Vienna - wait there's more!

Ok - you are thinking ....... what could be more? well ...... we ended up changing todays tour we were going to a beautiful castle to ..... watching the horses go through a rehersal at the Spanish Riding School. as you know I got rather gooey about the horses so pleaded (or turned on the ol' Brenda charm) with our tour director and he managed to squeeze us into the horsey tour! we were warned it wasnt just a practise session - but hey it was free for us so who cares. we started by going upstairs at their spectacular palacey type building and got a talk about the history of the horses, the school, the building , how they train them etc. the main thrust was that these horses jump and kick naturally so they just refine the natural abilities. in saying that there are 6 stud lines all carefully computerised, and only one 4 year old from each line each year gets chosen to go to Vienna for training. this is after 4 years racing round paddocks in the alps lots of freedom, grass , fresh air etc and then if you are the right colour, height, nose, lip, mane etc you have won the lottery and get stabled for 90% of your day, fed on oats, (only stallions are chosen by the way - not castrated or anythingso mares not allowed to upset the hormones of the boys!) and learn how to prance, dance, kick etc properly until you are 25 years old then back to the farm for retirement! then they tell you that they have a 'holiday' each year and go back to the stud for stud duties for a few months. oh yay! anyway we got to sit in the prime seats down the front (there are two tiers looking down on the oval full of people) which meant that the horses were about 3 metres away when they came past us. I was in heaven! no photos were allowed (tho Dave nearly had an all out fisty cuff with this obnoxious guy off our bus (sad to say Australian) who just kept on taking photos after being asked not to by the loud speaker three times!) so these photos are all we got before we knew about the photo ban. Enjoy!

forgot to mention they only did a practise - with training the horses how to do their tricky moves. an older horse was ridden along side a young horse (young rider alongside an older rider etc) so the young horse gets to see what it is supposed to do and also the correct music for that move is played so the horses can tell when to change to what by the music as well as the dressage movements of the rider. clever eh?