In August of 2006, a grey mare named Blue Hors Matine made competition dressage look like fun again at the World Equestrian Games at Aachen.

Unfortunately, in April she took a bad step coming off the van in Las Vegas for the FEI World Dressage Cup, injuring her left pastern. Her rider, Andreas Helgstrand, regretfully withdrew her from the competition.

I was hunting around to see if there was any update on her condition, or whether perhaps she had been bred, and found an interesting blog entry about a clinic with Andreas Helgstrand. At a very young age, he was selected as the rider for the Blue Hors stud in Denmark, where Matine was born.

The subject of the clinic is the appropriate work for young dressage horses, but many of his observations apply equally to young horses from any discipline.

Read more about Matine in last April's article.

Note: her name is pronounced Matinee but I can't get the accent on the e in this blogging software