United States Eventing Association

Debbie Adams and her horse D.A. Duras have traveled to the FEI World Breeding Eventing Championship in France to showcase this gelding on an international stage. Their trip has been made possible by the Holekamp/Turner Young Event Horse Lion d’Angers Grant. D.A. Duras is the first recipient of this award, having earned it by being the highest scorer of the 2013 USEA Young Event Horse 5-year-old Championship who also qualified for Le Lion d'Angers. Adams is a guest blogger with the USEA to share her inside experience of this event.

Another day with horses bring another adventure. Last Wednesday (Oct 7th) D.A. Duras (aka D) began the trip from New Jersey to Le Lion D’Angers, France. Being the fortunate recipient of the Holekamp/Turner Grant, to compete in the World Championships for Young Event Horses started the whole process going forward. The idea of taking your young horse overseas to compete brings out every emotion possible; excitement, fear, worry, pride, nervousness, confusion…enough said. Travelling solo intensified all my concerns as we were not going as part of a team, but as individuals representing the U.S. Young Event Horse (YEH) Program.

D flew from JFK in New York straight to Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Both airports are major shippers of horses. Getting to the airport was wisely handled by the professionals from HorseFlight, who are based in New Jersey. Driving into NY with a trailer takes nerves of steel and definitely a solid idea of where you are going. Upon arrival at JFK, D was off loaded into a stall at the Vetport. Horses must be there for at least five hours before flying. They hang out eating hay and listening to city noises. While D settled in, we headed to another area of the airport to have his equipment weighed, tagged and handed over to the airline. How you could ever figure this out without a good professional to guide every step of the way is a frightening thought. Then we headed back to see if D was happy and to see if he drank and was behaving normally. Next was a waiting game.

After waiting a few hours, it was finally time to load D onto his shipping container. They are in very large boxes with open sections, for their heads to be forward facing similar to a normal horse trailer. Most of the boxes, or pallets as they are called, contain three horses. These large boxes are lifted onto the plane with a large fork lift. Boxes are shifted on rollers within the plane to get them into their proper place. Once set in place, the wheels are locked for the pallet to stay for the rest of the flight. Horses have hay nets with them throughout and are offered water frequently. I was lucky to be flying with D and see the whole process and watch how he handled the trip. Petting him and seeing how calm he was made me calm as well! I think patting him on the neck did more for me than him. For horses, flying is usually much easier than a trailer ride. It’s smooth, climate controlled and fairly quiet. There are flight attendants that are responsible for the horses and they are absolutely terrific in their concern for each animal. I was so impressed with how knowledgeable and professional they were.

Duras flew with KLM which has “Combi Planes.” This means there are passengers in front and cargo in the rear. We spent most of the flight with the regular passengers as the horses needed little attention. They have someone with them for takeoff and landing, and to occasionally check on them. It is possible this was just a good group of horses because they were settled and calm throughout the flight. The only noise we heard from them was when one horse tried to take his neighbors hay as his own net was temporarily empty.

After landing in Amsterdam they are transported in their pallets to the Animal Import Center where they are checked and identified and health papers are reviewed. Immediately after D was released, we took him out of the building and directly to our trailer. Fortunately for D, we have friends two hours from the airport who collected us and took us to their stable. Duras came from the Netherlands as a 4-year-old from our friend who picked us up, Stal Hendrix. We headed back to his yard, which happens to be one of the top sales barns and training centers for show jumpers in the world.

We decided to come over a few days earlier than the opening of the competition grounds. Since this is Duras’ first overseas trip, I wanted to have a few extra days for us to get settled before the stress of the three day. He has handled the whole experience easily, and whether the extra days were needed I am not sure. Time will tell about that.

Good luck to D.A. Duras, Debbie and rider Kelly Prather on their overseas experience!