PIYAYO: New Beginning
I had not planned to keep Piyayo, simply to remove him from the owners
that would have a perfectly sound animal destroyed. Like other so
called unmanageable horses I had taken on in the past I would work with
Piyayo to rebuild his confidence and fitness before finding him a new
safe home.
Having sorted out a rented stable in a village near me at the home of a
delightful elderly lady, with the village green across from his stable
as his new schooling arena, I tracked down an experienced classical
rider; Jane Hodge, to help me learn the style of riding Piyayo was
familiar with. At this point in time we actually knew nothing about
Piyayo's past life and experience in Spain, only that he came here from
Spain as a wedding present and had suffered a year of hell.
As Jane and I started to work together to rebuild Piyayo's trust and
fitness, he on every training session endeavoured to continue to tell
us who he was. One of Jane's earliest observations was with respect to
the use of the Spanish serreta; many imported horses tended to carry
the scarring of their early training using the serreta. In Piyayo's
case there was virtually no sign of ever having a serreta on, but his
high level of skill in executing with bullring speed the spins,
passages, high flying capriole and levade without being asked, spoke of
a horse trained to an exceptional level by a very experienced light
handed trainer.
During our village green training, it transpires that his previous
'titled' owners had been surreptitiously viewing Piyayo's lessons with
prospective buyers, claiming to them that they still owned Piyayo and
he was temporarily with me for training! Having made a sale for a high
price for Piyayo with one of their buyers they then tried to get me to
take my money back on the grounds that they were very distraught at
having given up their much loved horse! Wendy (the groom) found out the
truth behind the so called grief and quickly passed Piyayo's papers to
me so we could freeze mark Piyayo (there was a very real threat of him
being 'taken' at night from his stable) and notify the police and a
solicitor of the situation.Having 'nipped' in the bud the attempts of his abusers to reclaim
Piyayo we settled back down to our plans to resettle Piyayo. His
previous owners replaced Piyayo 'the wedding present' with an equally
expensive living accessory in the form of a pedigree dog that sadly in
less than a year had been dealt the same treatment and character
defamation as Piyayo.
My search for a new home for Piyayo started with my
contacting the appropriate breed society, only to be informed that they
knew of Piyayo through another member who had already viewed Piyayo,
when he was initially put up for sale (and had rejected him as dangerous), as far as they were concerned he was not pure Andalusian
but a part-bred. The advice they gave me was to have him castrated.
Regardless of what the breed society thought of Piyayo pure or
part-bred his entirety had no bearing on his behaviour; only humans and
their ignorance could be held responsible for any bad reputation
(totally unfounded) Piyayo had been given.
So,
Jane and I worked on, having great fun being entertained by Piyayo and
starting to send searches to Spain to trace Piyayo's past. Sylvia Lock
on hearing about Piyayo contacted me, to (unnecessarily) make sure I
did not castrate him. Sylvia knew that the Hispano-Arabe was not just
'any part-bred Spanish horse', but a breed type that at that very time
Spain was officially re-categorising to hold a separate State Stud Book
and Piyayo was the only foundation Hispano-Arabe here in Britain.
page 2. A