Mine came in honor of my first Trakehner, a wonderful mare. She was older, had had a few off-and-on soundness issues, but I wanted to start a breeding business, and she was cheap because the riding soundness was uncertain but was well bred. Never got a foal out of her. Spent a lot of money trying, including a breeding to Peron right after his Olympic year. But meanwhile, as I tried to breed her and had all sorts of conception/pregnancy failures early and late, I started riding her regularly just because she looked so great out there in the pasture. That mare was marvelous, my first schoolmaster. Trained to that wonderful “you’d better do it right if you expect cooperation” level, but not way up in another universe from where I was. A good challenge, but not an overfacing one. I never had a bit of soundness issues with her, possibly because my horses lived out with a run-in shed instead of stalled. Maybe it agreed with her aging joints more. Don’t know. But I had years of fun doing dressage on my failed broodmare, and she made me a fan of the breed for life. Even including as much as I wasted on trying to breed an older maiden, she gave me far more in education than I had spent on her. When I bought my second broodmare – younger, as I can learn from mistakes, and she wasn’t a broodmare dud and gave me some neat foals – I specifically wanted a Trakehner.
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