Haflinger Yearling Filly: Stateside News

Our filly is for sale! Registered Haflinger AHR Reg. #3001-07, "Stateside News"
Asking Price: $1500

A beautiful blonde chestnut with white mane and tail. Should mature to 58". Her sire was the '03 AHR National Grand Champion, "Melroe CVA". Her dam is the daughter of the 1995 WORLD Champion, "Amadeus". She has nice barn manners and has been handled twice daily since birth. Stands for spraying, trimming, clipping, washing, and loading. Very quiet, easy going and fun filly to work with and be around! Working on Ground Training, Round Pen training, and Line Driving! E-mail with questions: jnewsted@ncats.net

More Horse Shows, More Pictures

Well, well, well! A flurry of activity this weekend and 2 horse shows! The Newaygo County Fair went on all week long, and on Friday they hosted an open Horse Show for all horses. We brought Sunny and Mel (It was just Jim and Billie Jean showing) and all we can seem to handle with just 2 of us is 2 horses! Anyway, we entered them into Halter classes, and put them in the Pony division. Mel won first place and Sunny won second place! They went on to enter the Grand Champion Halter Class, and Mel won Grand Champion Supreme! Out of all the horses there, he showed the best at Halter! Jim rode him English & Western Pleasure and Horsemanship (at a walk/trot class), and placed well in all of them. Actually, placing higher in English than in Western! There were Many horses here!

Saturday, we arrived early at another show, called Sunset Riders Open Show, near Muskegon. We've been here a few times in the past, and it's usually quite busy, with many horses and riders. We received the bad news that this is the last year this show will take place, as the property will be developed into a soccer complex! The halter classes here are organized by Registered Quarter Horse, Registered Stock horse, Registered Pleasure Horse, and Unregistered horse. We entered Mel in the Registered Stock Horse (At the judge's suggestion), and he placed 2nd!

We have a few pictures from this show, but not available yet. These pictures are still from last Sunday. 2 pictures are labled, the middle 2 pictures are Jim riding Mel in the Western riding class.

Some other classes at the Fair

We had 3 entries in Western Riding: Billie Jean riding Atta-Boy, Jim riding Mel, and our daughter Jenni riding Sunny. We took 1st (Billie Jean), 2nd (Jim), and 3rd (Jenni) places. Our granddaughter, Megan, helped us in halter for the best of 3 head (we got 2nd place), and she showed Sunny.

Newaygo County Draft Horse & Pony Show

Wow! What a fantastic Day! We brought home more ribbons than I could stop and count! And 2 large trophies! The show only required one fee per horse, with unlimited events that you could enter. So, of course, true to fashion, we entered all we could find! We also invited our granddaughter, Megan, to show with us, as well as our daughter, Jenni. Our grand-niece, Destiny, also showed up with her grandparents, and she, too, showed for us. We brought our 3 geldings, Sunny, Atta-Boy, and Mel. We entered them in halter classes, showmanship classes, and best 3 head from a farm, and best 2 head of a farm. We placed in all of these, with Mel taking 1st place in gelding ponies/Haflingers, 4 years and older. He went on to win champion of all geldings, and then won GRAND CHAMPION HAFLINGER/PONY of the show! I promise, the trophy was at least 3 feet tall! He was so showy and flashy! Definitely a standout!

These pictures are all of Mel and Jim. I especially like the one of them standing together by the fence...after one of their events, they stayed to watch Megan & Destiny's riding class. I just couldn't resist clicking a few of these photos of their backs. It looks like the 2 of them--cowboy & his horse--have become best buds!

Melroe Video

We've posted our video of Mel at the bottom of our blog! Scroll down and press play to watch. I uploaded it to Google Video today.

After much deliberation and debate, we decided to geld Mel. Because of how the horse market is, we thought that Mel would be more desirable as a riding horse, family horse, and show horse this way. We are taking Mel to his first horse show at the Newaygo County Fair Draft Horse show this Sunday. Come check us out if you're in the area! It's all day long. At the end of the day, we're going to do the Wagon 8 again, just like last year. We'll be using our team, Sunny and Atta Boy for this. We'll be taking lots of pictures of our day, so check us out next week for some updates!

Mel and children

The more we work with Mel, the more we fall in love with him! He is such a willing and gentle horse! A few weeks ago, when our trainer, Jamie was here, he brought his wife and 2 of their horses, and Jim and Billie rode Mel & Sunny for a trail ride. Up to this point, we were uncertain how Mel would react to outside horses and working side by side with them. He has been, of course, fine around any of our horses, mares included. Mel turned an interested head towards the new mounts, but never tried to pull out of Jim's control. For our trail ride, we rode down our dirt road about 1/4 mile to the township property. This property has several trails weaving through it, as well as a crick that borders the far edge. We rode through the trails, with the crick as our destination. We've ridden our horses back here before, but this was Mel's first time. He crossed the crick with no problem! He even had to walk over a rather high log that was across the trail in one spot. We've taken some video of this event, and are currently working on making a DVD of Mel.

This scrapbook page is of two of our granddaughters, ages 3 1/2 and 18 months. All of the grandkids love visiting with the horses and love riding them. Here, you see the two girls being friendly with Mel (large picture). Hannah is hoping to grab a handful of grass and feed it to him. As you can see the girls and stallion are not the least bit afraid of each other. The second, smaller horse, is Makenna trying to get close to Atta-Boy, and they are just looking at each other. I bent down to Makenna's height to take this picture, and boy, do these horses seem much bigger from this angle! You should try it sometime! To read the journaling, just click on the picture for a larger picture to come up.

Frame-able Haflingers

The picture on the left is of our gelding, Atta Boy News. It was taken on his way from the pasture to the barn/pen. I love how this captures his flowing movement as he rounds the gate! The picture on the right is taken of our stud, Mel (For Sale!!). He is penned closely to our other horses, and stays fairly calm. Right now, he's watching the other horses coming in from the pasture. This time of year, his coat is just so beautiful! It glistens in the sun, smooth as velvet, taking of the rich chestnut tones characteristic to Haflingers. Jim has been riding him daily, and has ridden with the trainer for several weeks now. Jim comments often, "The stuff I'm learning is like common sense!" Jim has been working with horses since he was a teen, and working with his own Haflingers since the early '90s. Our trainer, Jamie, has a philosophy of training riders to become great horsemen, so that they, in turn, can teach their horses the learned skills. Some of the skills that Jim has been learning have to do with teaching the horse to yield his head on command. With the slightest touch of the reins, the horse with pick up these subtle cues from the rider, hold his head in proper tucked position when being ridden, and will be unable to run away with its rider. The best part of the training that Jim and Mel are doing is that Jim is able to take these techniques and use them on the other younger horses he is working with. Currently, that would be a 3 yr. old gelding, and a 3 yr. old mare.