Hansi Heck-Melnyk is one of two women (the other being Tzviah Idan) behind my acquaintance with Asil Arabian horses in the USA. In 1994, at the WAHO conference in Morocco, she saw a teen-ager sitting on his own at a dinner, started talking to him, then after he went back home in the pre-internet age, started to supply him with articles and books about asil Arabians. In 1995, she introduced him to Joe Ferriss and a long correspondence ensued before they finally met in the US in 2000 (Tzviah was there too). In 1996, she made that teen-ager an offer to study at the University of Florida in Jacksonville, which he declined. That teenager was me.