From our foals to Grand Prix

The Heart of Dutch Warmblood Sport, Jumping, and Dressage

Dressuurstal Petra van Esch has been a family business for over a century. This is likely the secret to our success in finding the right horses for riders of all ages and disciplines. Our horses are bred for resilience, athleticism, and character first. We raise them in huge fields, where they learn to be a horse with other horses. Our facilities, including our indoor and outdoor arenas, are enhanced by our setting in the heart of Dutch dressage country. As we bring our horses along, they encounter farm equipment, bikes, and the realities of family life with kids, dogs, toys and all the surprises. This builds them into trusting partners with a broad experience of the human world.

We breed from embryos from the top dressage lines, and we also breed our own line from a dressage mare, Nelinora, a special mare who formed a close bond with Petra when she was young. Petra develops all of our horses with a correct, classical foundation as the starting point for everything that follows. That means each of our young horses learns classical riding, dressage, and jumping as part of their foundation, so they are prepared to specialize as jumping horses or dressage horses as their talents and their riders' interests develop.

Our well-rounded and thorough approach to the physical as well as mental development of the equine partnership has carried seven horses to Grand Prix.

Our farm is minutes from 's-Hertogenbosch, famous as the home of the annual KWPN Stallion Show, the largest stallion licensing in the world, and of The Dutch Masters, which has brought international equestrian sport to Brabant since 1966.