Paula's Beginning, Horses on Hold, New Additions, Move to Lillington

Horses On Hold

In 1986, I joined the Army. While I was active duty I met my husband and married while we were overseas. He knew that I was very much into horses but for some years we weren’t able to have any with our traveling (we were in Korea and Germany at the time and Desert Shield, then Desert Storm took over our lives). I had been on an almost 10 year hiatus away from horses and ponies but had maintained memeberships in a couple of organizations and studied bloodlines of breeds that I admired. I arrived back in the US to Ft Bragg in Fayetteville, NC with 2 daughters, pregnant with a third and very much wanting to get back into the horse scene. While visiting my mom and step-dad in Montana, our oldest daughter at 3 years of age walked under the belly of their Paint stallion. After I calmed down, I was determined that we’d get involved but with equines that were sized closer to the girls’ stature. The research became more intense as we stopped at a variety of farms to fit actual equine to the pictures and videos I’d received while overseas as we drove from MT back to NC.

Beginning with Ponies

I had maintained memberships in the Welsh Pony & Cob Society, the American Paint Horse Association (APHA), and Pinto Horse Association (PtHA) but when I started visiting farms, we found that the ponies I wanted and liked were usually way beyond our budget and also that they were still larger than I really wanted. Plus, I did remember I wanted spots, if possible. An ad in a magazine brought about speaking with a whole bunch of folks who bred Shetland ponies – they came in “painted varieties”. AND more importantly, “these days” they weren’t the nasty disposition-ed, tiny draft ponies that I’d had experience with in my own childhood. Armed with more information, we went to a farm in Montana when we again visited my parents. Videos, pictures and much more information exchanged hands as I learned more about Shetland Ponies. I was not looking for a stallion – but that was what “dropped into my lap” while I was doing the research. I found a pony that, according to several breeders, was of appropriate lines for children. I spoke to the pony’s breeder and was assured that they’d raised many ponies of his lineage and that he was a good candidate for an amateur handler and family. Speaking with a trainer who’d handled him as well as his sire was exciting and cemented the decision to jump into stallion ownership. He was shipped sight un-seen from 2 states away. He joined a TINY Shetland mare that we picked out of a herd in Ronan, Mt.

So, in 1995 we started with two ponies as a fun family venture to involve our young children and a non-horse oriented husband.

Paula's Beginning, Horses on Hold, New Additions, Move to Lillington

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