Our Journey to the Irish Draught Horse

We met our first Irish Draught in 1994, in our first year of showing in the sporthorse venue. We had taken a very nice colt out of our best mare to the Northwest Sporthorse Breeders Association Breeders Classic, entering him in Dressage Suitability for Weanling Colts. We were amazed - but very pleased - to have our colt pinned as Reserve Champion by judge Hilda Gurney.

While there, we ran into an old acquaintance, Ann Cummings. What a surprise! Ann and her family had moved out of our neighborhood, and it had been a couple years since we'd seen her. She had brought in her new horse, the then-three year old stud colt Snowford O'Donnell. He was the very first Irish Draught we'd ever seen ­ up til that time, we had barely even heard of the breed.

This boy was such a sweet horse, and despite being in the bratty prime of young stallion-ness, still a dream to work with, and to handle. We were completely sold on the breed. We booked the dam of our Reserve Champion colt to him, hoping to get our first Irish Sporthorse baby the next spring. This was not to be, as our beloved mare had given us her best and last with RK Paratrooper, the colt we had shown to the 1994 Reserve Horse of the Year honors for NWSHBA.

We schemed and plotted for years after that, waiting for the opportunity to get into the Irish Draught horses. We shopped stallion prospects in Ireland, and looked at what was available in the US and Canada, but never quite found "that horse". Finally, after the move to our new farm, we made the decision to "go Irish", and to breed all our mares to Irish Draught stallions to produce Irish Draught Sporthorse foals. I believed that O'Donnell was still in New Mexico at the time, so went stallion searching on the internet. My favorite pick was a stupendous horse named Touch of the Blues, but I could not find him any place! The owner's website was gone, and no trace of the horse remained.

Then, reading the For Sale listings on the website of the Irish Draught Horse Society of North America (IDHSNA), I came across an ad for a colt sired by Touch of the Blues. I went immediately to his owners' website, and looked at his pictures and description. I knew that we had finally found our Irish Draught! I printed out the pictures and information to show my husband Rick. We looked at each other and simultaneously said, "we can't afford this horse", then said, "what the heck, it costs nothing to ask". Rick called up Simone Mackay, the colt's breeder - as it happened, she and her husband Doug had been the people who bought Touch of the Blues! The deal on that little foal was struck within a week. After doing a lot of juggling, selling off and just plain scraping together cash, we were able to come up with the price, and then waited anxiously as our dream colt made the long journey from eastern Kansas to our yard.

In early November, five month old Manu Forti's Touch Down, aka Ollie, walked down the ramp of Cathi Bunker's big trailer and onto our farm. He looked around at the other horses, gave a little nicker and settled right in, and has become a huge part of our lives.

The rest, as they say, is history - for us, at any rate.

I've placed a short history of the Irish Draught on our website. I hope you will agree that we are justified in being so excited about these horses!

For those who want to find out more about this breed, I urge you to check out the website of the Irish Draught Horse Society of North America; there is a link located on our links page.

 

--Kate Justet Triplett, Homesick Angels Farm, Sultan, WA, USA