Our Stal Het Oosterbrook
We are
a sport- and tournament stable,
a training stable
and we conduct our own carefully selected breeding.
This is how our philosophy works:
We prefer training young horses and thereby bringing them to the sport. Best example is Joel. Together with Joel, who was raised in our stable, Gert-Jan belonged for seven consecutive years to the Championats-Equipe of the Netherlands, at first with the Juniors, then followed with the Young Riders and finally with the Seniors. The couple competed in European- and World Championships as well as in the Olympic Games. This success is the most beautiful fruit a rider can reap.
Although the sport is our main focus, we still put utmost importance in training our horses in a playful, honest and in a species-appropriate manner. Only working in this way with our horses gives us pleasure and makes them easy to ride. The education system in the Netherlands helps us pursue this philosophy. Already four-year-olds are allowed to be ridden in the show jumping course on time. This does not mean that such a young horse is ridden to the limit, not at all, but rather that it ‘s already possible to playfully practice short distances, to encourage the horse to think and participate from a young age on. This is not only a joy for the horse but a lot of fun for us as well and helps its further development. From the beginning, the horses are motivated by us to act independently. We offer a lot of variety, with grazing and rides, a water treadmill, a horse walker and our new medical wellness center. All of these advantages combined give the horses the necessary confidence and make them to real sports partners.
In February 2010 we moved into our newly built facility in De Lutte. What a feeling! Admittedly, during those first days Stal Het Oosterbrook was quite a construction site, but in the course of a year we managed to finish almost everything and feel incredibly comfortable now! Since 2011 we live on the facility as well – and it is wonderful always being close to the horses. Although one has to make sure to leave the stable once in a while.
Our facility
– 40 boxes in two box lanes, all with windows
– 3 riding stables
– 15 acres with pastures, meadows, 6 sand and 6 grass paddocks
– a bright, modern indoor riding arena, 22 x 65 meter
– large jumping grounds in a pentagon form with a low and high tide system
– water treadmill
– two horse walkers, one of them with an inside lunge circle
Beside the pastures, paddocks and wellness-facilities, we are especially proud at Stal Het Oosterbrook, of the small details which enhance our horses lives. For example, our hay racks that are not attached somewhere above, but extend longitudinally from top to bottom. In this way horses can choose the height of their feed intake themselves and even the smallest grain of dust doesn’t fall onto the horse but gradually to the ground. In contrast to regular feeding troughs that are located in the front of the boxes and are filled through hatches, our feeding troughs are explicitly attached to the end of the box, so that one has to go through them in order to fill them up. Hence we make sure that during every feeding every horse spends time together with someone in the box. This insures that it comes to immediate attention if something should be wrong with the horse.