The Great White

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172 – July/Aug, 2016

BY ERICA GREATHOUSE

In many of our favorite fairytales, a princess waits patiently for a knight in shining armor to rescue her aboard his noble steed. The knight
is handsome and strong, and his equine companion is typically white. Often, the princess waits for years, enduring all sorts of turmoil, before she and her knight can ride off into the sunset aboard his valiant steed.

For this reason, it seems fitting that APHA amateur competitor Michelle Sloan waited for over two years for her perfect white horse to come along. Sloan, along with her mother and number one horse show cheerleader, Alice Brock, trusted their trainer, Kristin Layher, to find just the right horse, and they were willing to wait until the perfect one came along. “Kristin has been looking for over two years for the right Hunt Seat horse for us, so I was very excited when she called and said she had found the one,” Sloan says. Layher was convinced she found the right horse when she first rode Dream it, also known as “Charlie,” a five-yearold APHA gelding by Mackenzies Gallant Jet and out of Maker a Tiger. “The pedigree was there,” Layher says. “He was green and had only been shown one time, but I knew his two siblings, APHA World Champions Must Be a Dream and Gallant Zippo. Knowing that he had such successful siblings helped me be confident in his potential. I knew there was going to be some work involved in getting him showready, but we bought him because we saw his potential. The bloodlines and movement were there, and we horse I’ve ever worked with, and he’s super quiet. His disposition makes him an excellent show horse,” she says.

Click here to read the complete article
172 – July/Aug, 2016