Here is some information regarding jenny Veenstra.
My parents and their neighbors bought two Friesian fillies in 1975, when Friesians were on a list of endangered breeds and hard to find. So my childhood years I grew up with her and her offspring, we went to shows and she did well, and excelled in harnass. When I was in highschool I hated math, until I found I could actually use it to calculate the inbreedingcoefficient from our mare with the different stallions, as there were no tools or computers for that yet and inbreeding esp. on Ritske was a great problem at the time.
I took driving lessons with the master of driving, Piet de Boer, who made the Guiness Book of records in driving 24 horses, and he taught me how to drive singles, pairs, tandem and four in hand. I was driving the ladies classes at age 17 already and went to all the showdriving competitions for many years.
When it comes to breeding my father, mother and me discussed a lot about what we wanted. So we went to all the offspring shows that were organised at the time to assess whether a stallion would suit our mares and our goals, which were not always the same as the KFPS goals. This philosophy has produced multiple star, sports, prestatie and preferent mares and stallions, an approved stallion that became champion of the stallionshow, a modelmare and a Grand Prix Dressage stallion.
In my childhood years I was only riding for fun, never took part in competitions and just rode on our farm. As an adult, I got the chance to stay in the USA for a year with a family with two Friesian horses. I developed a love for travelling, but also began to like dressage more and more. I applied for a showteam in Japan and was accepted there. For three years I worked there, every day performing shows for tourists both riding and driving. It was a great experience but not always easy, as there are great cultural differences between the Dutch and the Japanese and we worked with bosses that knew nothing about horses, but couldn’t and wouldn’t accept advise from their employees.
After three years I came back to Europe, settled in Belgium with Marc and began to work at different stables to gain experience. So I broke in horses, worked at a jumping stable starting and correcting jumping horses, worked at an Arab Stud riding Arabs, worked with International driving horses training them under saddle and worked at a dressagestable of a former European Champion dressage training her young horses as well as her Prix St Georges and Grand Prix horses.
I started training with three time Olympian Tineke Bartels and gained as much knowledge as I could find, attending clinics, seminars, trainingweeks etc etc.
I became an official KFPS judge in 1996 and have been judging ever since.
After a carreer as a competition rider for several stables I decided to start my own business, a dressagestable which is not aiming for quantity, but for quality.
With our own breeding product star stallion Wolter V I have reached Grand Prix level in dressage, and I trained multiple horses upto Prix St Georges level.
At the moment nine year old Sandro Hit warmblood Samuel is my runner up, I hope he makes his owners dreams come true.
I am a certified instructor as well and am teaching a lot both at home and abroad. I love to work with dedicated people and truly believe that hard work and the right attitude can bring you further than anybody believes is possible. I work with all kinds of breeds. In South Africa and Australia I get a lot of Thoroughbreds in my lessons that didn’t perform well enough at the racetrack and are reschooled into eventers or dressagehorses, most are warmbloods and ofcourse I have my reputation as a Friesian Rider attracting a lot of Friesians as well.
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