The Story of Czar - Part 1

This is the Story of Czar, my Nooitgedacht/Arab Pony. It will be a long story, as you will find that I provide a lot of background information, to enable the reader to understand more. Because of the lengthiness, I will be doing his story in installments…

Every little girl, or more accurately then, almost every little girl on the planet, dreams of owning her own pony. She gets huge puppy eyes whenever she sees a pony or a horse and her family usually has to indulge her when the opportunity arises and she can sit on the back of a pony at the local Nursery or on a friend’s farm! Sometimes, when they grow up, a certain fondness for the majestic animals remain, sometimes the ‘obsession’ never lets up. With me, the obsession remained.

My dream got stronger as I grew up. I wanted to own my own horse, but, unfortunately, for the most part, I grew up in the city. I was fortunate that my parents knew lots of people who had farms and so we could visit those over the weekends and holidays and in this way I gained some experience riding different horses and ponies. These horse owners were always so friendly, helpful and allowed me to gain my own experience and learn at my own pace. We wore shorts and rode barefoot, sometimes bareback, always filled with joy and fun. It was always easy-going. As everyone agrees I am sure, horses hold something magical, mystical and noble inside them and I have always felt that just to be near them or to touch them, was fulfilling to me, somehow. However, this was the sum total of my experience as my parents could not afford to send me for horse riding lessons. Later on in life, I was not too sad about this fact, because my experience with Riding schools, was not altogether pleasant.

We used to live quite close to a stable yard and the kids would ride the horses to the local Café on the corner to buy Cokes before returning from their outrides. As a little girl of six or seven years old, watching these magnificent beings on those awesome creatures, I so very much wanted to get closer and stroke the horses’ noses. Alas, I was shunned and shouted away every time. My conclusion: horsey schools are not so nice…

When I was in High School, I had a friend who was really into her horse riding lessons and she invited me to go along one Saturday. Her Instructor made me so nervous and I was only sitting on the side watching my friend! She was yelling at my friend and again this nagging feeling inside me flared up: Horsey schools are really not so nice…

The years rolled by and I was in my twenties when my dream became a reality. A couple of my friends owned (and still owns) a plot in Honeydew, Johannesburg and the topic of horses came up. As luck would have it, owning her own horse, has also always been Alida’s dream and we sat together dreaming away, thinking, that it would not be too far fetched for us to keep horses on their plot, as it was big enough. We knew absolutely nothing, except that we wanted to make our dreams come true. And so, our idea grew wings and took off, because everything sort of naturally fell into place. Alida’s husband, Hein, was magnificent and very agreeable to our crazy notions, because he understood our childhood dreams and he decided to help us make them come true. For this, we shall be forever grateful.

And so, we began our search – to find horses. Alida went about it a little differently, but that is her story.

Now, because I am the way I am, a little quirky, eccentric, stubborn and so on, I have always had this affinity for stallions. Do not ask me why, I can hazard a guess and reckon it may have something to do with the story of Black Beauty. But a black stallion has just always been RIGHT for me.  I think I irritated everyone around me, because all I could talk about was my own horse and finding him and having him and what I planned and how it would be and so on and so on!

Then a friend of mine told me about an abbatoir in Krugersdorp where, apparently, you could buy a young horse quite cheaply as you would only be paying for the ‘meat’! These horses are gathered from all across the country, brought to the abbatoir or slaughterhouse and then readied for slaughter, to be made into dog food, or certain types of polony or taken to the lion parks to feed the lions. It was a horrible thought, and remains a horrible thought to this day, but to make a long story short, my friend agreed to go there with his cousin, who knew horses quite well and pick out one for me, and one for Hein’s sister, Issie. Issie wanted a filly, but I was adamant that I preferred a colt, the darker and closest to black as possible, please. (They knew that I would not be able to go there and leave with only two horses, I would buy the whole lot!)

And so, on a bright Wednesday, in 1998 my friend called me to let me know that they were on their way with the horse box. We had made a (very) quick paddock for their arrival and it was ready and waiting. I was working half day at the time, so I got in my car with two colleagues from the office and we drove through to the plot, so go see my baby!

And, he was still a baby. They found the two, a little dark grey colt (8 months old) and a little Basuto type filly, standing in the queue to be shot! To this day, gunfire freaks Czar out completely, and who can blame him?

Issie named her little filly Topaz and she was a frail, scrawny little thing, terrified of people. How they managed to get them into that horsebox remains a mystery to this day. As soon as they offloaded them, the two little ones literally scampered away to the far side of the paddock, to get as far away from people as they possibly could. 

The challenge ahead was very clear to me, but I was ecstatic! Czar had arrived!