This message is from: "Nathan Lapp" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> This stallion discussion has been immensely interesting. Being only a year and a half into the Fjord world, many names were new. But when Peg asked to hear from owners of Erlend offspring, that rang a bell! My sister Hannah owns Onalee, a 4-year-old mare by Erlend, and I asked her to give a few words on her. She says, "Onalee is nice-looking, 14.2 hands, deep heart girth and good bone but not stocky. Nice high withers for a Fjord. Kind, but has untiring get-up-and-go. She's a good trail horse--wish someone with more time than myself could enter her into long-distance competition. Otherwise, she cultivates the garden, gives children rides, takes the boys to the far fields to check their traps, and rounds up cows now and then. All this from a horse I trained by myself for the first time."
I will add to Hannah's comments the story of Onalee, last year at age 3, giving my 12-year-old nephew Jacob a bareback, unbridled ride in from pasture. She had never been ridden before, and Jacob had mounted her by mistake, in the dark, thinking she was 12-year-old Viola. When he got into the barn and saw the mistake he said, "I didn't know why she was looking back at me like that when I was getting on." Onalee also did a 17-mile competetive trail ride with Hannah this September, and earned some respectable awards. Since Hannah and I are full-time farmers we don't expect to be able to do much with Onalee in the show ring. But we think she is a perfectly conformed Fjord, and are eagerly awaiting a Northeast evaluation. We also had the pleasure of owning, for only three months, a son of Erlend born to our mare, Viola. He is now living it up at Old Hickory Farm, where Julia Will is raising him as a prospective stallion. I just got out Onalee's pedigree and am amazed to see such distinguished names as Baldur, Dragtind, and King Harald. The latter actually appears twice--as a great-great grandsire, and a great-great-great grandsire. And Viola's pedigree is equally exciting! Grabb appears twice, as both third and fourth sire. (did they do more inbreeding in those days?) Her dam is Bella, out of Viola N-13079. I wonder if that is the Elite mare Viola who is Hostar's dam? Viola was imported from Norway by Phil Prichard, and evaluated in New York as a five-year-old in 1991. She received 2nd premium. Evaluator comments were: "harmony in body, moves close in back, good bones." I do not know evaluator language well enough to tell if "moves close in back" is a fault. And, may I add, Viola has the honor of carrying the first United States conceived foal of Flotren, newly imported by Julia Will. We just had her sonogramed and the foal is due Sept. 2000. Barbara Lyn Lapp Lapp Family Fjords
