6/09/13
Join us as Animal Therapeutics Online owner Jo Shanahan (Schneider) takes us on a whirlwind tour of professional yards and competitions in The UK and Germany. Jo will spend three weeks interviewing and visiting the exclusive yards of riders such as Olympic team gold medallist Carl Hester, current world record holder and Gold Medallist Charlotte Dujardin, Eventing superstar William Fox Pitt, Australia Olympians Hayley Beresford and Wendy Schaeffer, and more. Amongst the events she will attend is the Burghley Horse Trials and Blenheim. Jo will bring news, tips, and training ideas back to Australia straight from some of the world’s top riders.
Hello Germany!! Today was the day I flew to Germany to see how things work behind the scenes of the powerhouse that is Hayley Beresford.
My beautiful family welcoming me to Dusseldorf airport – what a lovely welcoming party 🙂
I wasn’t due at Hayley’s until Monday so I spent the day being a tourist with some relis of mine (my maiden name is Schneider remember!).
This post doesn’t have much to do with horses but I thought I’d provide a bit of an update and you might appreciate it anyway. Who wants to travel to the otherside of the world and not get a little bit of touristing in!
On the first night after going out for dinner my relative Klaus and I went for a night time bike ride to get in some night photography. Now I’m about as familiar with bikes as I am with 13hh ponies but as the saying goes “it’s like riding a bike” so I picked it up quite well.
Our subject is a local blast furnace (as part of an iron smelter) that has been lit up with coloured lights so that its become somewhat of a tourist attraction. Klaus actually used to work there so he knew quite a bit of the history and was able to explain what each component was which definitely appealed to my engineering side..
We got some good photos and I learnt a few things which was good. I’m fairly new to night photography so I’ll have to practice a bit more but I was pretty happy for my first effort.
Me about to go bike riding – I’ll post some of the shots I got later on so you can judge for yourself if I’ve got what it takes to be a night photographer!
The next day we went on a train ride to Cologne (Koln) and saw the Lindt chocolate factory which was great! I had a German beer and meal in a traditional area so touristing in Germany “tick”.
At the Cologne Cathederal
Tomorrow I get on another train but this time it’s to Animal Therapeutics’ sponsored rider Hayley Beresford’s. I am looking forward to this part of the trip the most and I can’t wait to bring you some learnings on how a professional yard like Hayley’s operates.
Until then…. I’ll leave you with an image of my passport holder which holds a fitting message for all of us…