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chantal's icelandic horses
Importing our Icelandics

Whatever difficulties you may come across when importing a horse, the toughest thing is to make a choice of which one(s) to buy! There are so many nice horses to choose from, and they are all so sweet; it's just impossible to make a choice. Yet, we have managed. You can read a report here on what we did and how we picked up the horses from Luxembourg

Some of the horse pics I received by e-mail: for sale!

Months before we went on holiday to Iceland, we were starting to select farms to visit. Many contacts were made through the internet, and friends and acquaitances made their recommendations of where to look. Via e-mail I received various digital pics of horses for sale. This way, I could make a better qualification of the potential horse to buy (we were planning on buying one or may be two horses). Visiting all the farms to look at the horses was a real adventure, probably the best I have ever had! Each farm was different, and sometimes we had to drive a far end into the field in the farmer's 4 WD to find the herd of horses. We visited farms throughout the country, but in the end, the horses we were most interested in were all in the South. We went to see them a second time.

As soon as we made our choices and purchased the horses, we set the date for importing the into Holland. We used our sales adviser in Iceland to help us find an export agent. Next, we hired an import agent in The Netherlands, so that any confusing paper work was outsourced. The import date was set for September, so that the horses would come into the end of the eczema season, yet they would have time to adjust with winter coming up.....

It was end of September when we drove to Luxembourg with two close friends to pick up the horses. We left early in the morning, and would take two days in total to drive back and forth. This also gave us time to relax and have some fun.

Overnight, we stayed in an old fashioned quiet hotel. We left eraly the next days, to drive the last 50 kilometres in busy monday morning traffic. The plane was scheduled to arrive from Iceland at 09.00 am.

We arrived at Luxembourg Airport's cargo center on time, just to hear that the plane was delayed until around 11.00 am that morning. I was very nervous, as I had not seen the horses for 6 months and could hardly remember them.....

When we returned to the airport at 11.00 o'clock, we still had quite some waiting to do. In the mean time, we could not get access to the horses - I just could not wait anymore!

Finally, we received the papers and got clearance to pick up the horses. It was important that all payments of import duties and vet costs for the checkup in Luxembourg were made in advance through the import agent. The office dealing withthe paperwork was terribly customer-unfriendly. But they could not ruin my day!(although they were making a stron attempt)

Finally, there they were! Four beautiful silver dapples. They had changed so much. The young horses had changed coats and as silver dapples do, they had changed into a different seasonal colour. But I loved them again at first sight.

The horses were loaded into the trailer quite quickly, so we were on our way back before we knew it

We arrived home at around 10 PM, and unloaded the horses. We put them in the stable for the first night, so that they were not yet confronted with the other horses. The next morning, the horses were let out into the field with the others. They are now very much at home - no eczema problems yet. It took a while before the were used to their new feeding program - in the early stages they were itching quite a lot. We bought special low protein hay to ease the transition.