This message is from: "Mike May, Registrar NFHR" <regist...@nfhr.com>
The following was sent to me at my request. I told Carol I would forward it to the list for her since she is still not allowed on. Please send any replies to Carol directly - Her email address is: mailto:beave...@ns.sympatico.ca Mike ======================================================= GJEST - (1977 - 2009) Gjest was owned and cared for by Carol and Arthur Rivoire for 22 years. The well-known breeding stallion, GJEST, was put down on September 4, 2009 at Beaver Dam Farm in Nova Scotia. - Gjest was born in Norway in 1977. His sire was the Norwegian Approved stallion, Helgas-Jarl 1764, and his dam Rita 13847 was the daugter of Sollidblakken 1556. GJEST stood at stud in Norway until 1983 when he was purchased by the Nederlandse Fjordenpaarden Stamboek. The Dutch Fjord Studbook had used Gjest's sire, Helgas-Jarl for a number of years and were happy with the results of his offspring. Now they wanted Gjest for their breeding program. Bob van Bon, Chief Inspector of Fjords for the Dutch Studbook once said . . . . "You don't find stallions like Myrstein, Helgas-Jarl, Gjest & Nordal anymore. These were stallions that produced size, strength, and big bodies." Gjest started breeding in Holland in 1983. And it was 1985 when I went to Holland for the big show the Studbook holds every five years, and it was there I saw Gjest for the first time. -- It was the traditional time in that show when the Studbook displays all of their breeding stallions. Some are shown in hand, some ridden, some driven. They showed each stallion in the manner that best showed him off. -- Gjest was shown in a racing sulky with the driver in racing silks. -- The show was held at a racetrack, on the infield, but when it came time to show Gjest, they gave him the track. His driver let him out and Gjest showed off his famous, his spectacular extended trot. -- That was all there was for me. One look and I knew that this stallion personified what Arthur and I wanted to promote about the breed. ---- We wanted to tell people that the Fjordhorse was not only kind, quiet, forgiving, and pleasant. Yes, he is all of those things, but he's also a great athl! ete. -- That night I spoke to Bob van Bon, Chief Inspector of Fjords for the Studbook, and I asked him if Beaver Dam Farm could buy Gjest. The answer was a quick "No". After that, I was shown several Studbook stallions that we could have, and one of them was the treasured Astrix, on loan from Norway. -- We turned them all down. After seeing Gjest, we just couldn't accept any other. -- So, two years went by until one day, Chief Inspector Van Bon called and said they had just approved a son of Gjest for breeding in Holland, and now would consider selling Gjest if the price was right. -- We jumped at it, and in September of 1987, Gjest arrived at our farm in New Hampshire. Gjest arrived along with several mares we were importing. He was a very virile, vocal stallion, and he was not happy in the new land. -- One of my favorite memories of Gjest was a couple of days after he arrived that September. He was really agitated by this move from his routine. -- So, on the second day, I decided to cut his mane, and it was amazing. As soon as I began, he visibly relaxed. It was like he was thinking . . . "Finally, something familiar in this strange land with the strange language." -- It was at that moment that I fully realized he was ours -- ours to care for and to use. That fall and winter, we decided to send Gjest to a trainer in Vermont. Gjest was very well trained to drive, but had never been ridden. -- Sherri Balou taught him to ride, and I remember that Bob van Bon was astounded that this 10 year old stallion took to it so easily. -- Sherri took Gjest to a few dressage shows, and her husband, Charlie, took him to driving shows. The results were always good. We were pleased. Particularly so, when Charlie took Gjest to a Morgan Show. It was a special Morgan show, all about the Morgan breed's heritage, which was in large part, trotting aces. -- The show was called Morgan Heritage Days, and it was in Tunbridge, Vermont. -- Charlie entered Gjest in the Justin Morgan Trotting Race. Can you imagine? A Fjord in the "Justin Morgan" class. -- The show didn't have a rule specifiying that the classes at their Morgan show were only for Morgan Horses, so Gjest got entered, and he WON THE RACE, and got the huge and beautiful blue & g! old CH AMPIONSHIP RIBBON. He handily beat all those Morgan trotters. -- You can believe that soon after the show the committee got together and drafted a rule that would prevent such a thing happening again. The next spring, Gjest came back to Beaver Dam Farm and I began driving im. -- He was wonderful, but he was very forward and very strong and hard in the mouth. -- I began hauling him up to Larry Poulin's stable in Maine, and working with Larry. -- Larry had a system of rein handling that was new to me at the time. He kept the bit moving in the horse's mouth never letting him lean on it. When I mastered this technique, Gjest was a different horse to drive. He was sensational! Between 1988 and 1991, the year we left New Hampshire to live in Nova Scotia, I drove Gjest a lot. Trained a lot, and competed a fair amount. He and I did the Gladstone Spring CDE. -- We did Myopia. We did a CDE at the Eastern States Exhibition in Springfield, MA. We competed at the Woodstock Fjord Show. In 1987 (I think it was), we took him and several mares to the very first North American Evaluation which was held at Woodstock, Vermont. There was an international panel of judges - Van Bon from Holland, Arve Rostadt from Norway, and Ken Demers from the U.S. -- The stallions I remember in Gjest's group were - Solar, Modellen, Eggeprinse, and Montano (I think). -- All the stallions were imported originally from Norway. all were approved stallions in Norway and some also in Holland. All were great stallions, but Gjest was judged the best stallion in the group. One of the deciding factors was his serious masculinity. -- When we moved to Nova Scotia in 1991, with Gjest and 17 other Fjords, Gjest was again traumatized by this new move. The prolem in Nova Scotia was that we had so much land that his mares could get out of his sight, and taking his job very seriously as he always did, this bothered him a lot. He was content when they were within sight, but when they'd go up over the hill, he'd pace up and down the fenceline, and he did it so much that summer that he lost a ton of weight. Later, we reconfigured the pastures, and fixed the situation. The year after we moved to Nova Scotia, we began our Beginner Driving Vacations, and Gjest became a school horse. -- This thought makes me smile because I remember all those students who got Gjest as their assigned driving horse. -- They couldn't beleive it, and a lot of them, I think, wanted to run away when on the first day I brought Gjest into the barn. -- He was always all stallion. I'd take him out of his field and head for the barn, and he'd snort, yell, and prance his way to the cross-ties. He scared the hell out of the student driver assigned to him. -- I got a kick out of this. I knew it wouldn't last, because the minute I turned him around on the cross-ties, he knew what his job that day would be, and he settled immediately. Then the beginner could brush him, pick out his feet, and harness him with a teacher beside. -- Gjest was such a good school horse. We could head out with Gjest in the lead, and two or more driving mares following, and all was tranquil. Once on our dressage arena, Gjest didn't need to be in the lead anymore. The student driver could drive him anywhere doing any kind of figure, and Gjest, as usual, was all business. That characteristic of his of being so serious about the job he was doing was one of his most significant traits. Whatever the job he had to do, he put his whole heart in it, and gave it his very best. He hadn't a lazy bone in his body. He always gave it his all. -- Stallions have a reputation of being quitters. I never saw any inclination in Gjest to quit a job. Last spring was the last year Gjest bred mares. He was 31 years old, and seemed to be as virile as ever. -- He covered quite a few mares, and all but one took on the first cycle. The other, took on the second cycle. -- This, 2009, spring Gjest still seemed ready to breed, but unfortunately, the economy prevented the mare owners who had booked from going through with their plans. -- As Arthur and i are downsizing, we had no mares to breed to him. -- Another great memory of Gjest is from his last breeding season. There was one mare he had problems with. He just couldn't seem to enter her. She was ready and patient, and stood fine, but he kept missing the mark, but he never stopped trying. Each time, I'd pull him off, walk him around, and he'd try again. He must have jumped on her over 20 times. I was handling him, and I thought for sure he was going to drop dead from a heart attack. He was 31 afterall. When we put him down, he was still healthy, we believe anyway. He didn't seem to have any pain. Our farrier often remarked that astonishingly, Gjest didn't have any arthritis. -- He was declining, though. His spirit wasn't what it was, even as it was a few months earlier. This was the hardest decision Arthur and I ever had to make. We agonized over it for six months. -- Did we have the right to do this when he wasn't sick or injured or in any obvious pain? -- Then, we'd think about the coming Nova Scotia winter, and how it was very possible, even probable, that he'd run into a bad problem when the roads were impassable and neither the vet or the backhoe could get here. -- We're a hilly farm and we get a lot of ice. It's extremely difficult to get around on this ice, for people and horses. -- We thought of him falling, and us not being able to get him up. -- Oh, we thought about everything, and kept coming back to the fact that we didn't want to take the chance, at his age, of what we knew could happen this winter. -- We had to put 34 year old Tessa down a few years ago, and that wasn't a hard decision. She was obviously ready to go. -- It wasn't so obvious with Gjest, and therefore took a lot of fortitude to make the decision, which we feel was the right one, although right up to the end, I was still agonizing and thinking about calling it off. It would have been much easier on us if I had, but not easier on Gjest. -- It was a horrible decision to have to make, but we feel it was the most humane. It also allowed him to leave the world with his dignity, something this horse had a lot of. Gjest has made a tremendous contribution to the Fjord breed in Europe and in North America. -- He has many more registered offspring in the NFHR than any other Fjord stallion. I don't know how many offspring Gjest has in Europe, but I know that while he was standing in Holland, he was breeding 80 - 90 mares per year live cover. -- That's a figure that most horse people in other breeds can hardly believe. All told, in Europe and N.A., Gjest has hundreds of sons and daughters. Gjest has several well-known sons now breeding - There was the beautiful BDF Kanada King (Gjest x STine - Ene) . BDF Kanada King predeceased his sire. -- Others are -- BDF Obelisk (Gjest x Stine- Ene) , BDF Malcom Locke (Gjest x Stine - Ene) , BDF Titian (Gjest x Maryke - Hjerter-Knaeght) . I hope I haven't forgotten a stallion. And there are two young ones that I believe will carry on the tradition. -- We have a 2 yr. old Gjest son on the farm now almost ready to go to his new owner in New Jersey. His name is BDF Yellow Knife (Gjest x Holly - Orka) . The other is BDF Zenith (Gjest x Holly - Solar). Gjest was everything a breeding stallion should be. . Nobody ever had any doubts as to his gender. -- Frankly, there were times when he scared me, but that was my fault, not his. He was always being just exactly what he was supposed to be - a breeding stallion. -- We owned him for 22 years. He was handled by me, by the girls who helped us on the farm. He was mighty macho, but he never hurt any of us. Well, I got kicked once, but that was my fault, and Jaimie got bit once, but that was because Gjest was upset by a new gelding in a paddock across from him. -- So, that's not a bad record handling and working with a breeding stallion for all those 22 years. I drove Gjest for years. I trusted him completely. I'm a timid driver, but with him, I had total confidence. He was so brave that I knew we'd be OK. . I competed him in some prestigious ADS driving shows. -- For years, I handled him during breeding. I did everything for him. -- But, I never fogot he was a stallion. I always respected him, and he never came close to hurting me. -- Gjest gave me my best moments with horses. -- He was beautiful and majestic. But, most of all, he was very fast and very competitive. To sit behind him when he was going all out trotting was beyond belief and beyond comparison. There was no other like him. All his sons and daughters had his good work ethic and most of them were good movers, but not many of them (if any) could truly equal his heart and athleticism. As Bob Van Bon, Chief Inspector of Fjords for Holland said . . . . "You could look for a lifetime and not find a Fjord stallion that moves like Gjest." Gjest's incredible movement was a combination of his heart and the way he was made. Carol Rivoire ======================================================= Norwegian Fjord Horse Registry Mike May, Executive Director & Registrar PO Box 685 Webster, NY 14580-0685 Voice 585-872-4114 Toll Free Fax - 888-646-5613 http://www.nfhr.com mailto:regist...@nfhr.com Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw Classified Ads: http://tinyurl.com/5b5g2f
