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Before the trip, I set the goal to find an older trained horse/stallion. If that fails, the Celle State Stud Lot 1 took 3 D-line stallions from last year's licensing, and they certainly looked very nice on paper. A friend of mine told me about the Westfalian auction; it had two black stallions for sale. I exchanged email with the the auction marketing sales coordinator, and got the catalog, and enough information for me to plan a trip to go there. Fortunately, after some uncertainty, my old-time trip guide and friend, Trish, was able to make the trip with me, so I didn't have to go by myself. We arrived at Muenster on October 7, and immediately went to the auction center at Handorf. The Westfalian auction hall looked a lot smaller than the Verden's, but their horses appeared to be all a size or two bigger.
The younger stallion, Dollmann, was the vice champion of 3-year-old stallion class in this year's Federal Championship. He stood at 17 hands at only 3 and half years old. He was by Davignon II. Even though he was by a complete different line from Welt Klasse, Dollmann's facial expression, head and neck looked almost exactly like Welt Klasse's, especially with his glistening black and a white star. However, Dollmann's giant size scared me as Welt Klasse didn't finish growing until 7, and he grew from 16 1/2 hh at 3 years old to eventually 16.3 hh. Dollmann was always ridden with his neck quite high for his age, and doing a lot of extensions. His hind legs were considered to be somewhat lazy by a few trainers I consulted. No matter what, he was very impressive with his absolutely obedient temperament, and extremely steady rhythm with all his gaits. The movement of the front legs during extension was breathtaking. He was a lot more mature under saddle at 3 than Welt Klasse at 3 for sure. Dollmann was diagnosed to be a slight whistler.
The other stallion at the auction was by Rubinstein I. He was completely black, and looked exactly like his sire, but just 2 inches shorter at 16.2 hands. Very good size for me. He was older, at 6, and training M level. He was licensed, but never performance tested. For the past two years he was breeding in Holland. Again, a horse with super temperament. His gaits were correct, but not flashy at all. Also he was quite lazy with his hind legs; however, for my riding, he was certainly plenty good, so I test rode him. Though his hind legs didn't appear active, he was actually quite forward, so all the aids could be light, but he felt somewhat stiff, and he certainly wasn't a push button for me. :-) Anyway, I set a price on him as a potential riding horse for me, and decided to bid on him.
The auction also hosted a gala night like the Verden auction. They not only showed off all the auction horses, but they also brought many of their State Stud stallions to show off with their offspring in the auction. It appeared that this black stallion calld Mon Cheri by the Hanoverian approved Matcho AA was a very popular stallion now. There were many of his sons in the auction. There was also a twelve stallion quardrille that was really amazing. I could really see that the stallions selected for the ride were really consistent in type no matter what bloodlines they came from.
I checked with a couple of people who were closely
associated with the auction organization, and had some general idea what the
prices might be, so I had known before hand that Dollmann would go beyond my
price range for sure. Yap, I certainly didn't have to worry about
that Dollmann was a whistler, so probably wouldn't be approved by Hanoverian
Verband because he was sold for 600,000 DM to an American, Elizabeth
Lewis, who studied with Rudolf Zeilinger. Rudolf was with the buyers.
They sat right next to our table, so I had a chance to chat with them
briefly. As for the Rubinstein son, I did bid on him, I even stretched 10K
DM beyond the original limit I set, but decided not to go any further, and he
was sold a few thousand Deutsch Marks more than my last bid.
There were 45 stallions in this performance testing. At the night before, we talked to Hannes, who trained Wonderful for me and was one of the three test riders for many years, he was certainly not thrilled about riding 45 young stallions in one afternoon. My focus was set on the three D-line stallions - the licensing champion, his 3/4 brother, and a De Niro son.
The licensing champion, Don Frederico was very stunning to look at... yet another black horse with smiling eyes. He looked even better than his picture in the Der Hannoveraner magazine from last year as I believed he grew taller and leaner and showed a better proportion for the modern type. He demonstrated tremendous suspension and elasticity. However, his front legs paddled quite widely, and landed with toes out and jamming the ankles. Nevertheless, his ridability was incredible. All three riders were able to do quite a bit with him, and the most impressive part was that he could easily lift his wither, drop his hips and push off on forward aids. Even with his paddling, I knew he would end up with high placing, and taken by the state stud because of his bloodlines and good attributes, so I had to keep looking.
When this chestnut son of Laptop showed up, I really took notice. He had nearly perfect conformation with a long, elegant and upright neck. He doesn't look as expressive because he seemed to be more serious looking, but his canter must have been heaven for the riders. Axel Broeckmann, the assistant to the state stud manager, and I decided that there wasn't enough score for his canter. He should get at least 12. His trot was quite fine though not extravagant, but his walk still needed some development. He was not quite regular at walk, and could use a bit more push from behind. I asked Axel about any possibility of buying him. He grinned at me and said, "Well, you know I'm not the state stud manager, but I don't think so." Hmm, I couldn't recall what was said about him in the Der Hannoveraner after he was picked for Lot 1. He was definitely not treated like a celebrity, like Don Frederico or Multistar as far as I remembered.
I was a bit disappointed at Don Vino, the 3/4 brother of Don Frederico. He was a big bodied boy, and his legs didn't appear to be in protportion to support it; as a result, he was a bit quick with his tempo and lack power to push off his body, hence not much suspension. He was quite ridable and very obedient. With development, he could grow more in protortion.
The De Niro son, Der Lord, also had a solemn expression. He showed better suspension at trot, absolutely sterling mind, but his back appeared to be straight and the connection to the croup was quite pointed. He was certainly impeccably bred, and had very valuable bloodlines. I marked him down as a potential too. The Prince Thatch son taken in Lot 1 was a really, really naughty boy; big X over his name. The Sao Paulo son San Brasil was also very interesting. He was short coupled modern type; the walk was a bit weak, but good gaits in general, except he was a bit wobbly in the hocks. The Fabriano son, Fisherman's Friend, was large framed, quite leggy, and he improved more and more as the riding went on with each rider. He seemed to be a good candidate to me too. The licensing reserve champion, Multistar by Metternich, was a beauty with handsomely marked face. He showed very nice canter, but nothing else too significant to make him stand out. I noticed that in this particular testing, a lot of stallions demonstrated good canter. The Laptop sons, Escudo I & II sons and the Metternich sons all had very good canter. It was also interesting that all the Escudo sons have super conformation very much like their sires, but their heads were not the most attractive. Their eyes seemed to all set high... I was wondering if that could be improved by crossing them with mares by Weltmeyer and his sons as they are so prepotent in passing down their nice faces. (OK, I was doing genetics-on-paper like one German breeder joked about breeding the toe-in mares to the toe-out stallions, so the babies would be perfect :-)
It was nearly 6 hours for the test riders to go through all the stallions. The last three horses came in the indoor school... a Holsteiner, who was very big, but with very elastic movements and seemed very easy to ride; a son by Accord II with excellent conformation and definitely very desirable bloodlines, but I found his gaits were only so so. And, the last, a Metternich son, who and the Accord son dropped out of last year's testing because of illness, but were kept to complete the testing this year. Looking at my very short list, I was thinking I was going home empty handed. For sure Celle will take some if not all of them in my list. I listed down the Holsteiner, but again was scared of his size. I noticed that the Metternich son gave one of the riders a bit of trouble at the beginning then settled down, but by the time Holga Finken got on him, he certainly caught my eyes. He had exceptionally good canter with a lot of activity behind, good trot with suspension, nothing like Don Frederico or Welt Klasse, but again most Olympic horses didn't trot like them either. Most importantly, this stallion's walk was much better than all the other stallions. I wrote his name down also... Montserrat. Holga Finken certainly brought out the good attributes of this horse; he rode all the other horses too, so it should be fair for me to judge. New hope... But, wait! What about the original plan? Remember, an older riding horse or the D-line stallions? Oh, forget about that, this Metternich son won my heart.
Montserrat is not the older horse I was looking for, but he is older. He is 4 years old, dark brown, almost black with dapples, a faint cresent moon shaped star and 4 tiny socks. As far as I saw, his movements were very correct and he used his hind legs actively. After the testing, the results were announced: He was 8th out of 45 stallions tested, ahead of Don Vino, Der Lord and his half brother Multistar, the licensing reserve champion last year. Montserrat scored well in both dressage and jumping. Because he was older, 5 points were deducted from the final scores (indices), and resulted in dressage index of 117.18, jumping index of 111.96, and overall of 117.32. And, I have to brag that I apparently picked the top stallions one more time! The winner was the Laptop son I noticed, Le Primeur.
Montserrat was a Hunnesrueck raised stallion, so he was inspected for licensing after the performance testing with all the Hunnesrueck stallions that passed the test. He was named the winner of the licensing, and that was certainly very good news, especially the big Holsteiner, who actually was 4th of the performance testing, was also in the group. Montserrat did have a small splint that made me pause for a second, but knowing Pommery had two huge splints and went on doing really well with his performance testing and producing beautiful babies, the worry quickly evaporated.
As they said, the rest was history. I got myself a new stallion! My sincere thanks to Dr. Bade for giving me the opportunity to make the purchase, and to Trish for guiding me around.
A 9-year-old gelding in training with them was for sale; he was trained and competed up to I-1 by a junior, a young girl, who just discovered boys and abandoned the horse, and the disappointed parents were selling the horse. I test rode him, and he was certainly quite easy to ride even though I rode him in my jeans and short boots. However, I was completely spoiled by my stallions' great gaits, and I had a hard time accepting just good gaits.
Hannes also showed us his vice champion of the 4-year-old division in this year's Bundeschampionship. Wow! What a walk and a trot that horse showed us! His name is Warum Nicht (Why Not), bought by Hannes' mother, Anneli. She told us he had a very unusual breeding, very closely line bred Weltmeyer X Wenzel I, but they felt "Why not!?", hence the name. The horse's hind legs are so powerful that every step of the walk you can feel the force of pushing even just watching afar. He cantered a bit straight legged in front, but that certainly could be improved. Hannes also started some half steps, and it was no problem for him. Anneli told us that he was too big as a 3-year-old, so he stayed in the pasture until 4, so he just started working this year. Congratulations to their careful planning, and the success said it all. I wondered if they would be tempted by the hundreds of thousands D-Marks sales prices on the other Bundeschampionship horses, but Anneli said she would keep the horse for Hannes to ride. Isn't Mom always the greatest?
I also used the free day for my shopping spree at Verden Sporthaus. I bought boots, breeches, vests, gloves, and a Schumacher Weymouth bridle. The prices were too good to resist due to the strong dollars. I had a surprise when I was just about to leave the shop. I saw a few Americans there, and one woman wore a jacket with a big embroidery "River Grove Farm". I asked her if she was from River Grove Farm in Idaho, and she said yes. I immediately asked if she knew the mare that was bred to my stallion Wonderful. She said yes, and the guy next to her turned to me and said that the mare was doing really great, and the vet thought the foal would be big. I introduced myself to him, and he told me he was Bob McDonald. "Oh, yes. You're the guy I talked with on the phone about the breeding." He proceeded telling me all about Shatsy (the barn name of Winwood, a son of Wonderful they bought in 1998) doing really well at the CDS/USDF championship with scores in the 80%. He said Debbie was going to ride Brentina at the Elite auction gala party. I happily declared that I also picked Brentina out during my first visit to Verden in 1994 even though she was not the top selling horse. I congratulated them with their success with her. I asked them whether they would buy more horses this time since they had to sell several of their horses, including Winwood, this year because Debbie just didn't have time to ride all of them. Bob said, they would probably buy one. I was wondering...which one? The Vice Bundeschampion?
I was told that we had to plan for a long trip because of
the Stau (traffic jam). I was thinking, "what Stau, I was in a couple of
them near Bremen before; no comparison to the parking lot I'm used to in the
Silicon Valley during commute hours." We did leave early in the morning,
and it was actually a breeze to reach their farm. It took us only one hour
and a half. They have several horses owned by Japanese clients. One
of them was a Bundeschampion, one was a top price Westfalian auction horse, and another
was a high priced Verden auction horse. Trish and I just watched them work
them one by one. Katje was a petit lady, but she was very skillful and
tactful with these big horses. She was frank about all the faults these
horses have, but she was also very good at compensating them as almost all of
them seemed to be doing very nicely at FEI level. The sad
thing was the Bundeschampion. She said he was totally ruined before she
got him. He won at 3 years old and was used as the showoff of the breed
every where, ridden with neck high, and doing nothing but extended trot before
he was really strong enough to do it. One day he just collapsed, his back
couldn't take it any more and he went crazy because of the pain. Right
now, they could do only light stretching work with him. She also showed me
a mare that just arrived recently; similar case, extremely talented, but went
too fast with training and gone crazy because something was hurting her.
People seemed to know that she had this specialty to rehab and retrain them, so they kept sending her this
kind of horses, but she expressed that she would be a lot happier if they sent
these horses to her before they had problems.
We went to a nice
Italian restuarant for lunch. We chatted more about all those lost years
and how Joshua met Katje, etc. It turned out that Joshua was trained to
FEI in Florida when he was going to the graduate school there. He
represented Taiwan for the Asian Games. The Taiwanese Equestrian
Federation asked the German FEI organization at Warendorf to recommend a coach,
and they recommended Katje. He met Katje because of the event though the
coach deal didn't really work out because of the Taiwanese organization's
internal issues. I also learned that Katje was a student of Kottas in
Austria for three years and a master of in-hand work. It was a bit hard to
imagine that because she was really small in size. Joshua also kept saying
until he met Katje, he didn't believe that you didn't need force, or at least a
lot of strength, to ride or handle horses. Katje's cousin is a famous
German jumper rider, who is not a trainer or horse owner. They told me
that he was so talented that people kept offering him horses to ride and
compete, and he got to pick and choose what he liked to ride. Gee, isn't
that a wonderful situation?
Anyway, after lunch, we hanged around the barn a bit more, and I bade my farewell to them. The return trip was NOT a breeze. In fact, it was so, Mmmm, uncomfortable, it deserves a paragraph for itself! :-)
We left the barn around 1 PM, thinking another one and half hours, we would be back to Verden, and plenty of time to get ready for the Verden Auction Gala evening party. Not so! I finally saw some serious staus! Apparently everyone was trying to leave work early on Friday. It took us two and half hours to move 15 kilometers. I could've scooted my daughter's scooter faster than that. The terrible thing was that I was too casual about the trip and didn't go to the bathroom before the return journey. Oops... After two and half hours and no freeway exit in sight, I finally decided to look for a good bush! Fortunately the Autobahn travels through a lot of farm lands... For the next 30 minutes, I was agonizing, "Hmmm, maybe, perhaps the forest just a bit further ahead." "No, it's too far for me to run to..." "Eee, it's not dense enough." Finally, there was an emergency phone stop on the shoulder of the Autobahn, where Trish could park the car, and I could run down the hill on the side of the freeway to some bushes near a ditch, but I was definitely mooning the cows in the field. I bet I peed as much as anyone of them too! Ahhh! What a relief! Trish laughed at me because I was so embarrassed, and she was surprised that this was my first time. She said all of them did that at one time or another while in Germany. Really?
After we got back from the trip, I was exhausted. I guess it took a lot of energy to hold the dam. :-) Anyway, I decided not to go to the Gala party, so Trish went by herself. Later, I asked her about Debbie McDonald's ride with Brentina, and she said there was so much piaff and passage in the musical ride, it was getting a bit boring. Well, I guess Debbie ought to show off her horse's strength that was very much evident even when she was only 3. Trish said they also brought out Weltmeyer in hand, but he was a naughty boy. The handler had a hard time keeping him on the ground. I didn't know he was good at air above the ground too. :-)
During the final review of all the sales horses, Dr. Wilkens saw me, and came to me and told me he was very sorry to hear that Welt Klasse passed away, and told me he saw an excellent crop of foals by Klasse during the inspection tour. It was very kind of him to do so.
The auction started in the early afternoon. We sat with Dr. Ulf Moeller at the same table. He was a Verden auction rider in the past, and now associated with the PSI auction. Of course, his recent fame included riding the Thomases' Pristiges Pilot son Placido to Bundeschampion. Placido is currently for sale in the PSI auction. Ulf's wife and 4 month old daughter were there as well. The baby was really cute and completely not bothered by all the noises of loud music, crowds and auctioneer's sales pitch and chants. Boy, Ulf was a chain smoker; I definitely lost good 5 minutes of my life from the second hand smoking.
Since I was all set with my new purchase selection, I didn't really pay attention to the auction horses. However, I did video tape quite a few very pretty horses. There were 14 horses sold for over 100K, several over 200K. The vice Bundeschampion was sold for 340K DM, and the girl who sat at the table of the winning bidder must be the beneficiary as she was so excited that it looked like she was crying. So Debbie's sponsor, the Thomases, didn't want this one as I believe they could just buy any horse they wanted. It was not until the very last horse by Fabriano, the bidding war started. The son of Fabriano went to the Thomases for 430K. He was a big framed gelding with long legs, pretty substantial, and very similar to Fisherman's Friend, the stallion that I was also interested in at the Adelheidsdorf testing.
Following the riding horses, the foals came out. There were several foals with jumping bloodlines, but they also moved very well. Several of them sold for quite a bit of money perhaps as stallion prospects. The disappointment was the Rotspon foal, no one bid on him. Well, if he didn't have any major health or soundness problem, I had my guess why. Anyway, overall I enjoyed watching so many beautiful horses showcased in a relatively short period of time (though my butt did fall asleep.) I also satisfied my taste buds with all the "standard" auction foods as usual, the long sausage (bratwurst?) on a tiny bun in the middle just for holding it (unlike our hotdog that is way too small for the big bun), crepes, the pork sandwiches, and of course plenty of Champagne supplied by the auction.
Time flew and it was near the end of the trip. My au pair's parents insisted on driving all the way from Homberg to meet me in Verden because I couldn't find time to make the 6 hour round trip. I enjoyed meeting them a lot. No wonder my au pair is such a nice and cheerful person. Her wonderful parents are just the same way.
Well, it was a great trip though I didn't achieve my original goal, and it was actually stressful at times because of all the running around. I am really appreciative with Trish's help to guide me around. I am thrilled about the new stallion. I plan to keep him in Germany in training with Holga Finken, so I'll have more excuses to go to Germany! :-)
On my way home to San Francisco, I stopped by the Duty Free shop in Munich, and bought 8 boxes of chocolates to share with my hubby, children, and my chocoholic au pair who helped me with my children and Rubino while I was gone. 8 boxes were not quite enough to bribe them to sit through all the video I took. :-)
Until next trip.. Tsuess...
Violet
November, 2000
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