How a last minute trip turned me into the owner of the world’s 2 prettiest Icelandic horses

In the middle of covid we got a request for a horseback riding tour for one person. We were quite suprised as we did not expect anyone to come during the Covid season but we were very happy to confirm the request. The person we got was Kathi, a German women who had a bit of riding experience. She went with us to Reykjavik Riding secrets and we enjoyed her company very well. A year later she decided to come again and went on two tours with us, Riding the Rift valley and Tölt with glacier view. Now she owns two Icelandic horses and we are very proud that we got to introduce her to the Icelandic horse.

This is her story  

Since I was a doctor for internal medicine in the ER, I was one of the first people to get the COVID-19 shot and was fully vaccinated by the beginning of February 2021. I had two weeks off in March around my birthday, and, by chance, I had learned that you could fly to Iceland without needing to quarantine if you were fully vaccinated. Even though I hadn’t been an active horse rider for almost 20 years, trail riding in Iceland was on my bucket list, so I decided to try and book a last minute trip through “Pferd & Reiter”, a German horse travel agency.  
​
Steina and Meike helped me organize a three-day trail ride around Reykjavik, with a small surprise birthday party at one of the farms. It was an exclusive trail ride, with just Steina, Lóa, Ari, myself, and the horses on the trip.

At one farm, I was made an offer to buy a horse. Afterwards, I started to google how to import horses to Germany and the associated costs. 

After my trail ride around Reykjavik, Steina organized an all-inclusive farm stay for me at Midasi for four days, where I could ride as much as I wished. 

When I arrived at Midás, Ásta and Gísli knew that buying a horse was already on my mind. They had decided to sell all their horses and the farm three days before I got there.  

When I entered the stables, I immediately fell in love with Keimur, who was then 5 years old about to turn 6. He was a gelding after their own breeding stallion with the cutest baby face a horse can have. I was riding and trying out all the younger horses, but in the end I was mainly interested in Keimur and his younger brother, Kapteinn, whom he shared his stall with. After I flew home, I couldn’t decide whether to buy Keimur, who was a very sweet natural Tölter but easily scared, or Kapteinn, the super relaxed and easy-going trail horse that had only been trained for 4 months. I kept debating which one would fit best, but couldn’t decide until my brother said, “Why don’t you just buy them both?” I had only spent a week with Icelandic or gaited horses, and could only judge that both horses were of good character.

My plan was to mainly ride them in the woods to relax.  

Since Kapteinn hadn’t been trained much, we ended up piggy pacing pretty quickly, but also over and over again to pace when I had planned to canter in the woods. I decided to give him to a trainer for 2 months because I simply wasn’t experienced enough to correct his gait. 

Larissa Becherer corrected the beat quickly and fell in love with Kapteinn herself, asking me if she could keep riding him and show him at competitions. They qualified for the German championships in PP1. Unfortunately, Kapteinn got spooked on the last meter of the track by the judges table in the first run, but I´m still very proud of him that he managed to qualify for PP1 at the DIM at 7 years old.  
​
While Larissa competed with Kapteinn, I started competing with Keimur in V5 and T7 and then moved to T6. This season I started with V2 and we just won our first trophy in T4 at an indoors competition, the “Eyja Winter Warm-Up” at Sina Günther. 

To be honest, Keimur is my hearthorse, I just love him so much. The first second that I saw him and fell in love with him didn’t betray me. He is such a gentleman that excuses so many of my mistakes. I would not be able to share him with Larissa like I am with Kapteinn. I am ok with her lounging Keimur from time to time, but my heart can´t fathom her riding him, I need to have that for myself. I will forever be grateful that Asta und Gisli let me have the world´s 2 prettiest Icelandic horses (maybe from my point of view).