Maurice Dedobbeleer

Dear Maurice, dear Mrs Dedobbeleer,
Dear members of the committee, horse loving friends,

Today I have the honour and the pleasure to pay a floral tribute to our chairman who celebrates his tenth anniversary in office.
As we all (should) know, Maurice was born (on December the 25th of 1934) infected with the ‘draft horse disease’. As a little boy he accompanied his father to the National Championships. I’ve been told that Maurice attended his first ‘national’ in 1946 at the age of twelve (a quick count learns that he ‘endured’ sixty of them at close quarters). The event was then held in June, spanning two days, with large categories of mares and stallions. As breeders too the Dedobbeleer family has a proven track record: when reading through the list of crowned mares one discovers no less than three champions sprung from their stable, in 1957, 1968 and 1972.
Maurice also regularly drove the draft horses on the fields of the Pajottenland, in his Flemish native town of Bellingen, this being attested recently by a picture which appeared in our ‘little yellow’ magazine.

Upon his marriage Maurice settled in the Walloon village of Mettet to continue the trade in gateways and closing partitions of his father-in-law. The draft horse however never left the pasture of his thoughts.
For many years he was a respected member of the jury at numerous competitions, being furthermore an official juror of the Belgian Draft Horse with, to name but them, Pol Verheyden and Firmin Libens. These three men bore the reputation that they could see ‘through’ the horses and thus - not surprisingly - scored well when elections for members of the jury were held. The Ardennes Stud Book also values Maurice’s connoisseur’s eye, still inviting him to examine their horses.

In 1996 Maurice added a new chapter to his ‘draft horse story’ when chairman count Eric de Liedekerke wished to pass the torch of the chairmanship. Upon accepting the nomination Maurice will presumably not have expected his term becoming such a turbulent one. The number of Belgian draft horses kept decreasing and a lot of renowned breeders threw the towel in the ring by lack of successors. This spiral is still winding down, partly because of that ‘silly’ law on caudotomy. Our association, with its chairman on the first ranks, deplores the prohibition on shortened tails and no effort was or is neglected to undo this decision. We prefer however not to pursue this argument here and now as too many words have already been wasted on this topic, without success whatsoever for the time being. The position of our chairman has definitely not been an enviable one with the breeders tackling him harshly on this subject, as if a chairman could abolish the law.

The regionalisation of the ministry of agriculture, under whose competence our association has to manoeuvre, has been another major challenge in the past years. As a consequence our royal society had to be split in a Walloon and a Flemish branch. We opted for a two-daughter stud book structure working under the dome of the mother. Each daughter will, according to its conviction, nature and disposition pursue the ideal horse, the same horse: the Belgian draft horse.
Maurice, we pledge that both regions will loyally preserve that cultural heritage.
Busied by the changes imposed by the government we were furthermore confronted with the issue of the secretariat where things went wrong quite often. The fortunate return of Jeannine and Hugo made that problem belong to history.

Dear Maurice, we realise only too well that it isn’t always easy to be the chairman of an association where the means are limited and which depends upon the goodwill of many volunteers who dedicate themselves to the smooth operation of such an organisation. We are convinced that the majority among them are of a good disposition and will always remain loyal to ‘their chairman Maurice’. The fact that many address you in this way is a sure token of respect. How often did we not overhear, at competitions and meetings, phrases such as ‘the chairman was also present, what a dedicated man, always travelling this far!’ Maurice, we fully endorse these words and count on you to remain our chairman for many year to come!

Herman De Gezelle, chairman of the VFBT

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