Nick's Blog

Lifri-The Working Icelandic Horse

Five years ago, we decied to move closer to work and give up our 100-mile-a-day commute. I told the realtor that I wanted to be close enough to Palmer so that I could ride my bike to the office and have enough land for a horse. It was hard giving up our 20-acre home in Willow and move to the edge of Palmer, but we found an older home in our price range, with a little
less than four acres, that needed a lot of TLC.

As a kid in Vermont, my family boarded a few “camp” horses in the wintertime, and I enjoyed doing the feeding and sharing their company. I hoped someday to have my own horse.

When I moved to Alaska, after college, I quickly got absorbed into the inner Alaska mushing scene and didn’t think of Alaska as a great place to have to feed a horse. Later, I moved to Southeast Alaska and confirmed in my mind that it was no place to train a dog racing team. I did, however, determine it to be a great place to find a wife!

In 1995 Robyn and I left Southeast and took jobs in Palmer. I noticed that Palmer looked like the best place in Alaska to keep horses that I’d seen so far.

Part of my work involves assisting Biologist Bill Collins with his caribou and moose research. From Bill I heard his stories of his bringing Icelandic horses to Alaska in 1982. Bill was studying reindeer in Northwest Alaska at the time, and needed a way to follow deer across the Tundra in the summertime. Bill bought five Icelandic horses in British Columbia, and they
provided him with the transporation that he needed.

I figured that the Icelandic horse would be an affordable animal to keep in Alaska and decided to get one. My dream is to spend as much time as life allows exploring the mountains with horses. My budget dictated young, untrained, affordable horses. Lifri came to us from the Icelandic
Horse Farm in Vernon, B.C. in the spring of 2003 as an unbroken, soon-to-be four year old.

Lifr’s mother had adopted an orphan foal and raised it along with Lifri. The name Lifri means Brother. We were told Lifri had received more interaction with people than most young horses, and in his case it worked out well.

I had bought Pat Parelli’s Natural Horsemanship book at a feed store a year before I bought Lifri. When I read Pat’s book, I was very impressed with the wealth of information he shared. I wish there had been a book by Pat about dogs when I started mushing. I found some of Pat’s methods unnecessary once I started training Lifri. Lifri is so friendly, and hardly shy. It may be that Icelandic horses in general are a little different to train.

Training Lifri to saddle was very easy to do. I first trained him to pack. We took long walks, strolling along at a slow place with only a total of 40 pounds in his bags. That first year he was never in a hurry to go anywhere, and I decided not to ask him for speeed. I rode him on his first
trail ride in the Alaska Range on a hunting trip the following spring after packing in with him. He did great packing and being ridden.

I now commute to work at least a couple of days a week on Lifri and have used him half-a-dozen
times on work projects, instead of a four-wheeler. I am able to ride Lifri through highway intersections in the middle of town or in the wilderness without any problems. Lifri has a lot of self confidence and a lot of trust. We still have a lot of skills to learn together, but I could not be
more pleased with my “working” Icelandic horse.