Meet Joro! Well, to be exact her name is Jörð (pronounced ‘Yearth’ to rhyme with ‘earth’ which, funnily enough, is exactly what Jörð means in English) but who can find the time to figure out all those fancy Icelandic characters? I may just call her ‘Muddy’ on a wet day.
Anyways. Jörð was the horse that Fiona always knew she wanted from the minute she first clapped eyes on her at Smári’s Tölt show in Spring 2005. She had been imported from Iceland in late 2004 and Lu Crawford was bringing the horse on for it’s owner with a view to sale. When we first saw Jörð she was being a bit of a madam (and not in the bordello sense) with Lu but, on subsequent days out at Oakfield and the British Championships the horse was settling more and more under Lu’s excellent handling and training.
Lu qualified Jörð for the British Team to go to Sweden for the 2005 Icelandic Horse World Championships and Fiona went along as groom to the horse – guess what she wanted to buy whilst she was out there? On their return we raided the piggy bank, stole the money from the gas meter, robbed the children’s inheritance, sold Húni and Gæla into the white slave trade and I got a proper job – the funds were raised and Jörð came to live with us in Bridford.
2006 seems to have zipped past – Fiona and Jörð have come on in leaps, bounds and the occasional very fast lap of the oval track – Jörð was only born in 1999 so there’s a few years left in her yet!
Jörð 2010 Update
By Fiona
So much has happened in the four and a half years that Jörð has lived with us. She has taken me to the World Championships in Holland, we have won the T1 and the T2 and taken part in the Ice Tölt.
Jörð had a year off in 2008/2009 as she was supposed to be giving me a foal, however she failed to produce the expected offspring after having conned me into her maternity leave (despite having been scanned in foal) so she’s back on duty as my number one favourite riding horse.
Our challenge for 2010 is the four gait – her trot on the oval track has always been elusive (although she’s produced it for me when it really matters) so we are working on a bit more consistency in this area.
