Morning Star Arwen

2006 partbred Nooitgedachter mare

Approved for breeding as Basic

By a grade stallion out of Dubbele Diamand Sharon (Geschenk Julius)

Championships:

2016: National Champion Nooitgedachter Sport Horse

2017: Pre-Horse of the Year Show: Reserve Champion Open Working Riding Horse; Horse of the Year Show: Supreme Champion Nooitgedachter Working Riding Horse

2018: Horse of the Year Show: Reserve Champion SASA Open Working Riding Horse, Reserve Champion Nooitgedachter Working Riding Horse

2019: Horse of the Year Show: National Champion Partbred Nooitgedachter Mare; placed in the top ten mares of all breeds during the Supreme Championships; National Champion Nooitgedachter Children's Working Riding Horse; Reserve Supreme Champion Nooitgedachter Working Riding Horse. Standerton Show: Reserve Champion Open Working Riding Horse; Champion Open Mare; Champion Nooitgedachter Riding Horse

Arwen came into our lives in the summer of 2008, a few days after the sudden and tragic death of my sister's horse. She was all of 26 months old - and had a 2-month-old foal at foot. A gift from a late friend, Arwen was pitch black with a perfect diamond right in the middle of her forehead. Even though my eleven-year-old self was quite convinced that she was in every way inferior to my treasured Skye, I still found a fairylike beauty to her. Little did I know that the fairy would soon turn into a dragon.

Originally, Arwen was supposed to belong to my nine-year-old sister, who had just lost her heart horse. This barely-handled two-year-old obviously proved to be far from an ideal match to my tiny sister, resulting in many falls and injuries, but I had not yet lost my nerve at the time and it wasn't long before I was the one riding the gawky little creature. We had many arguments as preteen stubbornness and two-year-old insecurity clashed, but ultimately, we found a sort of mutual respect for one another - a respect that would eventually blossom into one of the most rewarding relationships I've ever had with a horse.

By 2013, the year I turned seventeen, I had spent hours on Arwen teaching both of us how to do, well, anything. I had never even seen a cross-country course in real life. I had no idea that seeing a stride was a thing, had never jumped a gymnastic line, and didn't know that jumps need ground lines. My dressage experience was similarly lacking: I'd never actually seen someone riding a leg-yield, a shoulder-in, or even a working trot in appropriate self-carriage. My first riding teacher had given me the very basics, a gift in themselves, but the rest I just Googled. Nonetheless, Arwen's patience, tolerance, willingness and resilience had brought us to a place where we could do an approximation of all three phases of eventing, even if I'd taught myself almost everything off the Internet - and so off we went to try.

Our mutual first ever dressage test was in May 2014, and never in my life will I forget it. To this day I can ride every stride in my memory, and still know Prelim 1 better than any other dressage test. I wore a golf shirt, cream breeches, and gaiters that were too small. She wore the world's worst clipping and plaiting job and a shaped blue numnah. I had taught myself how to recognize and change diagonals the week before the competition based off an article in the Horse Quarterly. But nonetheless, she put her pretty little head down and tried her heart out, and at every single show since, she has done exactly the same thing. We scored 61% and won a ribbon because the other horse bucked.

After that I decided that I wanted to be an eventer, and so my little fat Nooitgedachter mare was made unbelievably fit - doing trot, canter, and eventually, gallop sets on the long lanes now surrounding fields of crops where once Skye and I had run through the wild veld - and taken to her first event. While I don't see myself returning to eventing anytime soon, I still treasure those weekends in the country as some of the best times of my life. We were eliminated repeatedly and extravagantly on cross-country, but considering that we were getting by based on a couple of clinics and no instruction at home, the fact that we are still alive is a testimony once again to her courage, carefulness, and sheer intelligence.

An EV65 test - the equivalent of easy Prelim at the time

It was also in the eventing world in 2015 that I met my best and closest friend, E, who is still a bright light in my life even though we both grew out of eventing and took up gentler disciplines - she, showing, and I, dressage.

2016 was another year of getting one elimination after the other in the jumping phases, while Arwen's dressage continued to gradually improve. Even though we so frequently didn't finish our cross-country, she still loved galloping on those wide open spaces, and started to come out of the start box ready to blow something up - which earned her the nickname that has always stayed with her: Dragon.

In late 2016, I finally realized that maybe this eventing gig wasn't going to work out for us. We did some stadium eventing, which she rocked at,

and quite a lot of showjumping up to about 80cm,

before I realized that my heart and her talents really lay in the sport that eventually and completely captured my heart: dressage.

We rode our first Novice tests in early 2016. I'll forever be grateful to the kind judge who saw us at the ride-and-go that day. She was presented with a stiff, crooked, and hollow horse and an uneducated rider, and where so many judges would have absolutely wiped the floor with us and possibly turned me off the sport forever, this one gave me so much encouragement. Whether or not she saw any real potential, she gave me hope. And so the dressage journey began.

We also rode in our first Nooitgedachter show in 2016, where Arwen was National Champion in-hand in some very good company and rode her first higher Novice tests. The fact that she gave my uneducated behind any lateral work at all, let alone leg-yields that scored consistently quite high, is once again thanks only to her willingness.

Eventing bod still very much in evidence here

By late 2016, I had committed to dressage. I still jumped training horses for clients, but I turned Arwen's focus to dressage and showing only. She tackled this new task with the same fiery joie de vivre with which she does absolutely everything.

The only 9 I have ever scored in my life was for stretchy trot on this horse! On a grass arena she used to grab a bite or two while she was down there

In early 2016 I rode her in her first show riding classes at Horse of the Year Show, where we also did the working hunter. Hilariously, she was always the only partbred Nooitgedachter in the working hunter, and so we went through to Supremes year after year even though she is anything but hunter type. That was my first ever ride in the legendary Bob Charter.

2017 was also the year where we tackled our first Elementary tests, and this was where the rubber really met the road. Getting the simple changes, the counter canter, and the shoulder-in without any concept of what dressage actually is was intensely difficult. We gave many a judge a twitchy eye with my appalling technique, but her wonderful waterbed-soft trot made that part easy at least, and by sheer and utter obedience she scored repeatedly in the low 60s. It didn't matter that I believed a good pull on the inside rein and a good kick of the inside leg was the aid for the shoulder-in: she would do it anyway. There is no other horse I know that I think could have ridden Elementary, and even gotten points for Elementary-Medium, with a rider who had learned everything she knew about dressage off the Internet. At this point we didn't even have an arena yet - we were practicing our tests on a hillside.

We also competed at Horse of the Year Show again, where she won the first of many championships in the working riding.

By 2018, I had finally been blessed - literally; a story for another page - with an actual dressage coach. Learning all of these concepts was overwhelming enough on comparatively green Thunder; applying them to Arwen, where all my bad habits were in full force, proved overwhelming. Instead we decided to spend the year doing only showing. While she never placed well in the open showing classes - her height no doubt counting against her - she once again continued to prove herself in the working riding classes. In hand, she has always remained undefeated in her breed.

One of my most treasured moments with this horse was in February 2018. I had just lost a friend in a tragic, horrible, and abrupt manner, and our Strictly Come Showing that year was in tribute to her. I wore all black, and when I went to warm up, Arwen was being her usual dragonish self - all plunging and snorting with excitement. There were tears in my eyes when we went in, and when the music started, she calmed instantly. She gave me the quietest, slowest, and most obedient ride I have ever had from her. She was there for me the way she always is.

In 2019, I was focusing on Thunder almost full-time and also working two or three jobs at a time. Hoping she would have more success in the showing classes with a child - at 150cm, she's exactly on the border between minimum adult height and maxiumum child height - I had a youngster from the local children's home ride her for me. She lit the fire in his belly, and he handled her to yet another national championship in hand and a reserve championship in the working riding. Fiery and wild as she had often been for me, she never put as much as a hair wrong for him.

I still rode her myself at the Standerton Show that year, another memory I cherish, where she finally won her flat class. It helped that my dressage education had reached a point where I could ride a good medium trot, and she threw those little forelegs like a warmblood that day!

A different day, but also a good medium!

2020 brought with it some exciting plans. In some part helped by his experience on Arwen, her kiddo got into a prestigious boarding school in another province, where he continues to do extremely well and plans to become a farmer someday. I found another child rider, this time a little more advanced, and we sent her and Arwen off to SANESA to ride at Elementary-Medium. Arwen showed in Johannesburg District, where she competed against some of the very best ponies in the country - and won her class.

Of course, no one needs to be told why the rest of the 2020 show season went hopelessly awry. Still, Arwen and her kid made it to the FEI World Dressage Challenge later that year. They scored 60% in their test and Arwen may well be the only Nooitgedachter ever to compete at an FEI dressage event.

Peep the dedicated man in the background 💜

We showed again in August 2020, when Thunder went unsound three days before a show. Luckily, I'd planned to ride his last Elementary at that show, so despite the fact that Arwen and I hadn't ridden an Elementary test together in two or three years, I loaded her up and off we went. As always, she rose to the occasion for me and we had a great ride. Our scores were deeply mediocre, yet it was the perfect first show back after the pandemic had started. She lit the fire in my belly like she always does.

Back in September 2019, the horse who placed second to Arwen in the Standerton Show was a drop-dead-gorgeous bay stallion named Wilgerus Dakota. In January 2021, Arwen met this handsome fellow and has now begun her career as a broodmare. Even after being started as a two-year-old and getting all those miles on her through the years, she still has legs as perfect as though cast from iron, and is as sound as she has ever been. She is a credit to her rare breed. She gave me a stunning filly, Eowyn, in December 2021 and returned to work in late 2022 after Wynnie was weaned.

Arwen added working equitation to her repertoire in January 2023 when we rode in a clinic, where she was wildly excited by all the obstacles but still did a great job with all of them. We're hoping to actually compete in WE at some point in the future.

We returned to the show ring in February 2023 at HOY, where I choked a little bit on the first big show atmosphere I'd ridden in for a long time, but she handled everything with her usual aplomb/violence. She was champion in the Nooitgedachter working riding and we enjoyed our first ever working riding test in the Supremes.

I'm definitely a gelding person, but there will always be room in my heart for a mare as perfect as this one. In terms of conformation, this is undoubtedly the nicest horse I have ever had - but what she means to me is so, so much more than that.