Years later, Ken bought a green-broke 2-year-old Appaloosa mare, a dark chestnut with a few snowflakes, and worked cattle with her. “I bred her to a Quarter Horse stud, and she raised me a colored colt,” he recalls. “He was an excellent colt, nice sorrel with a blanket. He stood about 14.2 hands. I kept him a stud and bought a few mares.”

Thus began several decades of owning, raising and selling Appaloosas for Ken, an 86-year-old Leoti, Kansas, native and farmer who’s had horses for as long as he can remember.

Hard times lead to better times

“I raise good, honest working horses,” he says. “I’ve sold them to local cowboys, many repeat customers. It’s a working hobby that’s made its way.”

And that’s pretty much the story of this Kansan, who’s made his way through life, working hard, enduring bad times and always moving forward. During his “Dirty thirties” childhood, Ken’s family managed to survive on their 1880s homestead (now a 1,280-acre ranch supporting cattle and horses).

After high school graduation, Ken worked as a laborer on local farms. Then came World War II; he joined the Army Air Corps and trained as a radio specialist for a bomber crew.

In February 1944, while on a bombing mission over Germany, his B17 was shot down. He was soon captured and spent the next 14 months in German prisoner of war camps. In June 1945, when he returned to Kansas, the chicken tasted good. “After eating sawdust bread and cabbage soup, I like good food and freedom,” Ken explains.

He and Betty, his wife of 64 years, have enjoyed a good life on the family farm 11 miles from Leoti. They’ve also enjoyed their Appaloosas and involvement in the Western Kansas Appaloosa Association, and with its futurity, which Ken chaired. “Then [the club] dwindled,” he says, and with it their involvement.

The Bishops kept busy hosting a small group of riders traveling from the East to the West Coast in the early 1970s. “Appaloosa breeders like me furnished board and shod their horses,” Ken recalls. “There was one riding an Appaloosa. It was the only horse of the bunch to make it all the way through, and he stepped in the Pacific Ocean. I thought that was kinda neat.”

Diana Siderides, now an animal communicator, owned the Appaloosa. She holds fond memories of the Bishops’ hospitality and their beautiful, well-bred horses. “We were given hot showers, a luxury for us,” she says. “We talked non-stop while we stayed with Ken and Betty. Our horses needed shoes, so Ken got his farrier, Charlie Norton, to come over. Charlie told us these shoes would last until California because he’d be putting borium on the toes. Ken actually did the welding of the borium. I still have the shoes here in Idaho.”

High-quality cowboy horses

Through his decades of raising Appaloosas, Ken has owned 10 studs. At times, he bred 10–15 mares of his own and sometimes half a dozen outside mares. Nowadays he’s semi-retired from the farm, but still spends every afternoon helping his son, Kelly, who runs the operation. He’s also down to just a couple of mares and a stallion named Oaker, a 10-year-old blanketed chestnut with “a tremendous hip and a good disposition,” he says.

Ken’s young, green-broke horses go primarily to area cowboys, working in the local feedlots. “Cowboys use a lot of horses,” he says. “It’s word-of-mouth advertising. They develop into real good cow horses. They like ’em, come back and buy more.”

Over the years, Ken has shown his horses at halter, mainly in state and local fairs, picking up a few championships and watching some he’s sold perform well in reining competition.

For about 20 years, Ken competed in the local fair’s colt class, with colts of all breeds from the county are shown at halter. His entry was usually the only Appaloosa among primarily Quarter Horses. “It’s always done me good to be ‘handicapped’ by leading an Appy and beating those Quarter Horses,” he quips. “I didn’t take my colt this last year…He was too young, [but] I went down there and looked ‘em over. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have been last—might of been second.”

In this mission, she’s had help from both her human and horse friends,  including several Appaloosas. “I know that helping the two-legged and four-legged understand each other is why the Great Spirit put me here,” she says. “When people entrust their kids to me, it’s a high honor and a serious responsibility…They’re handing me a piece of the future.”

Looking to improve

The future is exactly where Judy, a self-proclaimed offbeat and sometimes irreverent instructor with a master’s degree in human and animal psychology, aims while working with challenged riders at her Ravenswood Equestrian Center in Bismarck, Arkansas.

Take Haylee Ellison, with profound spastic cerebral palsy, for example. She advanced from being held on her horse to tying perennial challenged riders champion John Gray in Arkansas Appaloosa Club competitions. “Not only can she hold herself up now, but she can negotiate a trail class with style…very difficult when your muscles don’t respond right half the time,” Judy says.

Or, there’s Will Stevens, a student featured in a Journal piece several years ago. “…[His] parents were told not to educate him because cerebral palsy was going to take him down,” she recalls. “He’s about to finish his master’s, thank you very much! No such thing as a nine-inning ball game with these guys…The game’s not over ’til we win.”

Teamwork

There’s teamwork aplenty at Ravens-wood. The coffee’s always on, and “Make nice” reigns as cardinal law. With constant support from her patient husband, John, who tends to farm maintenance; and neighbor Cheri Boyd, who helps train therapy horses, Judy offers a program where learning is effective and fun for all.

Able-bodied students help coach challenged riders. In turn, they enjoy more efficient learning techniques, thanks to lessons gleaned by their instructor from years of working with students with disabilities.

Ravenswood’s mainly Appaloosa therapy mounts, most with registers of merit in various disciplines, demonstrate uncanny intuition toward each rider’s needs. For example, there’s “Taco,” who “loves being a school horse,” Judy says. “You can see him assessing a new rider, mentally going down his list: Disabled? Able-bodied? New rider? Hmm, what do I do with this one? He’s so smart he’s spooky.

“Comanche Bold Ruler has been known to duck and catch a rider who is losing their balance, even before the handler can move,” she adds. “He can also sense an impending seizure and will freeze, turn, look at the rider, then at you. It’s horse for ‘Something is wrong here. I’m not moving ’til you fix it.’”

Pioneers

Besides taking care of riders, Judy’s horses have taken them to heights they could never imagine before their involvement in the program. That’s due in part to the Arkansas ApHC, which initiated the nation’s first challenged riders’ trail classes in Appaloosa shows.

“We’re proud of that,” she says. “The organization is one of the very few clubs in the country where they can actually compete for awards. They train hard for these shows, and the shows give them the sense of achievement than few other things can.”

After more than four decades of working with challenged riders, Judy’s passion and satisfaction toward her life’s mission continually intensify. “Teaching and coaching is not a job to me. It’s a calling,” she says. “There’s something about the look on someone’s face when they trade in two legs that don’t work well for four legs that do, that will keep any coach going.”

Editor’s note: To learn more about Judy and her program, visit www.horserentals.com/ravenwoodequestriancenter.html. By Marianne Love

Photo by Terri Miller

Dressage judges in the East are seeing spots, and Laurie Phillips couldn’t be happier. In a sea of solid warmbloods, Laurie’s Appaloosa sport horses really stand out. “The judges definitely remember you,” says Laurie, a professional Appaloosa breeder and trainer in Glenville, New York, just outside of Saratoga Springs.
But her horses’ spots aren’t the only thing that capture the judges’ attention. Laurie’s Appaloosas are outstanding performers and have earned her recognition at the top dressage shows in the country against some of the best horses to be found.

Starting young
Laurie began her riding career as a very young girl. By age 10, she was completely hooked on jumping, and rode with Neil Shapiro, a 1972 Olympic silver medalist. Her early success came on the hunter/equitation circuit with 5-year-old Appaloosa mare Winsome’s Spintan. “She was the first horse that I totally trained myself,” Laurie says. “I remember jumping her over five foot fences and she took them like they were nothing.”

Determination and hard work create leaders in any discipline, and Laurie was nothing if not determined. “I took every clinic that I could when I graduated from high school,” she says.

She landed a position that led to her first job as a professional rider. After finishing college in 1990, Laurie opened her own business of boarding, training and hunt seat lessons.

By that time, she’d sustained an injury that kept her from jumping big fences, and it was then that she became interested in dressage. “I started taking dressage lessons from a few different people before I met Rick Albertson,” Laurie recalls.

Rick is a USDF bronze and silver medalist. Under his guidance, Laurie showed Faith In Plaudit up to Prix St. Georges Level.

Growing and winning
The next step was to breed “Faith” to her stallion, Bear Paw Confetti, and the mare threw a beautiful leopard colt, Bears Spark Of Magic. She lost the mare during a second pregnancy, but kept “Magic,” the first foal.

Laurie’s proud of Bear Paw Confetti, a grandson of Chocklate Confetti. “He’s a gorgeous, loud, tri-colored leopard stallion that I showed everywhere and did everything with,” Laurie says. His most outstanding accomplishment came at the world-class Dressage at Devon event in 2000.

“I took him to Devon to the breed show and he was reserve champion in the Appaloosa sport horse class,” Laurie says. And “Bear” didn’t just excel among Appaloosas at Devon. In a meteriale class, where horses are judged under saddle at all three gaits for suitability for dressage, Bear placed eighth against 42 warmbloods. The following year, Magic won best 2 year old.

Although Bear did well in dressage, Laurie felt his heart was in jumping. She sold him to a hunt seat rider who shows him successfully on the Appaloosa circuit. Her new dressage mount is Appaloosa mare Audacious Chocklate. “I showed her in Training and First Level very successfully this year, and I’m hoping to get my USDF Bronze Medal in 2009,” Laurie says.

A love of color
Laurie currently owns seven horses, all foundation-bred Appaloosas or Appaloosa crosses. She does all her own training and is concentrating exclusively on dressage. She uses the natural horsemanship ground training methods of Pat Parelli and Clinton Anderson to train her horses before she gets on their backs.

But not all horses of any breed are suitable for dressage, and Appaloosas are no different. Laurie advises anyone looking for a dressage horse to look carefully at conformation.
“Appies that are successful [in dressage] are horses that are built more compact and uphill,” she explains. “Horses that have higher croups than withers are going to have a harder time, especially when it comes to riding at upper levels that require a tremendous degree of collection and sitting on the hindquarters.”

For 30 years, Laurie’s ridden and trained just about every breed of horse. “Appaloosas will always be my favorite,” she says. “I love their great minds, their sweet temperaments, and they tend to be hardy and have good feet. And I love their brilliant color! If I’m going to have an Appaloosa, I want color. It’s what attracted me in the first place.”

Editor’s note: To learn more about Laurie, visit http://www.appysporthorses-hartshorncreek.com