Horse Tails by Evelyn Hunck-Irving
I bought my first horse in 1998. She was a bit of a misfit at the riding stables where my daughters and I had been riding for several years. Gaduna, a mare with a KWPN[i] bloodline, was an amazing horse. Mostly when she wasn’t lame and couldn’t ride in the lessons, that is! Often the other Amazons didn’t like to ride her, as we had to saddle the horses up ourselves. Gaduna did not like anyone touching the top of her head. I didn’t mind and was always very gentle with her. I did once go flying whilst trying to, ever so carefully, put on her bridle! She tossed me about a metre up in the air! Luckily I landed gently again on my feet when Gaduna set me down! So when the owners offered her to us for a smaller price than usual for a KWPN’er, I jumped at the chance to become a horse owner.
Gaduna loved jumping and was good at dressage as well. Our friend, Marijke, who also loved her, would ride her in competitions. One time clearing not just the jump, but the side-post as well!
We decided to allow Gaduna to get in foal. Choice of a stallion to cover her, was Hunter (officially Hullabaloo) who was champion jumper of South Holland at the time. I moved Gaduna to a different stable, where there were more parks and woods to ride out in. It was great to see Gaduna’s tummy grow huge then feel the tiny foal growing inside her. When eventually the foal was born, a Stallion, we named him Uisge, which is Gaelic for, and pronounced, Whisky. KWPN horses are always given an official name beginning with the alphabet letter in use that year.
Uisge charmed us all! Our daughter Daniëlle and her best friend, Bojana, were the first to arrive after the birth. They were invited by the Veterinary Surgeon to hold up the placenta to be checked. I took two weeks off work and sat in the stable with Gaduna and this beautiful leggy foal most of every day. What an amazing time that was. I had a little stool I’d sit on. Uisge got very used to me and lay down next to me with his head on my lap. I drew pictures of both horses and wrote everything down, keeping an account of Uisge’s development. One wonderful and incredible thing that happened was that Gaduna allowed our direct family into her stable, but when a stranger tried to enter, she’d lay back her ears and scare them away.
Time for School
Yes, we sent Uisge to the Foal School when he was 6 months old. He lived there with a group of about 12 other foals in Bleiswijk, about a half hour drive from The Hague where we lived, until he was a year old. By then I’d moved Gaduna to a smaller stable in Maasdijk, in the Westland. So I managed to get a place for Uisge there too, with another young stallion, Utixo, so they could grow up together. They lived there together for about 3 years. They looked so similar and romped and galloped around having fun and growing stronger every day. The owners of the stable knew how to handle young stallions, so they both turned out very well-brought-up foals! Then I had to have Uisge gelded, as there were another two mares there.
Around this time, I had a professional rider break Uisge in so that I could ride him too. That was so exciting! He turned out to be the most comfortable horse I’d ever ridden. Like a Harley Davidson of the motor cycles! He was such a gentle horse and he’d race around the arena as if it were a free, hundred mile beach! He loved racing. A young friend whose parents also had a horse stabled there, turned out to be a natural, and she’d ride Uisge around in a running gallop without even using her hands on his reins. So beautiful to see. One evening when I was riding Uisge after work, we were in a good gallop, when I accidentally pulled a rein that unbalanced him. Down he went, and I could have stepped off, when suddenly I felt that he was keeping me in balance on his back, so I stayed on. But not for long, because as he pulled himself upright again, he spurted forward in the gallop he’d already been in! I was caught by surprise and flew a metre up in the air, and fell to the ground on my bottom! It felt like I’d received a kick in the head, I was stunned despite the obligatory headgear. But there were no marks on my head or on my protective riding helmet. Uisge stopped a few yards further on, and turned round and came back to me, as if to say:
“What are you doing there? I was keeping you on my back!”
So sweet of him. Anyhow, I felt really stupefied and it took me 15 minutes to recover and get back up on my feet. I somehow managed to climb back onto Uisge’s saddle and walked a soothing round of the arena, before heading off home with a massive headache. It turned out that I had concussion from the fall on my Posterior and had to spend a week in bed before I could go back to work!
[i] KWPN – Koninklijk Warmbloed Paardenstamboek Nederland (Royal Warmblood Studbook of the Netherlands).
Gaduna and Uisge 23 March 2001
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Uisge 6 days old
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