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This is Sugar in the summer of 2008. It's my
favorite picture of her, so far. |
Sugar Champagne Lace ("Sugar")
5/17/2001 AQHA, IQPA, ICHR filly
Amber cream (champagne) color
HER PEDIGREE (after the first page, scroll down
for her generation 4 through 8 pedigrees.)
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Some of the more recent pictures are
HUGE (after you click on the thumbnail).
This page is mostly in chronological order:
most recent at top, oldest at bottom.
As of Spring 2011, her weight was good... we had cut her back a
lot, to mostly just good hay. This past fall of 2010 we switched from 12%
"sweet feed" from Sam's Club to "All Grain" by Tractor Supply Company. She
gets a half scoop of that once a day, mostly to make it worth her while to come
when called.
OK, where was I? Oh, yeah...
October 2010
These first four pics and the video link are from one day in
October, 2010, when I had decided to work her a bit in the round pen,
and she hadn't been worked for a while, and was in a bad mood. Who knows,
she may have been a little lame, or under the weather.
She's usually tractable. They're on 24/7 turnout, and the facility is 2 miles
from our house, so we don't know
when they've been fighting, chased, etc; and maybe "pulled something", or
maybe have a kick or bite bruise.
Subsequent sessions have gone SO well, that I think I could use
her for lessons (in the round pen)!
But I didn't have anyone on "camera duty" those days, so this is all you can
see...
VIDEO
July 2010
Below: sometimes Sugar and Doc look like twins, even though most of their
color genes are different; all they have in common is a cream gene. Doc's
base color is chestnut; Sugar's is bay, and she also has a champagne gene.
But her mane & tail are so heavily "frosted", and Doc's are so dirty, that they
end up looking very similar. Then again, Doc has black skin with pure pink
under his white markings, and Sugar has pink skin with heavy freckling all over,
and no white. Hard to believe they're actually so different...
Two un-posed pics of just Sugar that same day:
A study in facial freckles. The second and third pics
are identical, except that the second is a lower-resolution version. Your
choice.
Sugar being "harrassed" by an Annoying Young Man (to her,
that day...) ... but see how he ends up sitting on her with no tack at all.
Joe had been cleaning a gross water tank with that brush, hence the look
on his face...
June 2010...
As of 2010, she was over 14.2H and over 1,000 lbs.
Can you say "easy keeper"?
She was
actually "fat"; I thought she looked pregnant! We kept cutting her food back,
but she kept gaining. The weight tape, then, said around 1050 lbs.
May, 2009...
She was already topping 1000 lbs regularly; she might have been fat, but I
think she had put on still more muscle, too.
November 2008...
 This handsome
young cowboy, in Sugar's stall with her, is my son.
October 2008...
 -- Solomon rides
bareback with just a halter if possible
August 2008...
Click these thumbnails to see some August 2008 pics of a ride Joe was about
to have.
Some of the pictures are very large.
The saddle and bridle Joe's
using here are not Sugar's usual tack;
they're his lightweight synthetic saddle,
a bridle he got at Equine Affaire with a matching saddle,
and a bit he got
recently to accommodate his one-rein stops.
I ride Sugar in an orangey-brown
leather Western saddle,
and a matching bridle with a jointed egg-butt snaffle.
We all practice "humane Western riding".
July 2008...
-- I put my best
riding student on her for a trail/field ride. She's using her own saddle.
As you can see from her facial expression, the young lady still preferred
Amir (see link.)
April 2008...
"In exactly
one month she'll be 7 years old, and has matured into a 'real horse'. What
does that mean? Well, for one thing, I've been calling her 'my little
filly' for far too long... now that she's 7, she's definitely a grown-up -- a mare. But also, she was a late bloomer, like our Doc, and just
finished *growing* recently. She weighs just under 1,000 lbs." (She
actually did get bigger, still.)
After thoroughly confusing her previously, we finally re-taught her that
it was all right to canter under saddle.
Solomon was riding her when it
finally sank in on April 15, 2008, and then the next day my ex-riding-student
did it. Here is a video capture (still) of it (not clickable):
That's old Amir grazing at the side, and me at the bottom of the hill, from
where I sent them off.
And the short video of her cantering, taken by her dad on my non-video
camera, is here (hope this works, it's my first video on a web site, AFAIK).
She breaks into a trot at the top of the hill.
March 2008...
This was what they called "the blizzard of 2008". The snow drifted so
much from the wind that you can't tell how much we actually got. We had left the horses
in their stalls during the storm, and when we turned them out the next day they
were still muddy from before the snow. But the snow was soooo pretty...
These are just the ones of Sugar, since this is HER page.
May 2007
Pics from two days before her 6th birthday, in May 2007, after a bath
with a dark blue horse shampoo!
It was all I had that day. It stained parts of her a bit, temporarily.
Some of these were meant to illustrate the "swirly"
coloring that many dark-pointed champagne horses have on their lower legs.
The next week, I took one to show her dished, etc. profile: 
Jan-Mar (?) 2007...
 Pretty...dirty!
2004 : The pictures and text in this table are from 2004,
when Sugar was about 3 years old.
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Sugar as a youngster, April 9, 2004, winter coat.
She was exactly 14H, barefoot, with a stick,
and 850 lbs by a weight tape, back then.
(Quarter Pony registry eligible!)
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I enjoyed riding her bareback, just because I could. She didn't
neck rein yet, so when I had only one lead on her halter, I could only turn
her in that direction!
She soon after this learned to neck rein.
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I trained her, using treats, to bend her neck around to whichever
shoulder I tap. All of our horses do this. ANYTHING for
treats... heh heh...
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A pause. Please excuse my casual, slightly tilted seat. I
think she is nicely muscled, though she still has a rather immature build
for nearly 3. When she finishes I think she will be a compact tank!
(and I was right!)
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This is a combination "how I trimmed her mane and tail"
(took off a lot of the lighter hair to show the darker base color. It
all grew back quickly and they have been left long and natural ever
since!) and
overall body shot. It looks like she has a wonderfully
sloping shoulder!
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Other side. I trimmed the top, white/yellow layer off her tail
and trimmed the bottom sun-bleached ends off, too. I thought it
might have been all sun-bleaching, back then, but have since realized
that she just has an extreme amount of "frosting", as some
champagne-creams do.
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Just a rump/tail shot. Shows the frequently-observed champagne
dorsal shading. I only removed some of the white/yellow hair because
she looked like palomino or perlino, and I wanted to show her true amber
cream coloring better. Some day I may test her for dun, especially
if I ever breed her.
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Interesting mane shot, though unflattering to the filly overall.
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This is a little game we play when we are both bored with
round-penning.
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Sometimes she plays it more enthusiastically than others!
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Summer of 2003, below; she's a 2 year old here:
A couple of the pics show her mane upside-down, revealing the dark colors
underneath the top frosting. I've included an under-tail shot for educational
purposes... here is a 2 year old amber champagne + cream. I think it's
amazing that her tail skin, though sprouting a good bit of brownish hair, is an
un-freckled shade of pink!
Pictures in the row below were all taken by the Van Zees in
South Dakota in May 2002, at exactly one year of age.
And here are my favorite foal imprinting pictures of her, also from the Van
Zees.
I've included her dam, Lace of Savage.
Sugar is appendix AQHA. Her dam is racing bred, goes back to Go Man Go, and goes back to King and Three Bars
each numerous times. Sugar has the quiet disposition and also the color
genes of her working-bred sire, Sugars Uno ("Cane") (see pics below.)
(These pics are a bit overexposed, I think. Below them are some I prefer.)
(arrows added by me to show possible dun striping)
They tell me he is the fastest horse on the ranch! He
has numerous lines back to Skipper W (Nick Shoemaker).
Apart from all that performance in her pedigree, Sugar should throw
about 50% champagne foals, and when you add the cream gene in we'll have a 75%
chance of dilute color every time.
She was originally registered as "Sunny Champagne Lace", but I
changed her name to "Sugar Champagne Lace". I just never liked
the name "Sunny" or "Sonny", I'm sorry...
Sugar's DOB: 5/17/01
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I've included her dam, Lace of Savage.
(arrows added by me to show possible dun striping)
