Jul 07 2017
Happy Birthday – Plejada
On 7th May, the mare Plejada AH celebrated her 30th birthday in Austria. She has been at the side of Alexandra Dietl since the age of two and a half and is an integral part of her life – although Alexandra Dietl had initially looked for a different type of ‘Arab’ …
Even as a child, Alexandra Dietl was fascinated by Arabian horses, but they had to be beautiful, the way she saw them pictured in a book with lots of “dish” – it had to be a dream horse! When, by the end of the 1980ies, time was ripe for her first own horse, she was searching for exactly that dream horse: “But I couldn’t find an Arabian who was absolutely reliable, rideable and quiet, with an distinct ‘Arabian head’ and which I could afford”, recalls Alexandra Dietl. “But then, after some time, I realized that the head is not everything, and so I bought my character dream horse”, she adds. She had known Plejada, since she was a foal, but so far, she did not match her expectations. But although it was only “love on second sight” – Plejada managed to convince her with her other characteristics. She developed and turned out to be a talent for Western riding, especially Western Pleasure, but also in Reining and Western Horsemanship they achieved first places – and that were first places in breed open competitions! With her successes, she became Austria’s most successful purebred Arabian mare in Western sports of her time.
With regards to breeding, Plejada had five foals, four colts and a filly. All of them have become leisure horses, although Parvati (by Furiant) also showed a lot of talent in Western sports.