Category: Editorial

The wrong people … They hardly exist anymore: shows where both Shagya Arabians and Purebred Arabians are exhibited at the same event, albeit in separate classes. The idea itself is good, as it provides the organizer with more entries for the same amount of staff and expense. If only it weren’t for that big ‘BUT’… …

Continue reading

The Beautiful Illusion … There have always been those little exaggerations, omissions, and embellishments aimed at presenting oneself in a slightly better light than a neutral perspective would allow. It starts with minor tweaks and doesn’t stop at major manipulations. In the equine world, people used to retouch photos in the past as well—altering backgrounds …

Continue reading

Nothing comes from nothing When we look back at the past year, 2025, the review is rather mixed. The National Championship was canceled due to a lack of participants, and the ANC had significantly fewer entries than the previous year. Both stallion performance tests (VZAP and ZSAA) were also canceled, and only two Arabian Partbreds …

Continue reading

Missed opportunity – on to the next one Just before going to press, the rumors turned into reality: the German National Championship had to be canceled due to an insufficient number of entries. Certainly a difficult step for the organizer (VZAP), but what would have been the alternative? Begging once again – like last year …

Continue reading

Porsche or Dacia? How often have I heard it: ‘You can’t ride a piece of paper.’ Really? That’s a bit like saying, ‘Your Porsche is in no way better than my Dacia, because they both get me from A to B.’ But the truth is, the Porsche brand stands for specific qualities—horsepower, speed, luxury. The …

Continue reading

Arabians as Riding Horses In this issue, you will once again find a new article from the series ‘What are the Germans breeding?’, in which we shed light on German Arabian horse breeding. Among other things, it emerged that the number of foal births has decreased drastically since 2017, while during the exact same period, …

Continue reading

Everything used to be better? How often do we hear that everything used to be better in the past, with people romanticizing ‘the good old days’—and yes, I think that in many areas of horse breeding, ‘progress’ has not always been for the benefit of the breed, because: In the past, we had a great …

Continue reading

Back to Normality Olympics is on everyone’s lips these days, and with the rain of medals in eventing and dressage, our Olympians have performed splendidly. Nevertheless, the criticism does not subside; in dressage especially, emotions are running high, and unethical training practices, overly tight nosebands, insensitively handled curbs, hyperflexed horse necks (rollkur), exaggerated leg actions, …

Continue reading

Breed Standard – yes or no? For centuries, the Arabian horse was the warhorse of the Bedouins and, later on, a riding horse for the European cavalry, as well as an improver of cavalry horse breeds. The quintessence, therefore, has always been: the Arabian horse is a riding horse. This was still the case when …

Continue reading

Old Knowledge Anyone who deals with horses needs to be knowledgeable in many areas: breeding, rearing, feeding, management, riding, and so on. And many believe they can acquire this knowledge simply by reading books (or, even worse, on Facebook), or they seek advice and action from self-proclaimed gurus. Reading is educational—that much is true—but in …

Continue reading