It's finally official, but has been in the works for a while. It all started when we bought a couple of show halters from Ron and Nancy Meyer. If you're a POA person you know Ron and Nancy. They are the best and have been breeding the best in POA for many years. For years, Ron and Nancy stood Guaranteed Equity, a son of RY Major Equity and the powerful dam, Kathie Lee. He was fantastic. We always wanted to breed to him but only got one gorgeous little tank of a baby (Berry Sweet Guaranteed) before he was sadly lost to colic. I've loved his babies for a while and thought, "wouldn't one cross nicely on Nugget?"
While talking with them at the Spooktacular, it came to light that they still had one daughter of Equity's and one other aged mare on the property. Listening to Ron describe her, I knew she was a nice pony. Registered as Paige One Guaranteed, she was named after their granddaughter. I loved that story as well. I told them that if they were ever ready to part with her, to let us know. Guess what? They let us know!
Libby and I went out to meet her last winter. Paige was in prime "I'm crazy" form because her one and only friend was in a completely different pen than her and that was NOT OKAY. She put on a good show of running and bucking around. Of course, in true horse crazy fashion, we immediately fell in love with her. She has the cutest little head and is a little tank. She is also hard to catch. When I say I have a type, I guess that's what I mean. The hard to catch, need to be won over kind. It seems like I have picked up my fair share of them over the last couple of years and I've loved every one.
Paige has done, in Ron's own words, "a whole lot of nothing." She is halter broke, has had her feet done and vet cares. She knows and understands people and Ron wasn't kidding when he said she's a kitten once she is caught. She has had two foals so far in her 12 years. One is buckskin broodmare by Ima Few Spot Dream owned by the AKA farm in WI named Guaranteed A Dream. The other was a palomino few spot colt that was sold a few years ago. From the looks of her first two foals, we are very excited to see what she will produce for us.
As far as the hard to catch thing, I'm on it. The first day here she wore the long catch rope. She never ran from us, but she would just slowly turn and walk away. Once caught she would practically fall asleep with rubs. She closes her eyes and just melts. I also have Libby and Sophie going in and petting on her so she doesn't become a one woman pony. By day 2 she had graduated to the short catch rope. For two days now we have been able to walk up and pet her and I should be able to get rid of the short catch rope altogether today. I have also been working on walking up and putting a rope around her neck . No big deal on that. This weekend it will be many times of heading out, putting a halter on over her other halter and then letting her go. We can't take the halter off until we are confident we can catch her. We don't have the ability to run her into a stall so all of our ponies need to be able to be caught and haltered. If she keeps doing as well as she has done so far, it won't be long and she will be a pocket pony.
I just love her. We haven't added a pony (other than foals being born) in well over a year. We did such a great job of downsizing last year that it seems a little irresponsible to bring home another pony. I said I wouldn't consider it unless the perfect pony came along. We truly think that with Paige's palomino color, her beautiful conformation and her disposition, she will make a fantastic cross on Nugget or other larger stallions. She is homozygous so we could even look at solid stallions if we wanted to go that route. She's a gem and I love her. Can't wait for her to love me as much as I love her.
Remember our new theme for naming foals after a theme for the mares? That way we will always know in a flash which foal belongs to which mare looking back. Well..... Paige has the same name as one of the characters on my all time favorite show, Charmed. So her babies will all be registered with "magic" themed names and the barn names will be characters from the show. Cannot wait to see what she produces in 2025!
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