a good physical condition and fast reactions, which makes the training for them to become proper riding horses easy.

A lot of the training horses we get, come to us at the age of 4 or 5, without having had much or any contact to people at all. Most of them are learning very fast to be haltered, to be led, to be touched everywhere and to go as near horse when hacking out. They get slowly used to lunging, saddle, bridle, shooing, go as a near horse, and eventually they get used to the rider with an understanding for the riders signs. After 4-8 weeks most of them can be taken hacking out on their own, not only by us but also by their owners. After the first period of training the horses usually get a monthlong break in the herd, before we begin again with further training. We keep an eye on it, that the young horsese are kept appropriately and that they can learn everything they need to be a good riding horse in a friendly atmosphere without any stress or pressure to perform. We start training our own horses gently, most times in the summer they turn 4 years of age, take them often out as near horses or let them run free with the herd we take on the riding tours. In autumn, respectively in the winter time we take them for about a month to our training stable. The next training period start then again in the summer with training for example tölt. In the meantime they can enjoy the vast pastures of Geirastaðir, by simply being a horse among others.