Peak Year Rider

The author of the blog (ruuhkavuosiratsastaja.fi), Anniina, is a high school teacher and student counsellor from Espoo, Southern Finland. She is married and a mother of two.

Anniina calls herself a "Peak Year Rider", which is the finnish name of the blog. It´s not always easy to manage with a full time job, a horse and a family. These things are probably the same everywhere. People like Anniina fill their life with the need to go somewhere witch leads to a terrible rush, when you are always on the run!

Unfortunately she lost her horse, Tintti, in October 2014.

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I became a horse owner a little by an accident. I had been hiring a nice horse for several years until the owner couldn´t take care of it any more. It was time to do some horse trading. The moment was the worst as I had always said to myself, that a woman in the age of making babies should never get a horse to eat time and money. So that very same week I bought a horse - and made a pregnancy test. And started blogging because I could not find peer support on the internet in my crazy life situation: the pregnancy and the very first own horse.

Well, it could have been worse. My horse, Tintti, was the most suitable horse for a "rush year rider" how I started to call myself. The term describes the hectic every day life of a horse owning mother, schedules, hurry, too short night´s sleep... Stretch marks and tiredness... On the back of the horse all that is faded away. Horse has an incredible healing power. On the back of the horse a mother of two children can live a moment only for herself. It is absolutely empowering!

I love eventing. With Tintti I participated one competition before she got the diagnosis of the cushing desease (PPID). The medication that she got is counted in as doping and our competing career was over. But that didn´t stop us training - I would say that the years after the diagnoses were the best!

As I received a nannasalmi bracelet woven with Tintti´s hair in September 2014, I wouldn´t have guessed that I will loose my mare only in a few weeks. Suddenly she was indisposed to move and that worried me - especially as she had been almost perfectly healthy all our 7 years together. Examination at the clinic discovered that her feet had reached their kilometers...

Tintti was put down into a never ending sleep. I had decided that she should not suffer the long, boring, probably useless and frustrating periods of rehabilitation if the situation got bad. I wanted her to go as healthy as possible without unnecessary lengthening her life. It was not easy, though.

Tintti was the horse of my life. She carried me and my children on her back, she educated me to be a horse owner. "A mishap horse" turned out to be one of the biggest growing experiences in my life.

I couldn´t be more thankful for our shared years. I carry them in my heart and around

my wrist with full of love.

Bracelet Mistral made with dear Tintti´s hair

Wish to have one? Enquiries and orders also by email

minna.maattanen@nannasalmi.com