The Pelargon story - how I found my Swedish warmblood

From AlexBrownRacing

I had finally made it to the Grand Prixs, with Mango[1], my “crazy” Thoroughbred who most people wouldn’t ever think would be able to go to a horse show, because he was so afraid of everything; other horses, people, pressure, you name it. And I, competitive as I am, always thought that until I start jumping at the Grand Prix level, it doesn’t really count. All the years of showing, from the pony jumpers and up through the higher levels, were just an education and experience gathering, a journey to finally arrive to where I wanted to be. Now Mango, was already getting older, I think he was 11 when we did our first Grand Prix, and I started thinking; ‘when Mango is ready to retire, even though he probably has another 5-7 years of showing in him, what do I have to ride then – to be able to stay at this level and go further?’ That was when I started thinking about getting a young horse, a horse that would have the talent and heart to do the “big stuff”. A horse that I could train from scratch and “customize” to fit me and my purpose. Most other horses I had trained, had been “rehab-cases”, screwed up in one way or another by other people or circumstances, and they had trusted me enough to letting me change them and together we had enjoyed and accomplished great victories. But the ghosts of past times would always haunt them, and every now and then, they would have “flashbacks” that would make me start dreaming of that I one day would want to start out fresh, with a horse that wouldn’t have any bad habits or memories – and if that horse would not turn out great, then at least I wouldn’t be able to blame anyone else, but myself.

Around this time, an old friend of mine from Sweden, Maria, was visiting me and she started talking about this yearling one of the breeders in her neighborhood had, and about that she had heard somebody say that they had seen him free-jump and about how impressed they had been with his talent and attitude. Maria didn’t know about my recent thoughts about investing in a young horse at that time, she was more thinking about that maybe I could get some buyer over here interested enough to take a look at him. After all, I was in the importing and selling warmbloods business, and she thought I might have a good contact. “This horse”, she continued, “comes from very good bloodlines, his mother was a 1.40-1.50 meter jumper herself and on the sire’s side there is Pilot and Ralme Z. All the off springs from this mare have become great jumpers, one of them is even an approved stallion in Norway.” When she mentioned “Pilot” my eyebrows went up and by the time she got to “Ralme Z” I was probably smiling. I had always been a Ramiro-fan (Ralme Z is by Ramiro-Alme), and my wish was to own a horse with some of that blood in him. Then Maria went on, “there’s only one thing though, he is “yellow”, I know a lot of people don’t like buckskins and duns.” Maria probably had forgotten that my first Swedish warmblood was a buckskin as well, or maybe it was just the fact that she wasn’t thinking about ME, as the potential buyer… To make a long story short, Maria went back to Sweden, had the breeder send me a videotape of this yearling free-jumping and I bought him, unseen! I remember calling the breeder, Ann, on Christmas Eve, telling her I had made up my mind – I WANT HIM.

Linnea 14819, Pelargon’s dam Pentagon 925, Pelargon’s sire

Importing a horse from Europe is usually not that big of a deal, I had been involved in many imports from Germany, but by the time we got all the papers together to send Pelargon on his long journey, the Foot & Mouth Disease had broken out in Europe. There were many e-mails and phone calls going between me, Ann and the shipper before Pelargon could even leave Sweden. Then we were nervous that he might get stuck somewhere in Germany, but he finally made it on to the plane, and at the last minute – the same day the boarders closed for all animals, due to the disease. We all took a sigh of relief as we thought the worst was over, when Ann got a call from JFK airport. They told her the papers weren’t filled out right and unless she faxed over corrected ones, they would put the horse on the next flight back to Germany again! Ann immediately had it taken care of and after three days in quarantine and a few days of rest at a lay-over stable in New Jersey, Pelargon was on his way to Texas with Equine Express to his worried yet anticipating new Mom.

When he finally arrived, he had been on the road for almost two weeks, and it was a tired and slightly thin 1 ½ year old that stepped of that truck. He seemed a bit confused and suspicious at first, I’m sure he wondered where his mom, sister and his stall buddy was and nobody was speaking his language, so I started speaking my native language to him and as silly as it sounds I think it comforted him and he relaxed, walked into his huge stall and started munching on his hay. Just to stand on something that didn’t move, probably felt good to him by then. Pelargon arrived around 3am, so he got at least a few hours of rest before he woke up to his new world. I was working in a 100 stall barn at the time, as the assistant trainer, and there were six barn workers, all male and they were speaking yet another language, Spanish. The guys were all concerned because they thought that this new horse didn’t like them, as they had a hard time handling Pelargon. He didn’t seem to trust them at all and I usually had to come to their rescue to put his halter on to go out to pasture and go with them when it was time to get him in from pasture. The guys would catch the other four youngsters, who were Pelargon’s pasture buddies, but Pelargon would never come to them. As soon as I showed up, he would trot right up to me and stick his head in the halter, and I would almost feel embarrassed, he so obviously preferred me instead of the guys. I talked to Ann about this and she explained that he had never been handled by men before. Ann herself is a veterinarian, so she did all of the vet work, her farrier was a female and Ann’s husband just wasn’t into horses, so Pelargon had not even been exposed to men, except for the veterinarian friend of Ann’s who helped geld him as a yearling, and that was probably not a very pleasant acquaintance… I explained this to the guys at the barn and they felt much better knowing that it was nothing personal, and they all soon became friends.

                        (3 pictures of young Pelle ) 	

So, did Pelargon meet my expectations when I finally got to see him? Big time, the first morning after he arrived, I let him out in the arena and the way he moved with his huge fluent trot and his airy and ground covering canter, I almost thought I had bought a dressage horse instead of a jumper. I had to let him free-jump one time first, before I was sure that he was the horse I had watched on the video tape. He didn’t disappoint me at all, in fact he impressed on me hugely, not only by his jumping technique and bravery, but also the way he would always TROT off after the jumps, nonchalantly looking back at me as if he was saying: ‘is that ALL you can do, that wasn’t very big”. I’m telling you, it was HARD not to raise the jumps to see what he could REALLY do, and that is the one thing I have had to battle all through his growing up time, the temptation of asking him too much too soon and instead to be patient and constantly reminding myself of, that I’m sitting on a goldmine here and he will be well worth the wait!

Shortly after Pelargon came to the States, his mother Linnea had a bad case of colic and Ann had to put her down. It was a sad day for Ann and I remember her saying that the barn looked so empty with only one “yellow” horse left. That was Pelargon’s sister “Rolleka” (by Rebel Z) and Ann still has her and she is very successful in the jumper ring. Rolleka has already had one baby, a colt by Leuthen, and I’m sure she will have more in her years to come, after her show career. Maybe Ann one day will have a new herd of “yellow” babies… picture of sister Rolleka & Orchis, another of his sisters, with her baby

After her death, Linnea received a prestigious reward, given only to the real successful broodmares, the “Carat Memorial”. Here is what was written about Linnea at the ceremony: “At the ASVH Örebro yearly meeting, prizes were given to some of the areas successful breeders. The brood mare prize Carat Memorial, donated by Orvar af Buren in memory of the brood mare Carat 2690, was awarded to the mare LINNEA 14819, born 1980, at Stig Nordqvist’s and owned by Ann Thoren, Vretstorp. LINNEA is by Utrillo out of Hepatika by Dragon-Jarramas from the mare family 40 and has produced among others Löjtnanthjärta, an approved stallion in Norway, the brood mares Cedera, Akleja & Rölleka (double diplomas in 3 year old testing 2000) and PELARGON, who has been exported to the U.S.”

Pics of his brother,[2][3] - the stallion

Baby pictures of Pelargon with his mother, Linnea.

So what did I do with Pelargon while I was waiting for him to grow up? Well, I spent a lot of TIME with him. Grooming, getting him used to the cross ties, the shower (which he hated at first), the fly spray, all those things that he hadn’t really experienced in “cold” Sweden. I took him out and hand grazed him every evening and started doing some in-hand training. The Swedish Warmblood Association (SWANA) had an upcoming inspection in the fall and I was curious of what the Swedish judges would think of him, plus it gave me something to do with him.

SWANA inspection 2001, at Tailwind Farms, TX

Karl-Henrik Heimdahl and Lars Parmler were she Swedish judges at the inspection, and they did not give Pelargon the very top scores that I had hoped for, they thought his back was too long and that he was a little too much on his forehand, but they gave him good scores on his gaits. Mr Heimdahl also said that: “we don’t know whether he can jump or not yet”, so I showed him a free-jumping picture and he said: ”Oh, well he seems to know what to do with his legs – good!” Mr Parmler also comforted me with saying that for a jumper it doesn’t really matter that much that they have a long body, and he said it would be interesting to see what this horse could do in the future and wished me good luck with him.

I had promised myself NOT to start riding him until he was three, not until his actual birthday, which was in June, so I started getting him used to being lunged with a saddle in the spring and I couldn’t wait for June to come around. Then one day in April, I was lunging him and he seemed a bit bored, so I asked a friend of mine, Joan, to just hold him for a second while I would climb up on him. Joan said: “maybe you should take off your spurs first?” I said: “nah, I’m just going to sit on him for a minute to see what he does”. He did NOTHING, he just sighed as if he was saying: “it was about time…” So we walked around a little, Joan leading him, and I realized I had just broken my promise. But after that time I actually waited until June to start riding him.

In the meantime I happened to capture THIS beautiful picture of him free jumping:

That picture gave me the true vision of, that I would soon be sitting on top of that horse, jumping WITH him, not just watching in awe. And to quote CS Lewis: “We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words – to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.” And I WOULD. Check this picture out, it was taken at Pelargon’s third jumper show, in February of 2004.

The breaking of young Pelargon went pretty uneventful, he was very eager to learn new things, had a little bit of attitude (which I think a good potential jumper needs to have), and sometimes, when I was careful NOT to push him too much too soon, he would get bored and almost telling me not to treat him like a baby. He is a lot like your typical warmblood, VERY lazy, when it comes to flatwork, I always have to work much more than he does. But when you put a jump in front of him, he wakes up, gets excited and ready to do his job. So, we started going to horse shows in the fall of 2003.

Pelargon LOVES going to horse shows. He acts like a stud, becomes a couple of inches taller and thinks everybody is there to watch HIM! And forget about being lazy – at horse shows he is a totally different horse and over-jumps everything by a couple of feet. I remember one show in Houston, where we jumped his first 3’6” class, and he jumped the whole course as if the jumps were 5 feet tall and impressed on a lot of bystanders. I had several trainers come up and ask me if he was for sale, and also when he was going to jump again so they would be sure to be there and watch him.

Little by little I started letting him jump bigger jumps and added some difficulty in gymnastics series etc. That horse can really make my day – any day. My boyfriend tells me that when I’m jumping Pelargon, that’s the only time I really smile! What can I say, he just gives me such an awesome feeling of doing everything so “perfect”, and everything is so easy. He has so much power, such talent, a huge stride, an honest heart and on top of it all – he LOVES his job. He was born and bred to be a jumper and he knows it!

We had a little setback this past fall, when I fell of a ladder and broke my back and injured a collar bone, and I couldn’t ride for about a month. And it took even longer before I thought I was healed enough to jump. I could tell Pelargon had missed jumping, the first time we hopped over some jumps, after my back injury. He was way over-jumping again and so happy, that I even for the moment forgot about my own pain and had just as much fun as he did. He was almost “begging” me (again) to set the jumps up higher, but I tried to be smart and think about the consequences…

But a few days after we had jumped, my back still felt OK and I couldn’t get over that “high”, that jumping Pelargon again, had put me in. So, the next weekend I thought: “OK, Pelle, if you want to start jumping bigger and you think you are ready for it, then let’s do it” And he was ready for it all right – no problem. Not only did he never even hesitate about approaching the jumps, how a horse can jump in such a picture perfect form EVERY TIME, that still amazes me.

December 3, 2004

Now, how do I finish writing this story? As you might have guessed, I can talk forever about my little “flowerchild”. The name “Pelargon” is Swedish for the flower “Geranium”. All horses from that family (no. 40 – Linnea’s bloodline) have flower-names, which usually start with the first letter of the sire’s name. I believe that Pelargon was sent to me by God. Many reasons, of course, for me to think so, but one little interesting part, that I have left out so far, was the fact that I tried to breed my old SWB mare to get a baby out of her that would be my new “jewel”. I bred her 5 times (!), to 5 different stallions, but she would never stay pregnant longer than 60 days. Nobody could explain why, the veterinarians couldn’t find anything wrong with her, and they all thought that they would be able to get that horse in foal. It never happened. I think it was God’s plan, He didn’t think I was ready for a young horse and it would have messed up the bigger plan, which He had for my life. And I also know, that my SWB-mare would not have been able to produce as good of a horse as Pelargon is, as much as I loved her. I was always so curious about what color her baby would get though, would it be “yellow”? And look at what God eventually gave me, a yellow super baby!! “Before I shaped you in the womb, I knew all about you. Before you saw the light at the end of day, I had holy plans for you.” (Jer. 1:5) Another interesting discovery, which I have thought of, now, decades later, is that at the time I was showing my mare at different horse shows in Sweden, there was this other buckskin colored mare, which people sometimes confused my horse with. And the more I think of it, the more I realize that, that horse might have been Linnea. I have not confirmed this with Ann, it is just a funny thought I have had…

Anyway, I thank God for all my horses and the gift He has given me to understand them and grow with them, through them, and for always protecting us and keeping us safe. “I know the plans I have for you, to prosper you and give you a future.” (also from Jer.)