On Monday evening Dinio and I took a calm stroll around Täljö. He enjoyed every minute of it. After our ride I gave him a good massage and stretched him. He really enjoyed that.

Tuesday evening it was time for our first dressage session for trainer Gunilla Ruus. Dinio felt just lovely, soft and obedient and calm in his mouth. This session everything worked and he was with me all of the time. I told Gunilla what we have trained on during our weekend clinic and what Tiago recommended me to work on - and Gunilla agreed. So we did a follow up and worked on bending and strightness. And Dinio was just super. Soooo happy! I am now going to train for Gunilla once every week. So looking forward to that!

My sister also took a lesson with here horse Chilikungen. He did very well as well and she will also train for Gunilla from now on. My sister was very pleased with her lesson and the instructions Gunilla gave here.

I will soon post a video from the weekend clinic with Tiago!!

This weekend Dinio and I attended a two-day clinic in Enköping. The trainer was Tiago Albergaria from Portugal. For more information about him - see http:\\www.rotbrunna.se

With me was also my darling mother. Dinio got a box in the guest stable and settled in very well. Me and my mother had rented a room for one night. Nice room. The evening was sceduled for an Portugise evening with food and wine.

So to the riding: Dinio was very tensed during the saturday session, the indoor arena was light and spacy but the seeting area was very high and this was new to Dinio. He glansed a lot towards this area. But it is also a good experience for him, to learn to relax in various surroundings. And I was of course a bit nervous as well. But I think we did well anyway. Trained on shoulder in, half passes in trot and canter, counter canter and circles. Since Dinio is a very ambitious horse he is often ahead of me, so if he have done one half pass he is alreayd prepared to do another one in the next corner. And there I have to correct him and it is here he gets tensed and starting to guess. In other words we have problems with going from bended lines to straight lines and from straight lines to bended lines. Here I have a lot of work to do, to make him relax and wait for my signals.

Unfortunately I got a big riding sore during the session which gave me a lot of pain during the Sunday-session. At the beginning it felt rather OK but I soon realized that I was not able to do any canter work with this sore - so I asked Tiago if he could ride Dinio for me. And he accepted. He rode a follow up from the yesterday session and focused on bending and strightness. It was very worthful for me to see Dinio under a very experienced and well riding rider and of course - to get his oppinion of what to work with for the nextcoming months. Tiago rode Dinio extremely well, it was so nice to watch them together.

Tiagos reccomendation now is to focus on straigthness on straight lines and riding circles with bending and correct tracking and to maintain the same rhythm - all the time. I didn't need to train on the movements too much- "he now it all".

I can't finish without telling how extremely well Dinio behaved during his stay at the guest stable. Beside him he had a 3-year old stallion who was very nervous during the afternoon and the night. He climbed on the wall, moved around a lot and neighed a lot. Dinio tried to great him now and then but backed off and didn't seek for a fight. I am getting more and more impressed with my darling Dinio - he is just wonderful.

When arriving at home Dinio stepped out of the trailer, took a deep breath, greated the other horses and was happy to be home again. Since it was only 1 o'clock in the afternoon I led him to his outdoor paddock and he was very happy to spend some hours there - so happy that he didn't want to follow the other horses in to the stable at 4 o'clock. But after a while he came, got his afternoon feeding and then he told me - go home - I need my well earned nap now!!