ARGO   Here she is, the source of my madness and my introduction into the world of the eternally poverty stricken. This is Argo, a mostly-Polish Arabian, a few days after she became mine. She was four years old and was my college friend's way of asking me not to move to New York. ("Just think, Becki, if you stay in San Jose, you can have this horse"). Argo became mine in 1997. She originally belonged to Jennifer Johnson, who was in the Magazine Journalism department at San Jose State at the same time as me. Jenn got her in exchange for helping to clean out someone's barn. After I graduated college, I briefly considered moving to New York City (I had a job interview scheduled at New Woman Magazine). At the same time, Jenn was trying to convince me to stay in the Bay Area so we could start a local horse publication. Jenn's whole family is huge into horses. They had something like 20 of them at the time, and Jenn didn't really need Argo (another mouth to feed), and I was coming over a lot to ride the neighbor's horse (Cir, I miss that horse). I won't say how much I paid for Argo, but it wasn't much, and the opportunity to train and ride my own horse sounded way more tempting than the $21,000 salary I'd be making in New York City (don't even ask me how you can rent a NYC apartment on that kind of money). So here I am, and here I am still, and there is Argo. (Click on any of these pictures to see the bigger version)
YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR   Argo had never so much as worn a saddle, or had a bit in her mouth. As for me, I'd been riding Cir, who was about as push-button as they come. I thought, "I'll train this horse myself." Well, let me just say, I'm lucky to be alive. Argo wasn't a bucker or a rearer, but she wanted to GO, and that's just what she did, with me sitting on her back. She ran like a Kentucky Derby contender, with me hanging on for dear life, and at the end of it all I guess I half fell off, half bailed off, picked up the reins and took her straight to a professional trainer, which really was what I should have done in the first place. By the way, after I got Argo Jenn got pregnant and our plans for the horse magazine sort of went out the window. At this point I was starting to wonder if I should feel any regret ... a few months (and a bunch of money) after taking her to the trainer, though, she looked a little less like a wild creature and a little more like the one you see in this photo.
CROWNING MOMENT   Here we are at a schooling show, where I managed to win four ribbons (two thirds, two fourths), some of them in classes as large as 12. Not bad, but we were never able to duplicate this feat again. At our one and only class A show, we won a fifth place ribbon in a class of six (because the judge wasn't looking at us when we blew our lead). Argo spent all four hours we were there throwing a temper tantrum. She bounced, bucked, attempted to run away, threw her head and was overall a very nasty character. I still have my $400 fifth place ribbon, but we haven't been back to the show ring.

Fortunately, Argo still has a promising future. Wanting to "go, go, go" is actually a desirable quality in an Arabian. One of the crazier factions of the horse community is the "endurance" sect. Endurance is just what it sounds like. People get on horses and ride them anywhere from 25 to 100 miles, and the first one over the finish line wins. Argo is perfect for this sport, for obvious reasons. I'm not sure I am, exactly, but Argo is. More of that to come in later months, as things unfold. But in the meantime, here's one more reason why Argo has a promising future.
BIG FAT HORSE   Not long after the very expensive fifth place ribbon incident, my horse trainer told me we might want to try breeding Argo. "90% of horses who are bred calm down," she said, (I am laughing hysterically as I write this). Anyway, I fell for it, so I had Argo bred to my horse trainer's stud, a big chestnut called Aslan PF.

I am now going to bore those of you who know nothing about Arabian bloodlines in order to brag that Aslan is a full brother to Sandstorm JC (who is a star in Europe at the moment), and son of the late Fame VF, who is legendary among Polish Arabian sires. Argo is a granddaughter of Huckleberry Bey (another famous stud) and Naborr (yet another famous stud). So the match was a good one for reasons other than "it will calm her down," (more laughter). Left is a picture of pregnant Argo, now two weeks overdue. Horses carry their babies for 11 months. Argo carried hers for nearly 12. I nearly lost my mind waiting for the foal to finally make its appearance.
BIG FAT OUT OF CONTROL HORSE   Much to my dismay, though not really to my surprise, breeding Argo did not "calm her down." While most horses eventually need to be on "bed rest" (they start to feel kind of draggy about five or six months into their pregnancies), here is Argo a mere week before she had her foal. She was still trying to run away, she was still bouncing up and down the rail (instead of walking), and I don't think she even noticed the fact that her giant belly was dragging the ring. At this point, everyone was referring to the foal as "she." Why? "I don't think Argo is the type who would have a boy," my trainer said. So even though I wanted a bay colt, I was prepared for a grey filly, and everyone was surprised when a week later Argo had exactly what I wanted. How often in life do you get that?
CABRE ROMEO   Argo had her foal at 10pm on March 20, 2000. Despite the fact that everyone had been hovering around her for the last week, sitting out with her half the night, with me on call, next to a phone and unable to leave town for fear of missing the big event, Argo managed to have the foal at the exact moment when no one was around. Ask me how annoyed I was about that. Anyway, here he is, at long last, the lovely and talented Cabré Romeo. (For those of you who are not familiar with what happens to grey horses as they get older, yes, that is Argo. She was born black and was still quite dark when I got her; now she's a much lighter grey and will eventually be all white.)

"Cabré," by the way, is the name I picked for my future ranch. You know, the big place I will have in Oregon when I am retired and able to support myself off of my horses. Don't ask me how I am going to do this, as I haven't quite even figured out how to break even with my horses. Anyway, that is the dream. For more details on my "ranch," you can go to Cabré Arabian's official website. Lots more boring stuff there to thrill and amaze you.

ROMEO THE BABY   Following are a bunch of senselessly cute pictures of Romeo. I have no real reason for putting them here, other than to show you how cute he was back then. I also have a few pictures of him kicking the hell out of Argo, which I've chosen not to put up here, even though they are quite funny. Argo had a bad habit of stepping all over him when they were turned out together, and he learned how to defend himself pretty quickly. Anyway, these are the pictures of him looking a little more docile and innocent. Here he was probably a month to two months old.
 

ROMEO THE ATHLETE   I had some very real fears about what I was getting into when I bred Aslan and Argo. Although the bloodlines are pretty impressive, Argo's, shall we say, "firey" personality and Aslan's, shall we say "eek, it's a piece of floating paper that might eat me" personality gave me reason to be concerned. My biggest fear was that the result of the union would be a bitch who was afraid of everything. But again, I was lucky. Romeo is everything I have ever wanted in a horse. He is pretty, he is quiet and agreeable (unlike his mom), he is brave (unlike his dad) and he is as athletic as a horse can be. Here he is at the tender age of one month, jumping a shadow, looking for all the world like a grand prix thoroughbred.
ENOUGH ABOUT ROMEO, LET'S TALK ABOUT DENVER   As if I didn't already have enough horses, I decided late that summer that I needed another one. Martin wanted to learn how to ride, and I had a bunch of friends who were bugging me to come out and ride, and since I liked most of my friends, putting any of them on Argo was really out of the question. Enter Denver Pawnee, a 16 year old former rodeo pickup horse. If you've ever watched a rodeo, you know what pickup horses are; it's their job to rescue the cowboy after he's done riding the bronc. A pickup horse will come up alongside the bronc (which is usually still bucking, twisting and carrying on), and the pickup horse's rider will help the cowboy down and loosen the bronc's bucking strap. So anyway, Denver had a lot of training. He was used to loud noises and bright lights and other horses doing stupid things, so it was really hard to rattle him. This is a Very Good Quality to have in a horse. Denver's classified ad described him as a "babysitter," and that's exactly what he is. Anyone can ride him.
DENVER THE INDIFFERENT   Unfortunately, Denver had some problems, not the least of which was his total indifference to everything around him. Denver does not like carrots, by the way, which makes him a freak among horses. Also, he turned out to be an arthritic seasonal photic headshaker. Which means he's too lame to do a lot of trotting and loping, and is unridable in the springtime because he has allergies and throws his head around a lot. Well, he was maybe not worth what I paid for him. Let's just say he was a lot more expensive than Argo, and more expensive even than the stud fee I paid to get Romeo. But fortunately for Denver, he's just an all around nice guy, except for the part where he doesn't really care about you and would rather not see you. But horses that anyone can ride are hard to come by, and that's enough to convince me to keep Denver in the family.
HIGH DRAMA IN MORGAN HILL   At some point I decided to change horse trainers. I won't get into my reasons here, except to say that I was starting to feel like I wasn't getting my money's worth, and my trainer was starting to insist that I geld my colt, even though I had a number of votes from the ranks telling me that gelding him would be a bad idea. To my albeit untrained eye, Romeo looked like he was going to shape up to be a nice showhorse (here he is as a young boy showing off his neck). I decided to get the opinion of another trainer, Todd Azevedo of Equus Farms Training Center, who reconfirmed my suspicions that gelding him might turn out to be a mistake. (I'll take a pause here to fill in the non-horsey on what "gelding" means: "Snip, snip." 'Nuff said.) After that there was a lot of drama. Let's just say that one horse trainer typically does not like to lose her client to another horse trainer.
ALL THINGS COME TO A CHANGE ...   Romeo did not stay small and cute for very long. He grew fast, and in one year was already as tall as his mother. That is unusual for a yearling, and it suggests that Romeo may grow to be in the 15.2 to 16 hands range (if you don't know how big that is, I'll just have to satisfy you by saying that for an Arabian, it's really, really big).

Romeo's new home was Willow Pond Ranch in the Santa Cruz mountains, where Todd had his training facility. Moving him off the old place was not a positive experience, but Romeo really thrived in his new home. He had access to huge, green pastures (which were completely absent from his old home), and he had another colt his own age to play with. In the warm weather, he quickly lost all his baby fuzz and started looking like a real horse. Here he is, barely a yearling, "standing up" for Todd in front of the arena at Willow Pond.

... AND THEN THEY CHANGE SOME MORE   In late spring, Todd told me he was moving to Texas. Well, this did not really surprise me, as Todd was losing a lot of his high-tech clients to lack of funds (this was right after the stock market started slipping), and Texas was an infinitely cheaper place to live. Anyway, I had a few choices. I could send Romeo back to my old trainer, which I really wasn't prepared to do, or I could send him to a new trainer in Stockton (the only guy in the area Todd recommended), or I could send him to Texas with Todd. It may surprise you that I decided to send him to Texas. Why? Because good trainers are hard to come by. I really liked Todd's style (he wasn't as hard on his horses as other trainers), and most importantly, Todd was really enthusiastic about Romeo's future. Here's Romeo with Martin, not long before Romeo left Willow Pond for his long trip to the deep south.

ROMEO THE SHOWHORSE   Following are a bunch of senselessly pretty pictures of Romeo. The first one is Romeo looking pretty. The second one is of Romeo with his head over his shoulder, looking pretty. The third one is of Romeo with his neck slightly arched, looking pretty. In all these photos he is about a year old. He is now even bigger than he was when he lived at Willow Pond. I've only just returned from Texas, where he went to his first class A show. Unfortunately, he did not do well there — there were 27 other colts, most of whom were really nice, and Romeo did not stand up as well as he should have. That is not to say, though, that we've gotten discouraged. Romeo still has the potential to go a long way, and we still think he will.