We are now into the sixth month of the year and the Arabian horse industry has had such heartache and loss like no other year before. Sigi Siller, Erwin Escher, Wendell Hansen, Drug, Enzo… All have passed since our last edition of The Arabian Magazine. My article, The Year the Tears Came, and tributes to Sigi, Erwin and Enzo can be found in our pages.
I find that times such as these really do force you to re-evaluate your own life – where you are, what you are doing, what to change. It is so easy to put things off until tomorrow, to procrastinate, and I think that we often end up feeling invincible, as if tomorrow will always come, and that we will live to see another dawn, every single day. However, the fragility of life has other ideas and it is up to us to take each precious moment and enjoy it. Savour all that life has to offer – from the beauty of your horses to the sound of the birds singing, from your family and friends to those peaceful times of solitude.
For so many of us, it is our four-legged family that get us through and keep us going. They are the ones that make our lives richer and I like to think that, in many ways, we make their lives richer too. The interaction that each of us has with that special horse is so precious and so individual. The bond, the relationship – it is often knowing that there is a horse waiting to nicker at you as you enter the yard, or a dog or cat to greet you eagerly, that makes us get up in the morning and carry on. They depend on us and in our own way, we depend on them too.
At such times, it can be difficult to focus on brighter things and certainly, with five in memoriam pieces as well The Year the Tears Came in this one edition, this has been a very hard magazine to put together. But through the tears, there is some sunshine to share. Aljassimya Farm, who so graciously dedicated their front cover to Sigi, held an open house after the Las Vegas Breeders’ World Cup and we share the joy from that day in a feature in the magazine. Then we have the European Amateur Cup, and the day was full of smiles and happy horses. And we celebrate the superb two-year-old colt, Wortex Kalliste, who took Vegas by storm back in April.
Our next magazine will celebrate the horses of Europe as well as those that compete in performance. So many breeding programmes have horses that excel in both the performance and halter world – and Erwin’s Rothenberg Stud and Sigi’s Om El Arab are fine examples of this, as was the great stallion, Enzo. Theirs is a legacy that will live on for many generations to come, and I look forward to sharing the future of Rothenberg Stud, Om El Arab and Enzo through the pages of this magazine over the coming months and years.
Janina, Annette, Philip, Brent… We are so sorry for your deep loss, and we send you all our thoughts at this very sad time. The love of the Arabian world is with you.
