September 2002 AT Conference in Missouri.

April Pruente was the host this year for our conference. She had done a superb job, people came from Luxemburg, England and all over the US. Also Dr Tatiana Riabova arrived from Russia and gave a seminar on grading the horses. After the conference she went on a month tour around the US and graded almost all the horses here!

April organized a horse show, showed AT's under saddle and horses decorated the Turkoman way. She had a yurt set up with decorations and the weather was great.

Next year it will be in California.

Right after the conference the grading tour started. I was fortunate to be able to go on the first part, to see Max Ott's horses in Wisconsin.

We were there for two days to do all the work. Most of his kids helped bringing out horses and his oldest son rode one of the stallions and demonstrated some beautiful dressage moves.

All of the horses were measured in height, length and cannon bone. Then grades were given followed by going outside for pictures and then let loose in the arena to see their movement. A feast for the eye.
And the hospitality was wonderful.

We also saw Nyla's horses at the end of the day and it was dark by then.

The next day we went to Sally Mae, we arrived late and it poured rain. Then we went on to Bettina Koehn were Julie Kort and her stallion were waiting for us and Bettina's mares. We had to grade them inside which made for poor lighting for pictures.

Finally we were done for the day and spent the night at Bettina's. Al five of us. Then the grading party went on and I had to go home to meet them again in Washington State almost a month later...

Finally it was our turn to be graded! I can only take two in my trailer so I took Pascha and Shazada. They were well behaved together in the trailer and lots of people would come and look at them while waiting for the ferry. There was an apple tree full of apples near buy so they got lots of treats.

We went to Cathy Leddy's farm in Snohomish and it was nice to meat new people and old friends and be surrounded by horses.
When it was our turn to be graded both were terribly miss behaved and would not stand still. But we got measured all the same. We had to go back home that night and missed the party but it was a school day for my son.

The results are in our newsletter and final results will come once Tatiana has looked at pedigrees at home in Russia .

June 2002 Olimpic Gul was covered by Pascha, she is pregnant and will be due end of May 2003. On June 17th Shazada Giz was in labor. So exciting, my friends came, we were all waiting excitedly when I thought something was wrong. She just seemed to be in too much pain. I called Susan our vet and she came buy and checked the foal's position, bad news, it was head first but upside down. She tried to reposition it but at vain. Shazada's contractions were getting stronger and stronger and there was just no room to move. Susan gave me two options, put her under to stop the contractions and relax her, and try to move the baby, or take her off island to the hospital, and the baby would probably die on the way.

If we would put her under and failed, we would not be able to get her in the trailer and go to the hospital and would have lost time and probably Shazada too. So I opted to save at least Shazada's life and take her to the hospital.

We gave her a painkiller, she felt better and just followed me into the trailer full of hay incase she had to lay down. We called ahead and let the ferry people know we had an emergency. We made the trip to the hospital with no ordeals, and there they gave me the bad news, She might not make it, the foal is dead, and if they can't get it out they will have to do a C section and I need to decide now because they have to get ready and call the surgeon and I have to be willing to pay.

I agree to have all the necessary done, and it turns out one of the doctors is from Iran, and has worked with Louise Firous and her Akhal-Teke's! It's a small world!

The two doctors were amazing, they went inside of her and cut off the head of the foal and a leg, and with a chain, and 3 people pulling with her contractions they got the foal out. It was a colt, hard to tell what color, either light golden or cremello hard to tell it was so stained.

The first thing Shazada did as she was still laying down was take a bite of grass. A month later we went back for check ups at the hospital and they kept her to remove a huge scar on her cervix with laser surgery. At the hospital they thought she would never be able to breed again. The scarring was too severe and her cervix was not responding and remained wide open instead of closing in-between heat cycles.

My holistic vet recommended an herb and so did Advanced Biological Concepts were I get my feed from, and her cervix healed. We will see this spring if she can be bred....