I know Oscar and Tilly will be interested in this story... Oscar went horse riding on his birthday... so even at 4 years old, he knows quite a lot about horses... and Tilly has a long standing interest in horses and hopes to get a job brushing down horses at the dressage school around the corner near her home.
Those of you uninterested in history, skip this paragraph! We take up the history of the Lipizzaner breed in 800 AD. Yes, we'll skip the first 5.5 million years of horse history... its origins in North America... its evolving change of shape... particularly its teeth and feet... you will need to do your own research for those details. The immediate ancestors of the Lipizzaner breed can be traced to the 7th century when "Barb horses were brought into Spain by the Moors and crossed on native Spanish stock" ... in the 16th century, when the Habsburgs ruled both Spain and Austria, a powerful but agile horse was desired both for military uses and for use in the fashionable and rapidly growing riding schools for the nobility of central Europe... in 1562, the Habsburg Emperor Maximillian II brought the Spanish breed to Austria. In 1580, his brother, Archduke Charles II, established a Lipizzan stud at Lipizza (now Lipica where we saw them) located in modern-day Slovenia, from which the breed obtained its name. The Slovenians have been improving the breed ever since. Here endeth the history lesson.
Tilly and Oscar, the horses are not really white horses... they are brown horses... their skin is brown... at birth, their hair is brown. However, their hair turns grey. So, if Mummy starts finding some white hairs on her head, you can ask if she is related to a Lipizzaner horse.
Every military invader anywhere near Slovenia seemed to make tracks straight to the horse farm and took as many horses as they could. Napoleon Bonaparte was not averse to a bit of horse stealing... he found the farm... liked the look of the Lipizzaner and stole the lot... including the breeding records... and set up his stud in Austria. The horses stayed outside Slovenia until the end of WWII... when USA's General George Paton found a large mob of Lipizzaner in Croatia... and via Austria, repatriated the breed back to Lipica. The USA soldiers rode them, put them on trucks and trains... but managed to get enough breeding horses back onto the original farm to form a breeding group. The Slovenian government funded the establishment of the breeding farm and it has operated as a national park ever since.
We saw many horses tied up inside buildings staring at blank walls. We enquired if the horses objected to the lack of stimulation. We were told to watch horses in the wild. They move when they need more food or water... or are involved in breeding and leadership tussles. Otherwise, (we were told) they stand still. Feed them... let them lie down every few hours... let them roll around to scratch their backs... and they are as happy as a pig in mud. Do you have evidence to the contrary? It sounds strange to me.
Good breeding requires a tight meritocracy system. If you are a male and show lots of talent, you will be trained in dressage and allowed to compete in international competitions... perhaps the Olympic Games. If you win lots of medals in competitions, you will be allowed to be a stallion and sire folds... through artificial insemination only (Oscar, get Dad to explain what that means). If your dressage talents are a little lacking, you will be gelded and given a chance to be trained and compete in carriage events. If your talent still doesn't come up to standard, you will be gelded and hired out to pony club and participants. If you are a female, and come from a good breeding line... you do not have to show any talent... you have won the lottery of life... first prize. You will be put out to pasture and after your fourth birthday, you will be allowed to breed. If your foals look good... move gracefully... and your sons qualify for dressage training... you will be treated like royalty and allowed to breed for another decade. If you don't make the cut for the top class, you will be tested to see if you should be trained for carriage competitions... if you fail this test, you are confined to pony club work... an utter disgrace to the breed.
In the 1950's an Australian imported Lipizzaner horses onto a stud at Billinudgel. This stud has continued to satisfy registration requirements. Now, Australia has over 10% of the world's registered Lipizzaner horses.
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