Ischka fan de Groenbank

ACHIEVEMENTS

2010 - Awarded KFPS 1st Premie as a foal at UK Inspections

IN LOVING MEMORY

Ischka fan de Groenbank was a daughter of our KFPS Model mare Femma who had two daughters in 2010 with the first, Ineke fan de Groenbank, being born by embryo transfer in the January. Ischka arrived in March and from the moment she was born she was wonderfully entertaining! We called her our little ‘time waster’ as there was something about her character that was really quite addictive. If we were asked to describe her in four words they would be ‘elegant’, ‘considered’, ‘sensitive’ & ‘intelligent’ all of which we think made this lady quite special.

We took a risk with this breeding as it was Sake’s first season at Stud so the quality of his offspring was not yet known. Sake’s father, Doaitsen had been very heavily used because he was from one of the lesser used bloodlines. We wanted to breed with the future in mind and recognise the importance of making good use of the smaller bloodlines to keep the kinship percentage as low as possible, hence one of our decisions to use Sake. Ischka showed such early promise we put Femma in foal to Sake again the following year. Sadly this combination did not turn out as well as we had hoped.

Ischka went to the UK gradings as a foal, taking it all her stride, as we expected her to and came out with a 1st Premie.

At the end of 2013, Ischka was backed. As expected, she loved the extra attention she got over that period of time. Getting her used to people on her back and even taking her out on short hacks later on in the process was as much of a pleasure for us as it was for her. Ischka took a break over the winter to process what she'd learnt and to give her some time to mature. The following Spring we slowly picked her up again and she took part in her first dressage outing where she scored an incredible 81,09% at only 4 years old and having done minimal schooling.

She attended a FHAGBI IBOP clinic shortly after with Jolanda Schreuder who had trained her mum Femma and she confirmed our thoughts she had an exciting future ahead of her. Rather than push her at such a young age we decided to turn her away for the Autumn and Winter to allow her to fully develop both physically and mentally.

In January 2015 Ischka fell ill and through consultation with John Keen at Edinburgh Equine Hospital and Prof Catherine Delasalle from Utrecht University in the Netherlands it was established she had aortopulmonary fistulation, a condition that affects approximately 2% of the Friesian population. The YouTube video below explains more about this devastatingly incurable problem.

In February 2015, we had to let Ischka go before she suffered. She was a true joy to have around for the 5 years that she lived, and she will always have a very special place in our hearts.

Ischka is now laid to rest in our memorial orchard with a beautiful apple tree above her.

https://youtu.be/VDwwGeYpErs