20. 2023 Part 3

Fabiënne van Olderen
Apr 10
3 min read

The final part of 2023. I totally found the drive to write again so everything will be on the laptop in no time. Lovely to look back at everything again. I am still far behind, but 2024 will soon follow. Now first the last months of 2023.

September.

This month began as usual with the foal judging. Iliyana was in top form! A nice figure a nice neck and showed nicely. Unfortunately we did not quite get the evaluation we had hoped for. Iliyana was not admitted to the auction because of a few too many red hairs in her front pluck.... This meant that I had to sell her myself.

Since the number of horses at my stable was not really decreasing, I decided to take some nice pictures of Sevimli as well and put him up for sale. Sevimli can move super and already has a mature impression, so taking those pictures was no problem.

Fortunately, Iliyana soon found a new home. Namely with a good friend of mine. This is of course great. A nice home and then also in the neighborhood.

Also scheduled this month was a photo shoot with my horses. You never have enough photos. I love photos so I like to share them everywhere.

Furthermore, now at the end of the summer I got some more time to ride by myself. So I picked up the training with Ari again and also found the fun again with jumping with Issy.

I also decided to start jumping with Infinity again. Finn also has a lot of fun with this, just like Issy, but has a little less talent. Not really, because practice makes perfect. But alas. My accident year was not over yet. After having done several jumps, which also went very well, I decided to do one last jump. I rode up to the jump with the plank, but during the last gallop, I already thought that it was not going to fit. Where and other horse might refuse, Finn thought I'll try it anyway. That didn't go quite right. The bar got between her front legs and we flew over together. I was just in time to roll away from Finn so she did not fall directly on me. But I did scrape my hip and head on the ground.

Out of adrenaline, I immediately got up and wanted to grab Finn. She had stepped on her own reins during the fall and in doing so had broken the bridle. The first thing I thought of, of course, was to see if she was all right. Fortunately, at first everything appeared to be fine with her, but I soon felt that I had made quite a smash. My helmet was pretty broken, so it could go into the dumpster.

October.

Whereas Sevimli's summer eczema went so well in the summer, it did not in the fall. He scoured his complete belly open. In this form I had never seen it before. The vet came and said that it did fall under summer eczema but that it manifests itself differently in every horse. So with Sevimli it really starts when the hair change from summer skin to winter skin starts again. Summer eczema is connected to the intestinal flora and everything from within. At the hair change, Sevimli's resistance is less and so the summer eczema gets worse. We got a good ointment and anti-itch remedy and fortunately it soon got better and I was able to control it better.

Sensation was getting better and better under saddle. He began to understand the aids better and better, and also the reins became easier.

Halfway through this month Iliyana moved to her new home. She got a beautiful place!

November.

At the beginning of this month, Incredible's foal evaluation was scheduled. Because she was only born in May and I had decided to keep her anyway, she didn't have to go for evaluation as early as September. We had to go to Münster. Here I was allowed to present her. She showed very well and we got nice comments. They found Credi a beautiful foal, still a bit on the small side, which is logical considering her age, but with potential. For now an IIa+ rating, but I was satisfied.

For Stanley and Sevimli, it was time to castrate. They had developed well and Stanley should be working from spring. So now was great timing, so they could still recover well before training started in the spring.