So, here goes to my first blog in almost 3 years....ha.
Due to my love for horses (hence the name and layout) I will be on here to talk mostly about them. My acute knowledge and random facts should be just about enough to interest horse lovers and Equinophobians a like :) Did you know the Friesian horse almost went extinct in the early 1900's?! yeah, talk about crazy! And if that had happened all of us Friesian lovers wouldn't know what we'd be missing out on. Now there are over 1000 in the U.S. alone!
I train Friesians, so that fact wasn't entirely out of the blue.
Here's some interesting stuff I found that I DIDN'T know prior to research...an article I found on Google:
AraboFriesians - Black Athletes
A touch of desert Arabian blood makes them specially tuned Friesians
find more and more enthusiasts among equestrians
Some 400 years ago, during the time of the Spanish occupation from 1568 to 1648, the local
Friesian farmers were forced to use Spanish stallions with Arabian blood on their mares. The
result was an immensely athletic breed of horse which is found in the ancestry of Orlov trotter and the Morgan, among others. Then around 1900, to save the Friesian from extinction, the horses had to be made suitable for agricultural work. Unfortunately, this development cost the breed its lung and heart volume. When during the 1960s, Friesian horses disappeared from international driving and dressage arenas, some breeders decided to return to the roots.
These experts began to search for the best
desert Arabian blood, which had already been introduced into the breed 400 years ago, to use
on carefully selected Friesian mares. They chose the well-known elite stallion Gharib, a straight
Egyptian stallion at Marbach State Stud, in order to improve the following characteristics: endurance, toughness, lung and heart volume. Which means a quick return to a normal pulse and a better ability to give off warmth through a finer skin and different muscularstructure. The result in the 2., 3. and 4. generation have been horses that have been very successful in sports. For eight successive years, a team of AraboFriesians have won the Belgian four-in-hand championships, for many years they have been regularly placed among the TOP TEN in international driving competitions, including world championships.
More recently, AraboFriesians have also competed successfully in dressage. It was great advantage for the breeding of AraboFriesians, that the pure Friesians had been rigorously selected for beauty and movement. This meant that in breeding Arab-Friesians, the main emphasis could be placed on athletic ability. As a result, the horses uniformly look like Friesians and are very athletic. Most buyers of AraboFriesians are former warmblood owners, so that pure Friesians and AraboFriesians do not compete against each other. AraboFriesians are not just simple crosses between Friesians and Arabians. They should carry 5 to 20 % selected desert Arabian blood and look like pure Friesians, with slightly less fetlock hair and finer heads. They have smooth gaits and enjoy moving. They have great endurance and toughness and are thus suitable for the toughest sport competitions. One of the most important aspects is their disposition: it is the "golden disposition" of the old proven Friesian bloodlines. Most breeding stallions come from the Ritske and Age lines, the old Friesian sire lines known
for their athleticism. Since 90 % of today's Friesians are decended from the Mark sire line, which is only rarely found among AraboFriesians, all 231 Friesian dam lines can be used for breeding. If pure Friesians are used, lines free of Mark blood are preferred, in order to get the sport certificate.
The breeding goal is 10 to 20 % Arabian blood, so that the horses look like Friesians with their
typical way of moving, and have the endurance and toughness of the Arabian. The foals
receive full papers and equine passports. Foals that promise to be particularly athletic, receive
the "sport certificate" The sport certificate is the highest accolade in AraboFriesian breeding
and a necessary prerequisite for a potential breeding stallion. These horses are bred specifically for performance. AraboFriesians should be able to compete against the best warmblood horses.
The breeding stallion Yk Dark Danilo competed for four years as the leading horse in a four-in-
hand team among the world elite, in the world championships and in the indoors, until he was
trained for dressage in 2005. In the same year, he was Reserve Champion in his class in
Belgium. AraboFriesians are equally for dressage and driving. The European AraboFriesian Society today has daughter societies in France and in Germany. There is also great interest in these baroque sports horses in the USA, Canada, Spain, Switzerland and Britain.
