TOA Blog Hop: History of The Horse

It's been an exceptionally slow week in cob land, partly due to my Month of Sloth No Goal December non goals, and partly due to real life and our unpredictable winter weather. Both ponies have had almost a week off, but it's well deserved time and I think we're all happy with the situation. We have a 'big' clinic upcoming in mid January, so we'll get back to training in the next week or so in order to be at our best and hopefully learn as much as possible.

As always, I'm really loving the blog hops, particularly because everyone always comes up with such excellent topics!

Beka from The Owls Approve asks: Before you met, where was your horse?  Who bred him/her?  What do you know about his sire and his dam?  What do you know where he came from?  Tell me about the time before he had a trainer.

Ginger was bred at a place called Sugarlane Welsh near Vancouver BC, then was sold to another breeder called Carrick Farm located in the interior of the province. She then made the big trip to where I was working in Saskatchewan as a just turned 4 year old and was trained by myself (with much help!) It's funny to me that in all our travels we've both returned to home to the coast BC where we're from. I never met Ginger's sire or dam, and know very little about her early days, beyond a few pictures. I know Ginger's dam has been a career broodmare, with several offspring all over North America. Her sire is less well known, but I like his breeding being somewhat familiar with his sire (Ginger's grandsire). The only other things I know for sure is that Ginger's always been very spooky and suspicious of people, and it sounds like she had a very natural upbringing, basically hanging out in a field and getting some basic ground manners before she came to me.

Ginger's pedigree.

Ginger and her momma. Still a bit hard to believe that little chestnut filly turned into my big bay mare!

Ginger's brother (same dam)

Ginger's momma again - they sure look alike!

Bridget was born and raised at Carrick Farm. I have to admit she was there the couple of times I visited Ginger and I never gave her a second look, thinking she was quite small and plain! I'm familiar with her dam as she was a Ginger look alike and was for sale at the same time as Ginger. Her name was Lindy and I was equally interested in her and Ginger, but Lindy was sold before I got anything organized and let's face it, Ginger was meant to end up here with me anyways. Bridget's sire is also a cob I am familiar with as I met him this past summer as a shiny, happy gelding :) Bridget comes by her good nature naturally, having inherited it from her mom. Bridget had a really great, natural upbringing, then a little bit of driving training before she came to me, the rest is documented on this blog.
Bridget's pedigree.

Grandma that Bridget and Ginger share

Bridget's sire

Bridget's "Gotcha" day this past August. I need to ask whether they have any baby pics of her!

ETA: I was showing G the above picture of Ginger as a foal and he was like "When did Ginger have a baby?!" (Like I super sneakily had her bred in the last year or so lol) I explained "The baby IS Ginger". G: "No it's not, the big one is!!" (Again, sure that I'm misleading him and Ginger has a new baby apparently). "The little one is colored like a camel, horses don't change that much!" I had to show him the markings and remind him someone did name her "Gingersnap" which is not exactly the first name that comes to mind for a bay! He seems disappointed...maybe breeding Ginger isn't quite out of the question at the moment after all?