Quarter Horse Unit sale, Sat.

Thirty-acrce unit on campus home to about 100 horses where they are bred and trained, selling 10-15 horses each semester

By Morgan Steger
The Collegian

Fresno State junior Thommie Haskins was eager to show off one of her favorite rides, a tall and graceful hackney horse named Peter the Great, at Saturday’s Quarter Horse Unit Open House.

After putting the 6-year-old gelding through his paces in a riding arena, Haskins tied him to a hitching post in the unit’s barn to let visitors admire him.

Haskins, who has been working with Peter for nine months, said the open house was a great opportunity to introduce the public to her horse and to the work the Quarter Horse Unit is doing. “It’s really cool to see people come in and get excited about our horses,” she said.

Fresno State is home to over 100 horses, said Myrna Garcia, a Quarter Horse Unit student-employee.

The horses are bred, born, raised and trained at the unit, which encompasses some 30 acres, a barn, two arenas and a bullpen on the campus farm, Garcia said.

Amidst the many quarter horses are about 20 hackney horses, a rare breed hailing from England, Haskins said.

There are only 2,500 hackneys in the United States and Fresno State is one of the only farms in the country promoting the breed, she said.

Hackneys, which were originally bred to pull carts, have a majestic air that lends naturally to equine competitions like dressage, she said. “They’re a really high-movement horse.”

In addition to introducing unique breeds to the public, the unit uses its Open House to reach prospective buyers, Garcia said.

About 10 to 15 horses are sold a semester, Garcia said. “All of them are for sale, if you put the right price on them,” she said.

The base price for a horse is $2,500 weaned, any additional training done by the unit’s 10 employees and volunteers ups the cost, she said. “The price depends on the bloodlines and how long they’ve been here and how much training they’ve had,” she said.

Breaking the two-year old horses in the unit’s circular, metal-fenced bullpen can be a wild ride, but the payoff of seeing a horse develop and adjust to a rider is worth it, Haskins said. “It’s so much fun,” she said.

“I love it.”

Every time she plops herself down on an unbroken horse for the first time, Haskins said she gets butterflies in her stomach. “Horses are just like people, every one has a different personality,” she said. “You are the passenger, you just sit there and do what they do.”

Haskins said that at the unit they refer to the rider testing out an unbroken horse as a “sack of potatoes” because their sole job is to teach the horse what it feels like to bear the weight of a rider.

Breaking horses, mucking out pens and shoveling feed are just some of the activities students at the Quarter Horse Unit undertake. “You get to do everything,” Haskins said. “You have to do cleaning and that kind of stuff but you also get to ride,” she said. “This is the perfect place.”

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