This is a love story. Not about the general love we all have for horses, but about falling in love with a specific horse, one that not only catches your eye but also your heart. That one in a million horse that can instantly inspire feelings you haven't had since your first real crush in grade school. The one that melts your brain like an ice cube tossed into a hot skillet. You know. You've been there.
Colleen Aufiero, 36, discovered her love of horses about the same time she discovered walking. Her website has an old black-and-white image of her standing at a chain link fence looking "at a couple of miniature horses that some people near us had in a field. I nagged my mother until she finally began taking me to stables to rent horses as often as she could".
The petite Southern California native comes from a close family, many of whom are riders, though at the same time she is very much her own person, her business self-made through her persistence and just plain hard work. Her grandfather was in the U.S. Cavalry around the turn of the last century, and also drove chariots in silent movies, such as the first early version of "The Ten Commandments." His daughter is Colleen's mother Joan, also a rider, and in spite of the reference to nagging, Colleen said that "she's also my greatest heroine, so kind-hearted. My parents have been very supportive."
Mike Aufiero, Colleen's father, grew up poor in Brooklyn, dropping out of school at one point to support his family by working in a two story livery stable. Mike and Joan celebrated their 40th anniversary this year and now divide their time between Oregon and Arizona.
In 1974 her mother was hired by Boeing Aerospace, and with her husband moved 8-year-old Colleen and her older sister Roene from Ontario, California, to a place south of Seattle big enough to hold their own horses. They purchased an older paint gelding for her sister and a Shetland pony for Colleen.
Before long Aufiero was in 4-H and showing in Western events. In her 20's she bought a quarter horse gelding and, she said, "struck gold with that horse!" Not only did she win 67 points in her first year of limited showing with the gelding in Western Pleasure, she met trainers Steve and Carol Metcalf, now of Pilot Point, Texas, but in those days working out of Snohomish, Washington. Steve Metcalf had walked over to her at one show and complimented her on her horse, and the relationship began.
"Carol Metcalf is my mentor, at the time my greatest inspiration in the world," Aufiero said, "because she works very hard and demands success by being very well prepared." Aufiero continued to take lessons, commuting by plane after the Metcalfs left for Texas eight years ago. She also still has the mare she bought in those days with which, as a two-year-old, the two women won $10,000 in Western Pleasure Futurities.
Aufiero now lives in Bothell, north-east of Seattle. Kathy Calcagni is a neighbor and, formerly, a fellow breeder. She sold Aufiero a yearling colt five years ago and persuaded her to keep it in the northwest, introducing her to her own trainer who, like Metcalf, has a connection with Bob Avila.
That's Matt McAuslan, who with his wife Tiffany operates McAuslan Quarter Horses in nearby Woodinville. "I was impressed with his drive and dedication to the industry," Aufiero said, "they're both amazing people. They're good listeners and we work very well together."
His pedigree as a trainer isn't bad, either: after winning the AQHA Youth Worlds in Working Cow in 1990 at the age of 17, he moved from his native Bothell, Washington, to fill in for an injured friend at a ranch job just outside Portland. Within a year he was apprenticed to the most famous cowboy ever to come out of Yamhill, Oregon, the legendary reining and working cow horse rider Bob Avila.
"Avila's as good as it gets, everyone knows that" said McAuslan, 30, "and he's very demanding, but if you can make it through his program then you've done something. Of course, most of us who've worked there wouldn't want it any other way. We were there to learn from the best to try to become better ourselves, not to waste time. Colleen's a lot like that, too, as dedicated and committed as anyone I know," a comment that puts Aufiero in the front rank of professional horse people in McAuslan's opinion. "I'll stand behind that, all right," he said.
It was while he was working with Avila that McAuslan met his future wife, now the lovely Tiffany McAuslan, who at the time was working for Avila's former student and neighbor Tom St. Hilaire. Eight years ago they settled back in Woodinville on their ten acre ranch and opened for business. A few years later they began training and showing Aufiero's horses.
"This is my day job," said Aufiero, "breeding, buying and selling horses. I'm really immersed in this, but I've got a great team, too. Besides my mom, and Kathy Calcagni, there's my veterinarian Dr. Bob Fleck, and the McAuslans are just great.
Aufiero now owns 15 head, including two miniatures, and will tell you that her favorite horse and best friend is a 24-year-old chestnut gelding named Skeeter. But she also will tell you that in October of 1999 she fell in love. Totally bonkers. Like in the corny old movies when they cue the violins. This is the love story part. The happily ever after comes next.
McAuslan begins the story, "Ron Knutson of Spokane bought this 1986 mare in Texas named Topsail Calamity and her 1996 foal, Shining Topsail. Calamity's out of the well-known million dollar NRHA sire Topsail Cody, who died last year, and is himself out of Doc Bar Linda, who is by Doc Bar. Pretty nice."
Knutson sold the colt as a yearling to McAuslan's neighbor, Gary Baldwin. "He rode him for a year and a half or so and had begun training him, and then in the fall of 1999 brought him over to show me," said McAuslan, "and I liked him right away. Great style, very quick, good tailset, nice and compact but also athletic enough to be relaxed and easy. I called Colleen and said she should go take a look."
"Kathy Calcagni and I drove over to Baldwins," Aufiero reported, "and as soon as this little chestnut stallion came out of his stall I knew. I KNEW!"
"Yeah, she sure did," laughed Calcagni. "She just jabbered all the way home like a seventh grader in love with the captain of the football team. She just couldn't shut up. Peanut, his barn name, is a great horse, though. That's part of the fun of all this. She found a diamond in the rough. Not many people love animals as much as Colleen, but this horse was special from the first."
McAuslan says Peanut's not only good-minded and a good mover, but he's trainable and healthy, and is therefore easy on himself. "I'd rather have a trainable horse than a talented but lazy animal any day."
Dr. Fleck agrees. A rider himself, he characterizes Peanut as "a small horse with a big heart, very sound and able to withstand the rigors of competition. He's only had a few babies but they've shown good potential." Fleck handles all of the breeding through his Rainland Farm Equine Clinic in Woodinville.
And the happily ever after part? Well, Aufiero had originally planned to ride Peanut herself and was going to geld him. But as time went on they had second thoughts. "We began to see some unexpected raw talent emerging, and he's now more than earned the right to remain a stallion," McAuslan said. "We only have two here with 60 head, so to avoid gelding, a horse has to be exceptional, and he is that, all right."
With lifetime earnings of over $8,000 and 69 AQHA points just since 2000, and with million-dollar sires on both sides of his pedigree, and his outstanding capabilities and trainability, the only remaining question has to do with his get. "I'd like to ride babies like him," said McAuslan, "and so far that appears to be what we're getting, judging from Margarita, a two-year-old filly that seems to have a lot of her daddy in her."
McAuslan also won the Open Snaffle Bit Futurity in Rupert, Idaho, last summer on Shiners Okie Val, a half-sister to Peanut (she's out of Smoking Samantha). The filly was also a limited open finalist at the Reno Snaffle Bit Futurity.
Colleen Aufiero will come down off her cloud someday, but in the meantime will be happy to negotiate a private treaty for breeding. In the meantime, if your travels ever take you to the wooded hills northeast of Microsoft, you've got a nice little side trip you might take to see Peanut - Shining Topsail - and his crop of yearlings.
You also may run into Peanut at NRHA competitions in the area, as McAuslan and Aufiero plan to take him to the World Show again this November. "We'll be at Superslide up in B.C. (Canada)," he said, "and at Rancho Marietta this September down in California, and at regional competitions in Pasco, Walla Walla and Monroe, all in Washington State."
Aufiero, who said she'd been concentrating on the breeding for the past couple of years, plans to return to competition herself. "I'll get in the open amateur ring with a Lena's Wright On mare that will be bred this spring," she said. Eventually, she plans to pursue an equine breeding degree at the University of California, Davis. "I'd also like to have a column in a horse publication," she added. One hopes that if that happens, she could use the first one to tell the rest of us what love is really like.
Copyright © 2008 The NW Horse Source, LLC
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