“Our horse is a gelded thoroughbred born in New Zealand from a Japanese stallion. His real name is Son of Summer and the Thais at the stables called him Chokdee (good luck ), but my daughter did not like either of these names. So she chose the name Blim, because in Thai when you say ‘my name is Blim’, you say ‘suu Blim’... ‘sublime’ in French.
“My family has been involved in horse riding for generations. I have a medal from Nicholas II, the last Czar of Russia, who gave my great grandfather a medal for teaching him dressage. My grandfather fought the German artillery during the Second World War on horseback.
“I started to ride as soon as I could buy horses with my own money. I love living abroad in many different countries, so I became a factory manager, which is what I still do.
“When we moved to Laos, we bought 10 small Lao horses and we rode them every week by our friend’s resort in Vientiane. We had so many adventures, good and bad that it would take the whole night to explain. Meanwhile in France, we started a small breeding farm there as a side-project, where we specialised in pure Arabs. We still have 10 horses there.
“As soon as we arrived in Thailand, the next country where I worked, I looked for horses. The horses for sale in clubs and riding schools were mostly not that nice and the prices sky high, so after four months of searching I finally decided to look in the local market. Unfortunately, during the flooding we had two years ago in Thailand, the horses showed some signs of anemia, and the vets did not know what it was because Bangkok’s only lab was flooded. So I had to go through the whole process of sending the blood samples to our vet in France. When the tests finally arrived, they revealed that they caught the trypanosome virus along with the West Nile virus, which gave them very little chance to survive. Unfortunately, neither made it.
“We were devastated and decided never again to get horses in Asia, until a good friend of mine told me one day that her father knew a guy at the horse race stables who just bought a nice horse from Malaysia with no injuries– difficult to believe when you consider how the race horses are treated around here. We decided to take a look just for fun, but we fell in love right away. I asked three vets to check him out, and they all said he had no problems. So we finally bought him. Many people in Chiang Mai thought that we were crazy buying a race horse to change him to a dressage horse, but he is so beautiful, so classy and sweet.
“Unexpectedly, we have to move to Vietnam. The horse is still in Chiang Mai, but if I can find a good new owner for him I will bring him to Cambodia.
“I know of two places to keep a horse in Cambodia, where I have done business but never lived. The Cambodian Country Club in Phnom Penh should be interested in getting such a nice horse for riders, and in Siem Reap, there is a ranch called the Happy Family Ranch. It is actually very well run by a Cambodian man who is passionate about horses. Both places have a relationship with a good vet who I know personally, and this is the reason why I would send Blim to Cambodia and not to Vietnam, as there is no vet I trust there for horses.
“And if I cannot find any good place for him, we will fly him to our land in Burgundy with our gorgeous Arabs.”
If interested, contact Christine Avril at [email protected]
