Farewell my friend Ami

In 1992, just one week before my father Thor Sand passed away from cancer, I came across this beautiful black 18 hand Hanoverian gelding named "Ami", translated in French it is friend. This friend was clearly what I needed at that point in time, with the devastating loss of my father the following week.

During my youth, it was my father who was supportive of my love for horses since I was 4 and while growing up in Darmstadt Germany, he religiously took me for lessons at the Darmstadt Reiter Verein. There I had a favorite school horse called Winkleried, also an enormous black warmblood. One look at Ami, and it was love at first sight. I knew this was going to be my horse.

It soon became clear that although it may have been fate that brought us together, he was a bit of a handful and I was in need of some help.

I had heard of a woman, Ursula von der Leyen, who had ridden the auction horses at the Hanoverian Verband and made a call to see if she would be willing to help me with Ami.

This was the beginning of a wonderful friendship and riding partner. Rose was exceptionally generous with her time and with 5 children at home back then, she still found time to work with us.

I met Kathy van Camp through Rose and the three of us, with Rose's twins in tow, traveled to Lower Saxony to search for a horse for Kathy. Reinhard Baumgart had Goethe, who at 3 was started by Hannes Baumgart and was so beautifully balanced with a wonderful temperament.

It was decided early on, that Rose would show Ami and I would keep him going in between. Show nerves always got the best of me, but I found tremendous satisfaction in the progress that we were able to make without the formality of showing.

Charming the judges

Ami had a way of charming the judges... On several occasions, at the end of a dressage test when the rider halts, salutes at X., he would whinny and this would bring laughter from the judges and audience.

<- Ursula showing Ami at the Stanford Equestrian Center

As an artist, I was extremely fortunate to have Lydia Williams, my dearest friend, fellow rider with a great appreciation for art, as an enthusiastic patron and stanch supporter of my  work throughout my sculpture career.  Mrs. Williams commissioned sculptures of her horses and bought several limited edition sculptures based on the clay maquettes, making it possible for me to cope with the initial, exorbitant cost of moldmaking/casting in bronze.

Ami's companion pony Lightning was adopted from "Last Chance Ranch", an equine rescue outside Quakertown Pennsylvania. I adopted him when he was 2 years old and had just been gelded. He was and still is the dominant "horse" here at my farm, and is now asserting himself with Machu Picchu. It took about 6 months before he stopped attempting to bite everyone and everything that walked through his paddock but as you can see, he and Ami had become inseperable.

It is with deep sadness that I say farewell to my old friend Ami. After several years of managing the pain from arthritis and after he encountered side-effects from Cushings disease, I made the agonizing decision that he shouldn't suffer through the stress of another winter.

Fall, 2009

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