From the year 2001 until the end of 2009 I was a Parelli Natural Horsemanship professional. In 2010 I decided to teak a break from teaching courses and lessons. In the beginning of this year, I did not know yet what I was going to do. As an entrepreneur and horse lover, many ideas started to pop up pretty quick. I still love the Parelli program very much and hope many people will join in the future. So how could I still help? I know many people had trouble loading or travelling with their horse in a trailer, so … I decided to become an ambassador for safe and comfortable loading and transporting of horses. … and I wrote an E-book . I have loaded more than a thousand horses in trailers. To me it is a fascinating subject and I always love the result when the horse feels safer and more comfortable in the trailer and the owner is happy and relieved.
I plan to help you by offering all I know about trailer loading to ensure safe and comfortable loading and transport for both horse and human. And…. by promoting horse trailers with slant loading, since this is the most comfortable way for horses to travel. In those eight years I have loaded many horses and have also transported horses. With several of my personal horses I kept on challenging and improving my trailer loading abilities and have travelled extensively through Europe with them.
	Connect with me on Facebook or send me an email here I you like my mission and free Ebook:

More about Eddy. A short biography

(which turned out to be quite long after all)

I love playing guitar, Salsa dancing and I am a naturist. I only started riding when I was 18 years old when a girlfriend asked me to come along to the riding school. My passion at the time, was playing the guitar in local bands. I was born and raised on a farm (with no horses, but with cows). Always had affinity with and a feeling for animals. So that I liked horses, was no surprise. The traditional way of riding, however, did not appeal to me. I didn’t understand it. I then studied the western style of riding, but it still did not feel very harmonious to me. After this I read the well known books by Klaus Ferdinand Hempfling and Monty Roberts. I kept on muddling along and was riding other people’s horses. Someone then said to me: “Parelli, you would enjoy that”. I thought she meant car tires (Pirelli) and forgot about it again.
In 1995 I graduated as a mechanical engineer and started working as a drafts-man and spent hardly any time around horses. The idea of travelling, however, was growing stronger. I had hardly ever been away from the farm, besides going to work, to study and to play in several bands. July 1996 I took a plane to Wyoming, USA where I spent three weeks on a working Cow Ranch with genuine cowboys. Riding six hours a day, rounding up cattle (if we could find them). Within a short time, with a very sore bum, I changed from an average recreational rider to a fanatic rider. The ranch owner told me that I would make a good horseman, but would probably not pursue that. I did not even hear the last part of that sentence. That I could make a good horseman, I heard loud and clear.

I had an absolutely great time on the Twinpine Ranch in Wheatland, Wyoming. For the first time in my life I had the feeling that riding horses could also be enjoyable for the horse. They had a job to do and understood what the job was. A plan was born. I would stay on at the farm and do something involving horses. But what? And how?

In 1997 I quit my job and left for Australia. I had only been there a month, when I found an advert for a video: Pat Parelli’s 7 games. I had just read the book the Celestine Prophecy. It was almost scary how from that moment on everything started to fall into place perfectly. A week later I could borrow somebody’s horse and at that facility other Parelli students would meet on a regular basis. A few months later I found myself to be a working student with Tony Lander, a Senior Parelli Instructor at the time. In 1999 I returned to Australia to work and study with Tony Lander some more. I spent a total of 13 months there.

Shortly after I was back home my father died suddenly and I took over the farm. Even more reason to start as soon as possible as a horse professional, for I lacked passion for agriculture and technology.

In March 2001 I met with Pat personally at Equitana in Germany and told him I wanted to become a Parelli Instructor. He told me that I was welcome to join him in May for a young horse course, where he would also assess my abilities as an Instructor. I had no more money left (after my trips to Australia) and had no idea at the time how I was going to do it. Somewhere in April I got a phonecall form a friend that he would loan me the money. That’s how I was able to take another plane, to Colorado this time. I returned as a one star Parelli Instructor.

Parelli was hardly known in the Netherlands and Belgium. I started teaching a small group of enthusiasts. Some were very enthusiastic and those still are. I also received my first and at the same time most difficult project horse: Opère, my faithful demo horse. He was accompanied by Marieke, whom I married. It is actually a funny story how we met. I had just completed the course with Pat Parelli and I was looking for young and/or difficult horses to gain more experience. I really was not a big fan of internet forums and (I still don’t really like them), but I thought I would give it a try. I left a message on a forum and received a few replies. One of them was from Marieke and her very skeptical, young and sensitive Dutch Warmblood Opère. So now it is difficult to be only negative about forums, since they have given me the woman and the horse of my life.

This is how Marieke and I ended up as the pioneers for Parelli in the Netherlands. We wrestled through, without any knowledge of running a business, marketing, promotion, visiting horse fairs and organizing events. Not an easy, but a great experience, that has led to many friends and hopefully lots of happy horses and their owners. I have made many mistakes and will probably never make a great public speaker. Even though I did start to like it more and more and became more capable of being myself in presentations.

I felt very honored to give clinics and attend a specialist panel alongside Emiel Voest (well known Horseman in Holland) and Annemarie van der Toorn (Monty Roberts instructor in Holland) at the horse fair Horse Event and at the Bartels Dressage Academy. However, I did not feel very comfortable there. These things involve politics, self interest and big ego’s and I was not interested in this at all. Back then the horse world was not ready for what Natural Horsemanship really is all about. I rather stick to my principles and want to be myself and be honest.

I don’t need to be in the spotlight, although I will admit that being in a demo with Opère at the NEC in front of 6.000 people was a rush. Despite the fact that I was only able to show half of what we could do, I have never had more compliments on my horsemanship and the relationship with my horse as after that demo. The days before the performance we were in Stoneleigh Park (Britain’s Parelli Centre) and my horse was at his best. Both Pat and Linda Parelli gave me their thumbs up. That was in fact the biggest compliment.

After teaching for a few years in the Netherlands and Belgium and other European countries, we decided to build an indoor arena on the farm. Apparently I was able to write a business plan that convinced the bank in those times and the indoor arena became a reality in 2006. Super!

Then I had a very strange realization. I had accomplished quite a lot, was living on a fabulous location with an indoor arena and then the hammer hit me. I had reached my limit. The material things did not bring me happiness (I had no time to enjoy them). ‘Fame’, running a business, rules, regulations, administration, taxes, handy work, PR, marketing, teaching, courses, going to America for more training … oh, and I was also married.

Then in 2007, after almost having a burnout, I started with a program called the Release Technique. I had already done things like NLP and positive thinking. It was this program, however, that got me back on my feet and a lot more. I was then able to happy without a reason, just because I am.  I decided then to change my life. This is the reason I decided in December 2009 to stop teaching for a year. But I did not know what I was going to do instead. We had our own business, indoor school and a mortgage and then you decide to give up your main source of income. I had made radical decisions before in my life and so far things had only changed for the better. When you are truly prepared to risk it all, you may end up receiving more than you can imagine in return.

This is how a few months later I stumbled upon a new brand of horse trailers in the Netherlands, which I really liked. Soon I will tell you more about them. I decided to become an ambassador for the improvement of trailer loading and horse transport. I started this website/blog and hope to be able to contribute in this way to our horses … and their owners. For if there is one thing we can learn from our horses, it is to be humble and put aside our ego’s and truly look within at who we really are and what we can contribute to this world. Everyone who is looking to see what the world has got to offer them, will sooner or later run into the man with the hammer. That is not what it is all about. What do you have to offer the world and its people. I will write more about that later.

Now I am going to bed, for it is two o’clock in the morning and Marieke will be wondering what I am still doing up so late .

Write to you later,

Eddy

“whatever we think we know …  That’s not it. The TRUTH lies beyond thinking.”