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My grandmother's amber champagne Missouri Foxtrotter mare, Sunny. Champagne applied to bay leaves a blonde body color, a brown mane and tail (with lots of blonde highlights), amber eyes, and mottled purplish skin. Sunny's legs are very light-colored. Visit the Champagne Horse Association for photos of other champagne horses. (That's my mom in the pic.)
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Two more pictures of Sunny, the Foxtrotter mare, before she had her full winter coat. You can see her lighter-colored eye and the pink skin on her (ahem) vulva. She also has a metallic sheen, characteristic of champagne horses, even when she's wearing her wooly winter coat.
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My grandmother and grandfather in a parade in Kansas in the 1950s. My grandmother is riding her grade broodmare, Feather, and Grandpa is riding Fiddle.
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Grandpa and Tarbaby in 1964, a half-Morgan filly out of Grandma's mare, Feather. Tarbaby's sire was Flyhawks Black Star, a Funquest-bred Morgan stallion.
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Grandpa with Shiloh, a half-Quarter Horse gelding out of Grandma's mare, Feather. He was foaled in 1962. Grandpa was a farrier and trimmed horses' feet until his 70s. (The mark on Shiloh's flank is damage to the original photo.)
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Feather's first-born, Brandy was a Half-Arabian mare foaled in 1957 by the purebred Arabian stallion Wildwood Mohammed. She's being trimmed by Grandpa. Grandma and Grandpa always kept their horses on the fat side.
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I often got model horses as birthday and Christmas presents, so I looked forward to those events. Here's a pic of me at the age of six at my grandmother's house. OK, so I'm holding a giant Miss Piggy paper doll, but you can clearly see two of the three model horses I received that Christmas in the background, a Legionario III and the traditional Black Beauty.
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Here I am at the age of eight with a Clydesdale foal that was given to me by a family friend.
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You can tell I was pretty happy in this photo, taken when I was 11. I got the brand new Breyer Sham for Christmas that year!
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That's me in 1982 with Mister Show Bar (by Showdown Rick), a Quarter Horse gelding my family owned briefly before he died. "Mister" was the sweetest, most cooperative horse and therefore the perfect first horse for a young family. Unfortunately, he broke his leg in a pasture accident and was put down.
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My mother is pictured with the yellow dun Quarter Horse mare Little Delaware, a Top Moon granddaughter, who was my family's second horse. "Deli," as she was nicknamed, was a beautiful mare, but she was a bit too much for us to handle because she was extremely sensitive. I rode her from time to time and I don't think she ever threw me, but I remember her dumping my stepfather! We sold her to be a broodmare (she was already a very fast barrel-racing mare) and I've often wondered where she is today.
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In this photo, I'm leading "Flash," a grade horse that was kept at the same pasture where Deli and Chico lived. Flash's owner never came to visit the horse at all, so the horse was pretty much adopted by the neighborhood kids. You could do anything with him and I usually rode him with just a halter and rope. It was hard to keep weight on him though. I was working on my parents to contact Flash's owner and make an offer to buy the horse, but one day his owner finally showed up and took him away. (I shouldn't have been dragging that lead on the ground, but Flash was so bomb-proof that I didn't worry about those kinds of things with him.)
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This is Cody, my grandmother's 50% Kellogg CMK Arabian gelding. I grew up with Cody (registered as "Tomy") and his full sister Shirleyna. They are by the Ferseyn son Lawseyn (x Farlouma by Farana) and out of Synbona (Synbad x Greysona by Al-Marah Thunder). I knew the Lawseyn horses as "old-fashioned" Arabians, but in the last few years I've become aware that CMK Arabian breeders consider Lawseyn descendants to be good endurance racing horses. Cody was a Christmas present from my grandmother to my grandfather in 1977 and I helped pick out Shirleyna in a big field of mares when their breeder, Lloyd Laws, was dispersing his herd in 1986. Cody was foaled in 1977 and Shirleyna in 1978.
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The grey mare is Shirleyna (Cody's full sister) when she was a young mare in Texas. The bay is the stallion Lawmoss (Lawseyn x Lawsouma by Abu Farwa), owned by Claudia Provin. Claudia took the photo.
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This is my hero in horse form, Chico, a Welsh Pony/Appaloosa cross my parents bought me when I was 13. A friend of the family told my parents about a young woman who needed to sell her three-year-old gelding to pay for college. The gelding was trained English exclusively and had 30 days training over jumps. If we didn't buy him, the owner said she would have to take the horse to an auction that meat buyers frequented. I rode the horse and liked him a lot, but my parents said no. A few days later I came home from school and my mother said we should go out and visit "that horse you rode the other day." I asked her why on earth we'd visit that horse again, and she said it was because we'd bought him! I was thrilled, but there's no way I could have known how much that horse would touch my life. Chico is pictured here at the age of six.
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Chico at the age of 14. He was going through a bad bout of founder at the time and was having his feet treated to keep them from drying out while he was on dry lot. A very "easy keeper," Chico has to be watched closely every spring so he doesn't founder again. This photo shows his actual coloring well.
Chico taught me so much about how to stay on a horse! He's always been a good and caring horse, but he has a frisky streak that can overcome his good manners. I can't even begin to count how many times he dumped me, but he was always concerned when he saw me on the ground and stayed close by my side until I was back on my feet. I did have one serious fall when Chico bucked me off at a dead run and I was very lucky not to have broken my neck or back. When Chico realized how seriously I was hurt, he stayed right by me until help arrived.
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Chico at age 17. After years of owning Chico, I really couldn't figure out what his color was. I mainly considered him "brown." But recently I decided to study closely his coloring and narrow down the color possibilities. He isn't bay or brown because he doesn't have black legs (which are required for those two colors) and he's not chestnut because he doesn't have a red hair on his entire body. (Some of these photos make him look reddish, but he's really not at all. The red in his mane is the result of sunbleaching.) He has a true black mane and tail. After doing a lot of research, I feel fairly confident he's smokey black, which is the cream gene applied to black. He sun-fades in the summer, especially in his mane and tail, and he has lots of pangaré on his belly, flanks, armpits, and muzzle. I've found photos of other smokey black horses that are relatively close to his coloring also. Eventually I'd like to have a red factor test done on him to confirm or disprove the smokey black theory. (I can't wait to hear from the lab, "You want to run a red factor test on a GELDING?" Usually red factor tests are only done on breeding stock.)
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As this picture proves, Chico's a clown. He's retired and living with my mother, and the two have become best friends. My mother is not terribly comfortable handling horses, but Chico is a patient and caring teacher. I've honestly never seen a horse that is so ornery one moment, and so careful with a beginner in the next moment. He never takes advantage of my mother's inexperience, which is amazing to me.
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This is Khamystque, a Khemosabi/Fadjur granddaughter my husband and I owned. She was sired by Khamchatka (Khemosabi x Mee Coya by The Real McCoy) and out of HAH Quinque (Fadjur x Haifa Buruq by Neyseyn). In my opinion, "Misty's" personality and body type was more like the McCoy side of her pedigree. She's tall, leggy, spirited, and very aloof. After she was crippled by EPM (Equine Protozoal Myeloencephalitis), we found her a home where she can be a pasture ornament.
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