2004 Vorwerk Stallion Show

Meeting Suzanne Davies and Irene Linnegar

We decided to get up at 8 AM. That was tough. Fortunately we both took a warm shower and had a very wholesome breakfast which kept us on our feet until dinner timer. Our plan was to visit Gestut Kathmann in Vechta that morning (they are standing Dormello, Florencio, Rhodes Scholar, etc). but we decided to ask road directions at the Oldenburg Center, where the stallion show would take place that afternoon. We were there round 10 AM and saw Lisa Wilcox schooling Roadster and Jazz Time, while Ernst Hoyos was walking Royal Diamond.

The center was still quite deserted and most doors were locked until Thomas turned around and said to a lady, "You're Suzanne Davies, right?" Thomas had met Suzanne before at the 2000 World Championships for Young dressage horses. She rode (and owns) the 2000 5-year old Champion Dimaggio. Of course the news that Dimaggio would be standing at stud at Vorwerk's was the scoop of the week and to meet Suzanne in Vechta was just even better.

We decided to go for a coffee at a nearby MacDonalds because everything else was closed anyway. Suzanne and her friend/stable manager Irene Linnegar spoke openly aboard their farm in Sussex and their views on breeding. Suzanne was enumerating her collection of brood mares and stallions and was reciting one fantastisc pedigree after an other. I was stunned by the quality blood lines she had collected at her Pepper Farms in England.

The nicest story of the morning, however, was without a doubt that of their Dimaggio foal whose dam died at birth. Suzanne and Irene looked for a foster mother quickly and ended up trailering the foal to a hunter farm, owned by the heiress of Cadbury chocolates. "A butler even came over to invite us to tea," Suzanne recalled. "She had game keepers who skinned the dead foal and put the skin on our foal like a little jacket. The dam immediately accepted the foal as her own. She really seemed to want a baby."

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