One of the worst surprises of your life is the first time you throw a leg over a really good horse. The later in life that happens, the harder it hits you. Why did I waste so much time on those other horses?!

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For most of us the answer is money and opportunity. The good ones cost more and are a whole lot harder to find than those my dad used to haul home from the salebarn when I was a kid. Those horses were a gold mine of education - and not much else, except maybe to emergency room doctors.

 

So when I finally got the chance to raise my own, job one was finding the best bloodlines I could - bloodlines that had earned great reputations for trainability, talent, athleticism, and good minds, as well as for things like correct conformation. And I brought them to Deer Park, Washington. Job two is to raise them right. I'm slow and break easily, so I can't afford to take nonsense from youngsters. They learn manners from day one. I learned that from an old mare.

 

Our babies grow up on rough, hilly pasture in mixed groups. They learn to negotiate terrain and get along with other horses. They also get early handling, to instill confidence and manners. That early training paid off during wildfires in 2016 when 17 horses, including mares with foals, yearlings, and others, had to be evacuated into strange trailers by people they didn't know. Went off without a hitch.