We publish here the letter Federica wrote after the death of her wonderful horse.
Goran, that was his name, lived at Filicaja for some years, since Federica saved him from a life of exploitation and set him free. Goran left us on Monday, 1st November, after a day and a night during which all of our efforts to help him were, unfortunately, vain. He was and always will be our “gentle giant”…


Milan, 3rd November 2010

This is the story of a gentle and generous giant.

This is the story of how the man, for sport reasons and personal satisfaction, took away all his love and respect from a special and wonderful being.

This is the story of my Goran, big and strong Dutch “prince” with a flea-bit grey coat, used by the man to win important show jumping competitions, at any cost, with any mean.

Transported back and forth across Italy, doped with sedatives (to the point of making him faint and collapse in the van before a show) to calm his terror in front of the obstacles. Yet, this terror never translated in a refusal of his master’s orders, but in the aggression of the jump, always in the desperate effort to perform well the task for which he was drugged, tied, beaten, hit by poles while jumping. To the point of cutting half of his tongue with the bit. To the point of completely changing the bone structure of his knees, so that often he couldn’t even walk.

But this is also the story of a great love. It is the story of how our casual and unexpected meeting completely changed my life, and in part, his own too. The life that I was able to tear away from that world, helped and guided by the members of the then new-born Flaminia Da Filicaja Foundation, of whose existence wasn’t previously aware, and to whose founders I’ll always be deeply grateful.

This is the story of how Goran taught me to communicate, of how he trained me to work on myself in order to relate with him. Of the hours, days and months spent to convince him to lower his head to be groomed or petted. Of the nights spent in his stall as he battled against a colic. Of the games, the caresses and the work done to win his trust. Because a horse doesn’t care about our knowledge in equine matters until it realizes much it means to us.

We managed to build an exclusive relationship that, as such, it’s for life...

Goran, the gentle giant, died on Monday, 1st November after spending the last four years of his life at Filicaja. I’m “happy” he died in this way, lying on the ground and falling asleep near the people who cared for him with generous affection.

Back then, it was a very pained decision to separate myself from him, but I knew I owed him. I knew I had to give him back part of his nature, of his essence—and so it had been...

Today, 3rd November 2010, I’m not ashamed for all the tears I’m shedding as I write about him. My grief in these days is physical, is an inner hole in front of the irreversibility of the time spent together. Then I stop, and a smile blooms among the tears...that smile is him...his smart eyes, his big hooves, the holes at the base of his neck, the scratches on his head he adored. And I heard again, unmistakeable, his whinny, his smell, his warm muzzle near my face...that smell, that warmth, that love, are on my skin, are a visceral, unbreakable bond....for an exclusive relationship, laboriously conquered is, as such, for life...

Thank you, my love. Rest well.

Federica