The following article (reprinted with permission) appeared in the Jan. 14, 2005 issue of The Chronicle of the Horse:
Galeno Tyme Accelerates Mosier's Breeding Plans
by Amber Heintsberger (www.amberwriter.com)
Reprinted by permission of The Chronicle of the Horse. Visit www.chronofhorse.com to subscribe.
Having trained for several years in Canada, first with Cindy and Neil Ishoy and then with Evi Strasser, Jennifer Mosier returned to the United States six years ago to start her own business on a 100-acre family farm in Abilene, Kan. She originally purchased her stallions to produce young horses herself instead of going to Europe for them. She eventually plans to have a larger breeding operation with several stallions.
She got a real asset to her business plan when her 5-year-old Galeno Tyme won the 100-day stallion testing at Paxton Farm in Batavia, Ohio, Nov. 11-14, with the highest score in the history of the United States—155.87 points overall, in spite of a five-point deduction for his age.
Galeno Tyme is an Oldenburg by Granulit out of Geranda and was bred in Germany by Alfons Schrandt.
The testing was conducted by the Stallion Testing Federation, LLC, a joint venture between International Sporthorse Registry and Oldenburg Registry of North American and the American Hanoverian Society, under the auspices of the Federation of North American Sport Horse Registries. In North America, the ISR/Oldenburg Registry established the first 100-Day Test in 1986, and has organized a test every other year since. This year the test was judged by Dietrich Felgendreher, Manfred Lopp and Cord Waffman at the Paxton Farm, which is now the permanent site of the 100-day test.
Mosier, who has ridden Grand Prix, started and trained the horse and plans to train him to the upper levels of dressage. She will leave his jumping training to Canadian rider Karen Cudmore. Eventually she will send him to someone else to compete, but she has not made definite plans yet.
"What makes him special is that everything is just easy with him," she said. "Breaking him was just a matter of climbing on and going for a ride."
She laughingly recounted a story of riding him on the longe line at first. When the person longing the horse thought she said "go" instead of "whoa," and cracked the whip, Galeno Tyme started to piaffe. "He should have dumped me!" she said with a laugh. "He's very solid, kind and patient; he never bites, and he is incredibly personable. A perfect example of his temperament was the first time that he saw the lawn mower; he didn't spook but stretched his nose into the stream of grass to eat."
The stallion scored 152.19 in jumping and 144.54 in dressage. Without the five-point deduction that penalizes horses 5 years and older, he would have scored 160.87. "[A score of] 130 would have been fantastic but 160 is ridiculous!" said Mosier.
"There won't be anything like him for a long time," said Nancy Ferebee, whose pony FS Daily Hero was approved in the pony testing. "He had a whole fan club there."
The testing consists of a 100-day training period and the final performance test. The testing evaluates character, temperament, ability and willingness to work, as well as jumping and performance abilities. In the final testing, the stallions are judges for their basic gaits, their jumping ability both free and under saddle, and for their performance while ridden cross-country.
Mosier, who didn't consider her horse mature enough for the testing as a 3-year-old, trained Galeno Tyme according to the German system. The 100-day training period, in which the horses were left at Paxton Farm until the test, started Aug. 6.
"He was started well as a young horse," said Mosier. "He has a six-acre pasture to live in at home. It's worth doing everything right with him; even a great horse handled improperly won't reach its potential."
Still, she does not plan to keep him in a padded stall now that he has some acclaim. "I have to carry on with him like he's a horse," she said. "Not necessarily any horse—he deserves to be successful in the elite levels—but that doesn't change the training procedure. At shows you just see the result of consistent training at home."