wow! teddy is GORGEOUS!! i have a soft spot for paint horses!! i didn't even know you had a horse. tell me more about him. he is built SO much like my tuffy was, solid as a rock. is he registered? i'm curious to know his bloodlines. beautiful boy!

I love horses! Back when I was a kid at home, I had a couple horses. If I were rich I'd have one in a heartbeat!

Your horse is beautiful!

Thank you, both, very much.

Nina, I've had Teddy for 4 years now. He will be 25 in May!! He is registered American Paint. He was a lessons horse when I bought him. I'm so glad to provide him with the wonderful retirement he so richly deserves. I keep him on a 100 acre farm in Wilmington, OH. He's in a 30 acre pasture with about 10 other friends. There are about 40 horses on the farm. We have 300 acres of trails to ride. I have the great pleasure of riding him 3-4 days a week - weather permitting. :) He is sweet, sweet, sweet. He always comes to meet me at the gate when he sees me. I have wonderful friends to ride with and we have so much fun. You would never know Teddy was as old as he is. He is in very good health and is quite the frisky boy. I love him to pieces.

he looks FANTASTIC for a senior guy!!! so, he's registered...any chance he has any Hank-A-Chief in his lines? he just looks SO much like tuffy!!

Nina, Teddy has Impressive on his dam's side. Is Tuffy, who is gorgeous, by the way, registered? I could look him up on allbreedpedigree.com and see if they have anybody in common.

yes, tuffy was registered with the APHA. his registered name is Tuffer N Hank registration number 00073838. he is a son of Hank A Chief. tuffy was an experimental breeding at the university of illinois. Hank A Chief was bred to a qh mare which produced tuffy. he was a GREAT horse!! lost him 2 years ago at the age of 28. he did not come through the winter in good shape, lost a lot of weight and began having terrible nose bleeds. had him evaluated by 3 vets and they all said probable cancer so i laid him to rest. he was my best buddy for 23 years.

Well, phooey, you have to be a member of APHA to look up a pedigree. Teddy is registered on allbreedpedigree.com. His registered name is Impressive Billie.

Wow, Tuffy made it to 28! That is pretty good. How wonderful that you had him for most of his life. I often wish Teddy could tell me about his past. He did have one girl that had him for about 12 years, so that is pretty good.

I wish I could look up Tuffy's pedigree. We might have some horse in common. Teddy has Three Bars and Leos in his pedigree. I love how the pedigree goes back to the 17-1800's. Amazing to me.

I love the name Hank A Chief. It made me laugh.

Well, phooey, you have to be a member of APHA to look up a pedigree. Teddy is registered on allbreedpedigree.com. His registered name is Impressive Billie.

Wow, Tuffy made it to 28! That is pretty good. How wonderful that you had him for most of his life. I often wish Teddy could tell me about his past. He did have one girl that had him for about 12 years, so that is pretty good.

I wish I could look up Tuffy's pedigree. We might have some horse in common. Teddy has Three Bars and Leos in his pedigree. I love how the pedigree goes back to the 17-1800's. Amazing to me.

I love the name Hank A Chief. It made me laugh.

Teddy is gorgeous! As was Tuffy.

with teddy being as old as he is, i would just about bet the farm he and tuffy have some lineage in common. they are/were both built like tanks!!

i had been looking all over the place for a nice paint gelding. had been to 3 states, was getting really discouraged as nothing i found fit my criteria. i wanted lots of color and a steady temperament. on one of my trips, i stopped at a tack store on my way home. i was telling the cashier my woes. a guy walked up to me and said he couldn't help but overhear me. said he knew where there was a nice paint gelding for sale. turns out, he was practically in my back yard. he was a newly gelded boy, at 5 years old. had been used as a stud for 2 years but the guy told me he was a sweetheart.

called the guy on my way home and asked if i could come out and see him that night. it was late, dark, the day before thanksgiving. when i got there, my headlights shined on the most gorgeous horse i had ever seen, standing in cross ties, with just a bare light bulb to light up the barn.

i fell in love at first sight. wanted to ride him. jumped on bareback, the guy's son rode his 4 wheeler out in the pasture to light my way. i rode all around on him, back to the barn and asked the guy what he'd have to have. he told me $700. now mind you, i had been looking at paint horses for months and never found anything decent for under $2,000. i didn't even dicker with him, wrote out a check and told him i'd be back the day after thanksgiving to pick him up.

the rest is history. that horse saw me through a lot of tough times. he was the best trail horse on the planet and absolutely loaded with personality! when my husband was fighting cancer, there were many times that i would go outside to cry so he wouldn't see me. i would bury my face in tuffy's mane and pour my heart out to him. we had a bond like i have never had with any other horse. to this day, i miss him terribly! he lived a good life with me and when his body wore out, i knew i had to lay him to rest. he is buried out in the field in front of my house. i still talk to him when i'm having a bad day. :)

nina - great story, sounds like a wonderful horse.

And Teddy is great too.

I had a quater horse years back until I shattered my ankle. Something had to give since I had too much on my hands at the time and needed to heal, so regretfully, I found Casey a good home.

A year later a friend called ... he raised miniature donkeys and I had visited his farm often to see them and the babies int he spring. He had an eight month old jack he wanted to find a home for, and twisted my arm really hard (not really), and brought Cosmo in the back of his pickup truck.

My friend who had her horses at my farm got her own farm, so I had to find Cosmo a friend, and got Sambina. And they had baby Merlin ... both boys are now gelded and I have a happy little donkey family.

There are many more pictures on my blog ... whichI need to update!

Here is a link that might be useful: Donkeys, daylilies & dogs blog

Oh I love these stories!!! Nina, yours made me cry. Such a sweet story. And Pam, yours made me smile.

These horses and donkeys can be real life savers!! And best friends too.

Ok, ninapearl, I rejoined APHA because I had to know if Tuffy and Teddy were related. And, of course, they are!!

Tuffy's mom was Illini Lady II (hence the Illinois reference) and she has Three Bars in her lineage.

Tuffy's dad has King and Joe Reed in his lineage. I found Percentage, Myrtle Dee, Luke McCluke and Midway. These horses go way back.

So I think Teddy is closest to Tuffy on Tuffy's mother's side. Yaaaa!!!

I just found out that my friend's horse, Chief (Chief of the Hood) 's great, great grandfather was Hank A Chief. Could I please share Tuffy's picture with her?

This post was edited by murraysmom on Fri, Feb 8, 13 at 17:05

i just KNEW it!!!! how awesome is that!?!

i would LOVE to see pics of chief!!!!

by all means, share away!!! here is a pic of Hank A Chief. he was homozygous, a 100% color producer and it is said that his temperament was awesome. if he was anything like my tuffy, he was a big teddy bear!

Wow, those pictures are amazing!!! I love them. I did copy them and shared them with Sue. I've asked her for a picture of Chief. He is no longer with us either, but I'm sure she has lots of pictures.

And Hank A Chief is quite the stud, isn't he??? LOL I love a paint with attitude!! I'll share Chief's picture with you as soon as I get it.

Thank you so much!!

Our other friend that has a paint, Tonto, (Whispers Barman) shares Teddy's great grandfather, Win Or Lose!! I just love all the connections!!

what a small world, huh? can't wait to see pictures of chief! Hank A Chief stood at stud in wisconsin but it looks like he spread his lineage far and wide.

you know, i think i have a really good paint horse book around here somewhere. i'll see if i can dig it up and i'd love for you to have it. :)

tuffy had 2 blue eyes. one time on a trail ride, i had a guy ride up next to me and say "that's a gorgeous gelding. too bad he's blind!" i said "yeah, really it's a shame but he gets around pretty well." LOL!!

another time, i had a delivery guy drive up and he said to me "that baby sure takes after his momma!" i said "whaaat??" he pointed to tuffy and the little mini gelding you see in the pics. i said "he does, doesn't he?!" duh!! tuffy and rebel were inseparable, they ate together, slept together and got into mischief together. :)

i will look for that book today!

eta: well, phooey, i looked and now i'm pretty sure i gave that book to somebody. drat!

This post was edited by ninapearl on Sun, Feb 10, 13 at 12:22

Oh well, it was a nice thought. Thank you. Those are very funny stories about Tuffy. He was such a beautiful horse. I know it broke your heart to lose him.

I got to ride Teddy today. His white is looking rather cream colored now from all his rolls in the winter mud. I always look forward to spring and getting that long winter hair off of him. Still we had a wonderful ride both yesterday and today.

i do miss tuffy, he was such a goofy guy. he loved going places and trail rides. the funniest thing is, he refused to load in a trailer for anybody but ME. others would try and he would pull back and balk. i would take the lead rope, throw it up over his back, walk him to the trailer and say "load up" and he would practically walk over the top of me to get in. LOL

here's a link to Hank A Chief's breeder. he is long deceased but his legacy lives on...

http://www.encoressecret.com/wiescamp.htm

when it's warm enough to give teddy a good bath, use wisk laundry soap and then finish everything off with a rinse using a bucket of water with some bluing in it. he will glow in the dark, guaranteed!!

Thanks for the tip on bathing!! I would love to see Teddy glow in the dark. LOL

I bookmarked the page on Weiscamp horses. I recognized some of the names. Such gorgeous horses.

Sue told me tonight that she will get me a picture of Chief. I'll post it here as soon as I get it.

looking forward to the pic!

another great product for horses is Healthy Hair Care. it's a spray on conditioner that makes manes and tails soft as silk. when i had my horses on pasture, they would come in covered in cockleburs. the only way i could get them out without ending up with bloody fingers was to spray them with that stuff. the cockleburs slid out easily!

http://www.healthyhaircare.com/hairMoist.php

GREAT stuff!!!

Thanks, again. I have to laugh because normally Teddy's pasture is fairly free of burrs, but one day he came up to the barn with a big old burr tangled in his forelock. I was horrified. I felt like a terrible mother. LOL I'm just thankful he's not in the "geldings" field because they get lots of burrs. But because Teddy is a gentleman, he is in a mixed pasture of mares and geldings. That's my boy.

Ninapearl, here are pictures of my friend's horse, Chief. What do you think? See a resemblance???

WOW, he's gorgeous!!! seriously, there is NO mistaking these relationships!

at one time, i had a granddaughter of hank a chief. she was a black/white tovero, medicine hat. she was a great mare! i had her for several years before divorce forced me to re-home her. i sent her back to the breeder who raised her. he got several loud colored babies from her.

this is tuffy and "RB's Blue Eyes"...

Don't you just love it???!!!! Boy, your two make a stunning couple!! They look so cute together!

I love them and I'm sorry you had to part with your mare.

This is so much fun!!

all of these horses have amazing heads and SO similar!!

i wish i could remember RB's breeding! she always bleached out a little in the summer but in winter, her markings were almost blue/black. she was 6 when i got her and had been a broodmare. she was broke to ride but hadn't been out on many trail rides. the first couple of weeks i had her, i rode tuffy and ponied her alongside. she learned very quickly that trains and cars and stupid teenagers in convertibles wouldn't eat her up. the first time we went across a bridge was a riot, i thought her eyes were gonna pop out of her head! she turned into a great trail horse!

it was tough to have to lose her but i knew she was going back to a good home. when i bought her, the breeder and i made an agreement that if i ever did have to part with her, she would go back to him.

when i got divorced, i had to make a choice. i kept tuffy. there was no way i was gonna lose that horse!! i also had an old quarter horse mare. she was probably about 27 when all of this went down. i sold her to a friend who had 2 little boys. i wrote up a bill of sale that said if there ever came a time when they didn't want her, i would buy her back. i sold her to them for $1.

fast forward about 18 months. i had settled out in the country with the love of my life. got a call one day that the little boys had graduated to younger horses and was asked if i wanted the mare back. i hooked up my trailer and went to pick her up 10 minutes later!! bought her back for $1.50 (inflation, don't ya know!). she was with me until the age of 38 when i had to lay her to rest. talk about a great horse!! i could ride that mare anywhere, bareback with just a halter/lead rope. she always was a little barn sour but never did anything stupid. when we would turn for home, she just pranced all the way back with her tail up and her ears pricked forward. she was a beauty!

this is "Super Red Chips", Chips for short. :)

she was the gentlest of souls.

thought you would get a kick out of this one. these 2 were joined at the hip. if i took tuffy out for a ride, rebel would stand at the fence and scream bloody murder till we got back!

this thread is bringing back SO many wonderful memories!!!

I'm so glad! Chips is gorgeous! The picture of Tuffy and "mini me" is so cute!! I love how similarly they are marked. Your having Chips until 38 gives me hope that I will have Teddy for many more years. He's usually lead horse on the trail and he is the boss of his herd. LOL I know that he is so, so happy where I have him now. Here is a picture from when I got him just 4 years ago.

teddy looks like a super healthy guy and keeping him happy is the best thing you can do for his longevity. i hope you have many, many good years left with him!!

here's another picture of tuff and rebel. they had matching racing stripes on their butts. LOL

is teddy considered a bay tobiano? he has such lovely markings!

They are calling him a brown tobiano. Thanks. I love his markings too. His brown is so shiny, even in winter.

I love tuff and rebel's racing stripes. The similarity of their markings is really quite remarkable! Brothers from another mother??? LOL

i was thinking bay because it looks like he has a black tail and also black on his hocks above his white stockings. i've seen some gorgeous bay paints!

LOL, you wouldn't believe how many people would drive up, look at tuffy and rebel and comment on how much "that foal looks just like his momma". duh!

LOL, well.......of course you would say that!! LOL They do look like parent and child!! :)

Teddy does have a black mane and tail and on his hocks too. Maybe whoever decided he was "brown" didn't see that?

I call him a chocolate and white paint. :)

chocolate and white works for me!! seriously, though...with his brown markings and black tail (and i assume he has a black mane) and black on his legs, he would be considered a bay tobiano. not terribly common so you have even more of a treasure! :)

I'll tell him that, and of course kiss him on his nose, the next time I see him.

Didn't know he was so special. Even more special than he already is!!!

LOL

LOL yup! special, indeed...great markings and phenomenal breeding! :D