Day of The Icelandic Horse 1st of May 2024

FEIF and Horses of Iceland would like to ask you to join us, both by organizing your own event and by encouraging your members to do the same. For this, we have made templates for each country in various formats which can be edited by you and/or your members in order to advertise what you or they are organizing that day.

Instructions can be found in the first 1-3 pages of each template. Feel free to translate them into your own language before sharing the file with your members. Using these templates is of course optional. You can use your own material if you want.

Templates to use: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19Mz9IRTDR4ene3TIbPYDdU3SZBXby2eleK4IeZHFJCc/edit?usp=sharing

Here are a few ideas of what can be organized (of course, this is a non exhaustive list and anything can be added to it.

• Open houses: encourage people to invite their friends, family, neighbors, work colleagues, village inhabitants, etc. to come visit their farm/stables and show them around.

• Invite people to come ride: encourage horse owners to allow children and adults to come and ride (whether they hold the reins themselves or not can be decided on the spot according to the type of horse and rider)

• Demonstrations: Prepare a small show showcasing the Icelandic horse’s gaits and versatility and invite the whole neighborhood/village to come and see.

• Invite people for a barbecue at the stables: Whether they ride or not, people are always happy to show up for a barbecue (or something of the kind). Invite them for a tour of the farm and/or stables at the same time.

• Invite friends and family to come over: People love to get close to horses and it’s not something they do everyday. Whether it’s to groom your horse(s) with you and help you muck the stable and then have a drink together or just come and pet a few horses. They’ll probably like to see your riding skills too.
• Keep in mind that people love to eat together – this can be a day where everyone brings their own pic-nic, everyone takes care of one dish or where you invite everybody to have a few snacks with you… food always gets everyone in a good mood 😊

And for those of you who cannot organize something in particular or invite others, you can OF COURSE still participate by simply posting what you will be doing with your horses on social media. Show us what your horse’s favorite activity is or what your favorite part of being a horseperson is: whether it’s feeding and listening to the sound of horses eating their hay, meditating by mucking out the stables, going for a bike ride with your horse, sitting in a field with horses or hardcore training for a competition (or even competing), everything is welcome.

We want to show the world how multi-facetted being around Icelandic horses can be and how international our community is. We’re counting on you to spread the word!!

Hashtag of the day: #dayoftheicelandichorse Please tag: @horsesoficeland and @feiforg so we can repost what’s going on in your country.