“Excuse me, is this the three year old fillies class? I’m so sorry it’s just your horse is so small”
The sophisticated woman and her elegant seventeen hand dappled bay filly were a beautiful pair. I definitely understood immediately what she meant, and explained yes, it was that class, my horse was just small. I swear Celeste understood what I was saying as she seemed to puff a little up and stand straighter, to seem more imposing than her mere 137cm. The tall filly, I would later hear through show ground gossip, was the daughter of an Olympic hopeful.
“Did you win?” Is always the question people ask when you return from a horse show. For some events that makes sense, but for a Morgan horse in a dressage ring pitted against an Olympic daughter or the best Hanoverian colt in the country, that question does not come with the correct implications.
Many of my readers are Morgan horse people, or sport horse people, or both. Given that I do have many readers as well who are not thusly inclined, please allow my elaboration.
Morgan horses are known as all around horses, as saddleseat or as carriage horses, but seldom do people associate them with many of their greatest accomplishments, such as opening the West or being our loyal companions in war. Much in the same way, Morgans as a mount suitable for sports like dressage, jumping, and three days eventing, are often overlooked, despite their exceptional intelligence and good sense, their durability and athleticism, and their unfailing love for people. This means that entering Morgan horses into competitions seen as “unusual for the breed” mean the horse and human must work much harder to garner the same respect as for a horse seen as more appropriately bred.
Especially when the competition is the biggest breed show in America, at the oldest horse show grounds in the country, with international competitors at Olympic levels.
As I am still recovering my physical strength after a badly broken leg, I had to stop handling before the afternoon class in which Celeste was entered. My green, truly amateur husband stepped in. He handled our other filly beautifully, and though Celeste is more challenging, I believed she would perform adequately for him. I didn’t want to scratch.
This horse is my pride and joy, and I watched on pins and needles as my soulmate set her up for conformation inspection, and then led her in her triangles. Our dear friend was tailing, and my girl had a lovely spring in her step, mostly respecting my husband and showing herself off nicely. They looked beautiful, and it was a very good run, I couldn’t have asked for better especially being sidelined as I was – so when her score was announced and she had exceeded the leading score by six full points, I literally started crying.
The class had ten pairs run the triangle. As we watched the next scores tick in, some higher, some lower, one particular one quite high – but those higher scores besides the one, were quite close to Celeste, in fact within 1.075 points. Her position slipped from first of course but she paused at sixth with two horses to go. Then one. Then the class was over.
For those not in the know, at Dressage at Devon, the horses in places first through sixth get to stay in the ring, be individually called out to receive your ribbon, and get a special winner’s circle official ribbon. Places seven through ten receive their ribbons with their score sheets at the office.
Five towering warmblood fillies, and one tiny Morgan pony, stood in the winner’s group, patiently waiting for the ribbons to be retrieved, and then for the final scores to be read as they took their turns posing with their beautiful fluttering prizes.
My tiny Morgan found equal footing with some of the world’s best warmbloods.
Did we win, with my filly’s green sixth place ribbon?
I’m a crazy girl who had a big dream when she was a small child. The dream came true, and multiplied by about a million, with Spirit’s Celeste.
Spirit’s Celeste is a 2019 Morgan filly by my stallion Primal Thunder and out of my friend’s Equinox Challenge daughter, Triplesweet Trinity. She and I planned the breeding together, and I offered her multiple breedings to my stallion in exchange for the offspring her mare Trinity would bear in 2019. April 28, a tiny crumpled bay filly emerged in the middle of the morning when the barn was full of people, with big soft eyes and incredibly expressive ears, and an innate love of human company. I had a hunch she might be the baby to show in her first year, so worked with her on my friend’s farm two or three times a month before she came home, at which point we officially show prepped for a couple of weeks. Before she was five months old, she out-performed even my wild imagination. She’s not even a year old yet, and she has become the Morgan of my dreams, and the horse of a lifetime.
I’m a Morgan horse breeder. I’ve accepted this as my role in life, and become quite content with producing Morgan horses for sport disciplines. I do show, but I don’t show to win. I show to learn, to help my horses learn, to meet people, and to have the creatures I’m creating be critiqued assessed by professionals who know their job better than I do. I want them to be seen but I also want to know the truth of their potential. It’s nice when we do pin, but at the end of the day, the experience is worth much more.
In 2018, I entered my first rated show. My first show at all since I was a teenager, minus one late night show jumping competition in England. I took my beloved stallion Primal Thunder to perform in hand in the breeding division of Dressage at Devon. Devon Show Grounds has been a holy place in my mind my whole life and I decided it would be the best place for me to start. It was an unbelievable experience. The show staff are amazingly kind and helpful, especially for someone showing all by her lonesome as I was. My stallion is always a gentleman, and he napped curled up like a puppy between events, leading to some braid cleanups – but the braider I decided to hire was wonderful and is now a personal friend, as is the exceptional photographer who followed our rounds, in the rain. It was nerve wracking. It was exhausting. It was absolutely brilliant. I had so much fun, and I learned so much, met some wonderful people and horses, and even brought home some gorgeous satin ribbons. My boy was so quiet and respectful in the warmup ring, where there were also some hot tempered stallions of other breeds, that a couple of the officials asked if I would bring more Morgans the following year.
So, I did. I packed up my two youngest fillies, three year old BCT Gentlemans Prime Time and weanling Spirit’s Celeste, and we drove down from upstate New York to show. Prim had shown once previously, earning a blue ribbon at the Morgan Medallion show as a yearling. Given her motion, carriage, and success of her sire in the discipline, I’d been thinking dressage might suit her natural style, and I wanted to know what trained professionals thought of her. I also wanted to see how her self esteem would handle it! Prim is a sweet, loving girl, but can get overwhelmed, and is the low man in the herd so gets picked on a lot. Especially as the “big sister” to Celeste, I thought it might help for her to show again, see how easy it was, and at the same time be the comfortable presence for the tiny filly.
Celeste though, she was born a show horse, and ended up comforting her “big sister” at the show! She came out ready for a stage and spotlight – but in that distinctive, unassuming, Morgan horse way. She loves everyone, all the humans she meets and all the horses, dogs, barn cats, and anyone with whom she can interact. She cuddles like an oversized puppy. She can quietly stand and not fuss – at four months old. I wanted to put her in the ring and have her seen, and to check my own assessment against the assessment of the judges.
The show has been done for months now, when I am writing this, and I am still spinning from it. It was incredible.
I handled both of my fillies myself, as I frankly didn’t feel hiring a stranger to jog my babies would be appropriate. I learned in brief how to do so for my stallion in 2018, and had spent the weeks leading up to the show acquainting my girls with the proper way to stand and move, as best as one can. They were ready. We shipped down with a good friend who’s driving skills have always impressed me. Prim wasn’t keen on getting in the trailer – but Celeste marched right on, and Prim, not to be outdone by the much-younger-and-much-smaller, followed suit. They knew and loved each other at this time, and they shipped easily, arriving comfortable and dry to Devon’s grounds. Anxious mama me, of course, I’d been bustling around, bedding the stalls, portioning out hay and filling water buckets and obsessively checking my texts for the “we’ve arrived at the gate” message. Everything went smoothly. I had to speak with the officials about attempting to run both of them in the Morgan IBC class, and they arranged the order of “go” such that I would be able to run one back and fetch the other. We walked the grounds, each filly and I, we walked the Dixon Oval and did our triangle, and relaxed.
Our first day was all “GO”. Early I ran both my girls in the Morgan IBC class. Celeste won and Prim took fifth. Prim got to nap while Celeste and I then did the pony division in the afternoon and evening. In which she won almost everything. Which is still blowing my mind. She was the first place filly of the year, champion foal, champion young pony, and reserve grand champion, beaten by a 12 year old Westfalen (I believe) stallion who won the previous year and who, frankly, deserved to win.
Each filly had a class on our second day. Neither ribboned, but the entire point of going to this show for me, as I’ve said, is to have my babies exposed to the “horse world,” to see and be seen, and to learn about new and exciting things. Prim improved her score by a whole point in her class the second day, and the judge said she showed elegance and real promise – what can beat that?
We were done by mid morning, and after each had a nap, I took them for walks around the grounds. Celeste and I met up with a good friend of mine who came to meet her (she owns a colt by Celeste’s father) and we ended up walking around and talking to people for more than an hour, this tiny four month old filly standing nicely and quietly letting people pet her and talk as people do.
What we heard a lot, either to our faces or about us as we walked by, was pleasantly shocking.
“What breed is she?”
“Wait she’s a MORGAN?”
“This is the little filly who beat everyone?”
When we finally walked back to the stalls, two very nice ladies with the show were sitting there waiting for us to get back – to interview me and meet Celeste.
My mind is still blown about this. Not once did I hear anything negative said about myself or my fillies – not saying negative things weren’t said, but that I heard none of it. So many people approached me and Celeste, asking to meet her and hear her story, marveling about her kindness and sweet disposition, and how darn cute she is. When you’re a small time horse person, who’s ridden forever but only owned for a couple of years, who’s constantly sought it out but never been able to do it as she wished, but who is then suddenly in the spotlight because of a horse she made – it’s incredibly humbling, frankly. Proved to me that if you work hard enough, and always keep that end goal in mind, and just persevere and WORK, some day you might actually achieve more than you thought possible. It’s also been suggested to me that this, this exact thing, might also be why I love Morgan horses – because that’s how their minds work.
We met up with many friends at Devon, from the Morgan and the Dressage worlds. The Morgan IBC class hosted a fairly large class for an “off breed” – seven horses! – and I got to meet more Morgan sport horses and their humans. Dressage at Devon proved to me, more than anything else, that Morgans are sport horses, true warmbloods at their core, though not aimed or trained for the sport circles until much more recently than European warmbloods. Although this does mean Sport Morgans do have some catching up to do – developing through training what many warmbloods are born doing – if we humans work hard through collaboration, cooperation, and the grit and hard work our beloved Morgans are so known for, our high-headed, big-hearted, tough-as-nails and smart-as-Harvard-grads ponies and horses will prove their worth outside our inner circles.
The Modern Morgan 