17/03/2025
History of the Gypsy Vanner Breed.......Part 3
I hope you are enjoying revisiting some of these bits and pieces that help us identify the Gypsy Vanner Horse.
Yesterday, we learned that Edward Hart discovered that “while the Gypsies can tell you a great deal about their horses, they had no studbook and no breed society.”
We also learned that within the population of colored cob type horses the Gypsy people were building there was a portion of that population that could be considered the basis for a “type breed”.
Then we learned according to Dr. Phillip Sponenberg and Dr. Donald Bixby that while a “type breed” can serve several purposes it does not serve well as a genetic resource.
With all of that now in place it was the mid 1990’s, and now in this reporting I want to share two parallel stories that will further add insight to how these horses were beginning to be noticed.
My work had taken me and my family to Bitburg, Germany in 1995 where I was a school administrator for one of the military dependents’ schools. We lived in a small village off base, and located about two blocks from our house was a horseback riding facility. My youngest daughter was twelve at the time and wanted to take lessons. Little did we know that her interest would turn our lives upside down. It would be there at that riding school that we would first meet the Gypsies’ horses.
While we were busy meeting these horses there, over in Wales another story was taking form. Dennis and Cindy Thompson, an American couple from Ocala, Florida had been to visit a Shire farm. On their way back to London Cindy noticed a little black and white horse in a field as they drove by. She asked Dennis, “Did you see that little horse?” He said that he did not, but in a minute or two he asked “would you like to go back?” and she said “yes.”
Upon their return the little horse’s attention was alerted and when they got out of the car and closed the door, he came running over to them. They followed the fence around to the barnyard where they met a British farmer who told them he was keeping the horse for a Gypsy.
When Cindy asked him if the horse was a cross of some kind, the farmer said that he did not think so, because the Gypsy had a group of mares that looked just like the little stallion.
Now, let’s go back to Germany for just a moment. My daughter and I sat in the audience at the riding school for a special presentation. The back door of the arena opened and a horse like nothing I had ever seen before entered being ridden by the riding instructor’s young daughter. The horse was strikingly unusual, he was bay and white, and the pattern was almost as if someone had let Picasso loose with paint in the horse’s stall. He had an abundance of mane and tail, and his feet were feathered which made him appear to float as he carried his young rider through a series of patterns. I believe I was more mesmerized than my young daughter as there was so much about this animal that I could not explain in my own mind. He generated a series of questions that I have spent the last thirty years searching for and recording the answers.
Now back to that farmyard outside of London. Cindy Thompson stood there feeding the little black and white horse a carrot while the questions formed, was this horse a cross? yet the farmer said he didn’t believe he was. If indeed the Gypsy who owned him had mares like him, it might be worth going to see them.
This set Dennis and Cindy Thompson on a multiple year journey to try and find answers to the questions the horse created for them. By the time they had tracked down the little horse’s owner, and traced the stallion’s ancestry, they had met more Gypsy people and sat at their campfires just like Edward Hart. With the same curiosity and fascination as Mr. Hart they were amazed at the knowledge these people had of their horses, more importantly they could share how they had over time made breeding choices that had given them herds of coloured cobs, some of which possessed a set of traits that those outside of the Gypsy culture were noticing. What were those traits? Why were outsiders, those who were not Gypsies, now interested in the Gypsies’ horses? Why would this have been important?
In Part Four we will begin to explore the answers to those questions. Come back and join us then. I hope you are enjoying these posts as much as I am enjoying sharing them with all of you.
Have a wonderful weekend with your beautiful Gypsy Vanner Horses!
Photo is the beautiful Lion Prince residing here at Gypsy Royal Stud. Prince is one of the few stallions left by the famous Lion King and I believe the only Lion King son in Australasia. A fine example of a Gypsy Vanner!
