SUGARPLUM VISION
I bought this fabulous critter as a barely started 3-1/2-year-old filly and was admonished by a top trainer that it was a death warrant for a blind woman to have such a green horse. Within 18 months she had earned her Pinto Registers of Merit in two events, and to this day she is still affectionately known as my death warrant! More commonly she is known as Zoe, the nickname she came with for no particular reason. I changed her registered name to be Sugarplum Vision from the line in Clement Clark Moore's holiday poem: "Visions of sugarplums danced in their heads." A sugarplum is a sweet treat reserved for special occasions. Sugar referred to my being diabetic and Vision to my being blind and also to my vision of showing.
Zoe is a gorgeous 16.1 double registered 1996 Paint/Pinto hunter type mare. She is a flashy dark copper chestnut and white tobiano with an exceptionally pretty head and kind eye. She has national APHA points in both novice and open Hunter Under Saddle and earned PtHA Registers of Merit in open Hunter Under Saddle and English Pleasure in her five-year-old year. She also has national PtHA points in dressage, tobiano color, walk/trot, and western pleasure. Zoe is a super willing and responsive people pleaser with an incredible work ethic and tons of heart. She has personality plus and the Cadillac ride to be an equitation mount. This honest and talented professionally trained show mare is very sensitive to seat and leg as well as voice commands and can be ridden without reins. She is super trustworthy and fun on trails, a schoolmaster lesson horse, and a confidence-builder for timid riders. She has impeccable ground manners (you can bridle her while on your knees and lead her without a halter), knows natural horsemanship, has given bareback pony rides to handicapped children, and even does tricks including bowing and giving kisses. She is trusting enough to allow you to toss a hula hoop around her neck or lead her under a tarp barely high enough to clear her withers. Both her grandsires, Wimpy Lee and Sabru Indio, are mega point earners; and Zoe is a celebrity in her own right, having appeared in the 2/01 Practical Horseman and as the cover girl on the 6/00 Paint Horse Journal.
After I developed a clotting disorder in 2001, my doctor advised me to minimize my risk of falling; but this blind rider continued to jump Zoe, feeling completely safe on her. Then in 2002 the vet discovered a small cyst in Zoe's foot on x-ray and advised me not to jump her to avoid the added concussion. We've both effectively been grounded from flight, but look for Zoe in more down-to-earth starring roles in the future!
