Lieuwe van Swichum, 2003 Friesian Gelding
Lieuwe was imported from Holland as a 3 yo Stallion after we saw this photo of him in a "for sale" advert.....! He had already been broken to ride and drive and so was given a good long holiday before we started work with him.
In the Spring of 2007 we started to take him out to a few competitions, initially "riding in" days at Hunters Equestrian near Cirencester. He was incredibly well behaved and, a couple of weeks later, we took part in some young horse classes. Again, he didn't put a foot wrong but unfortunately we were up against some very "established" Warm Blood youngsters. We were very pleased with him, especially given that i'd only been cantering him for a few day! Below are some clips from an outing on May 13th 2007
A change in circumstances then meant I had limited facilities to work with Lieuwe and he was restricted to occasionally hacking out. In Spring 2009 I moved him to a new yard in Devon with an excellent arena. Unfortunately they also had several horses which Lieuwe developed an interest in! He wasn't settling to his new surroundings and found it difficult to concentrate on working so, in May 2009, Lieuwe the Stallion became Lieuwe the Gelding. The difference in his attitude was virtually instant and upon coming back into work he was very quickly schooling nicely. These clips were taken after 3 weeks work, on 8th July 2009
In August 2009 I took Lieuwe to a 2 day clinic with Rodrigo da Costa Matos, held at Withypool on Exmoor. It was the first time he had been anywhere for several years and, despite a couple of decent corkscrew bucks on day one, he was very well behaved. The lessons with Rodrigo were fantastic and I was given lots of tips and exercises to try and stop Lieuwe from overbending and "curling back," an unfortunate legacy from his early training in Holland. This is definitely getting better and I will hopefully get some more recent footage to update this page! 