About Cali Canberra's Horses

I have four horses that I adore and spend every spare waking moment with. When I was young I owned one horse at a time for pleasure. Eventually, my equine addiction led me to being "in the horse industry" for over a decade. I used to breed, ride, train, market and sell high-end Polish Arabian horses and usually had an average of thirty horses at a time. I spent as much quality time with each horse as I could and loved the business. Now that I'm back to having horses as companion animals (rather than as a business enterprise) I can't imagine going back to having so little time with each horse.

Kota

I've owned Kota for a little over two years. She's a seven year old Palamino Quarter Horse mare that I trail ride and camp out with and train to do advanced ground and riding maneuvers (although I don't ever plan to show her). Kota and I have fun mastering movements and it's a challenging and interesting activity to do when when we don't have time to trail ride or when then trails are too wet.

Mojo

I acquired Mojo in October of 2009. He's a 10 year old Arabian who had not been ridden - exactly what I was looking for! I'm just training him now with the intent to do trail riding and camping and everything I do with Kota ...although I'm hoping that as an Arabian he has more endurance than Kota! At this point we're just working on the basics and he's doing well.

Casino

Casino is my 22 year old Arabian gelding that had been one of our breeding stallions. I bred Casino (*Algonkian x Calamine by Back Street++) when I owned his sire and dam. As a stallion he was quite a handful and took a lot of patience to deal with - but at that time I didn't know so many of the natural horsemanship ways of doing things that I know about now. Perhaps he would have been easier to deal with if I had the knowledge. I'd always been kind but firm - yet he still walked down the long barn aisle on his hind legs and took off as fast as he could when we turned him out! Anyway, I gelded him when he was 8 years old after a mild case of founder which was about the same time as I finally admitted to myself that the Arabian horse market wasn't coming back! There was no sense in him not having the social life of a gelding if he wasn't going to breed anymore. I was so lucky that after only a month of his gelding he actually acted like a gelding! A friend in Colorado trained him under saddle for a couple of months while my family and I traveled looking for a place to relocate. When I got Casino to Georgia he turned out to be a sweet horse - still full of himself, but safe and easy to be with. He was a fun riding horse and loved the trails but is now retired due to soundness issues. He's content and will live out his life with me in a loving environment.

Barbary's Princess

Princess is sired by six time National Champion Barbary+++ and is out of the U.S. National Champion English Pleasure mare, Legacy's Cachet. I selected and purchased her as a weanling for a client in 1983, then bought her from my client as a three year old - you don't want to know what I paid for her in the hay-day of the industry!

I bred Princess to *Algonkian before I sold *Algonkian to Paolo Gucci (yes, "the Gucci") and then I bred her twice to Casino as the Arabian market crashed. After all the money I paid for her, given the timing, I lost every dime as her offspring were sold for pleasure horse prices in a dead market.

BUT ...I love her and she has a loving home for life. She's always been a sweet mare and a great riding horse. Due to arthritis she retired from riding shortly after our memorable 3 week wilderness camping trip alone in Oklahoma. We went there for bonding, research and for me to finish writing Wisdom of the Horse.