am I going to do?’ This was before cell phones so I had to run and call our vet. I kept saying, ‘She’s having a baby! She’s having a baby right now! You have to get here!’ I hung up without telling him my name, but he knew who I was. After that, I knew I had to really get involved and know how to do this on my own.” “Showing for us has been more about the horse
reaching its potential rather than winning or compet- ing,” Louise continued. “It is the fact that the horse can actually do it that is important, especially if we bred them. It’s like your kids— will they do well at a base- ball game? You’d like them to win for their sake, but at the end of the day does the winning make a differ- ence? Not so much, espe- cially at the baby stage.” After a short jaunt
campaigning two of their
young horses in
show jumping competi- tions, Doug and Louise continued educating themselves on German bloodlines by studying stallion videos. In 1993, the couple took a next step in their education by completing the orientation course for Warmblood breeders in Verden, Germany. “It was a remarkable experience for us,” Louise
sale, we bought April and Debutante, the best mares in the group.” During one of their trips to Virginia, the Leather-
dales sparked a friendship with Dr. Barbara Schmidt, a Hanoverian breeder and equine veterinarian from Kentucky. It would prove to be the beginning of a lifelong relationship. As Doug and Louise become more involved in
the Hanoverian industry, they built a partnership with Canadian Grand Prix rider Diane Creech for their competition horses, while also fully engag- ing in the very selective Warmblood approval process. In 2001, Doug became
Louise Leatherdale and Diane Creech with Chrevi’s Christo in Wellington, Florida.
the American Hanoverian Society’s (AHS) president. He was determined to restructure the organi- zation’s business, and remained in the posi- tion until 2010. “People in AHS tended to be stal- lion owners in the U.S., and periodically one of them would buy a stal-
recounted. “Ludwig Christmann with the Hanove- rian Verband picked us up in Bremen and we went to Elmlohe, a large horse show, and visited horse farms. Ludwig is phenomenal as far as knowing all of the bloodlines of Hanoverians and its history. He writes the stallion index for the Hanoverian breed, and he came up with the mathematical theory of breeding. He imparts that to his students. We learned hard and fast. Things gradually changed after Verden—it piqued our interest in dressage.” After returning from their whirlwind trip to
Europe, the Leatherdales headed to November Hill Farm to begin developing their dressage herd. Located in Keswick, Virginia, the top Hanoverian breeding farm was owned by Dr. Otto Fuchs and managed by Gerd Zuther. Their farm also held auctions at the time. “We had never been at an auction like this, so we
weren’t quite sure what we were doing,” Doug said. “At the first auction we bought a lovely mare named Watersong. At a second auction there, a dispersal
52 January/February 2017
lion in Germany,” Doug explained. “But the organi- zation was a mess, and I understood what you had to have to make a successful national organization— how to communicate with people and how to build an organization that worked. It was important that we re-establish the tie with the mother organization in Germany.”
Acquiring Stallions “W
e had ten to twelve years of experience before we bought any stallions,” Doug
continued. “Good judgment about horses does not come overnight. People in Germany study horses for twenty, thirty years or more and are part of the horse culture there. So when they comment favorably on our horses, it proves to us that we are on the right track.” The stunning black stallion, His Highness
(Hohenstein–SPS Daireen, Donnerhall) was the first stallion they purchased, at an auction in Germany in 2002. The final sale at 515,000 euros set a record price for a young Hanoverian stallion in Germany. “When we saw His Highness for the first time, we
looked at each other and said, ‘That’s the best horse we’ve ever seen,” Louise recalled. “We had no inten- tion of buying until we saw him. Before the auction
Annan Hepner
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