Mini & Pony
Rocky to the Rescue
By Priscilla Dance
Sep 24, 2007, 12:58

Lisa Butteweg of Laveen and her daughter Kate Beckett loaded their three Miniatures in the horse trailer and headed for the American Miniature Horse Registry Nationals in Tulsa, Oklahoma, September 6-17. They brought two horses to show and one to sell. They had high hopes for their stallion, Dream Maker Fantom Frame (aka Topper) in the Amateur Model.

The trip didn’t start out well. By the time they got to Albuquerque, the water line to their holding tank broke. It was Home Depot to the rescue! Recently Lisa has taken a job at Home Depot to pay for showing and for their Miniature Horse rescue. So she naturally turned to the store in New Mexico.

“Home Depot has been very supportive,” she said. “A guy at Home Depot there helped me get the holding tank fixed. “

But that was only the beginning of their bad luck. It was humid in Tulsa – almost unbearable. They had seven inches of rain in one hour. The first day in the stall the stallion injured himself at the showground. They weren’t able to show him.

“He got an eye injury,” she said. “We went to breakfast; when we came back, his eye was all swollen and bleeding. Hay was sticking out of his eye. When I pulled it out, it reached from my wrist to my elbow. It had worked his way into his sinus.”

That left them with DBMC Hukas Olneys Prime Time (Rocky) to show. But Rocky was enough. He won a top ten in the Owner Bred class and he was National Grand Champion in the multi-colored gelding.

“In the last class the competition was extremely tough,” said Lisa. “It was the owner bred and shown. We got a top ten ribbon. RFD TV came up to film us. When they discovered that my daughter and I were both there to show, they filmed us to show that Miniatures are a family affair. I went in the Multi-Colored gelding class after the interview. When they called my name, my daughter was screaming on the rail and I was crying.”

They’ll show the interview and class on RFD TV on October 21. Lisa was happier about her sixth place ribbon in the Owner Bred and Shown class than about the Grand Championship; it validates her breeding program.

“I was more tickled about the sixth place ribbon in the Owner Bred and Shown class,” she said. “It shows that what I’m doing in my breeding program for conformation and color is what they want for breeding stock. It affirms what we’re trying to achieve with our breeding program.

Finally, my breeding is paying off. We’re starting to see offspring doing well. He’s also close to completing his Hall of Fame points all in one year. I’ve been breeding for ten years.”

Rocky, age six, is by their stallion Bar B Hukas Little Dancer and out of DBMC Wings A Fire of Olney. Lisa bought the sire in Texas.

“I went to an auction in Texas hoping to buy Little Dancer’s sire Miasunke Huka,” she said. “He had phenomenal babies with wild colors. The sire sold for $40,000 and he was 28 years old. He only had two colts so we bought Little Dancer as a weanling.”

She bought the mare from Olney Farms in Scottsdale. She already had her full sister and was winning consistently with her.

“So we had a Sabino Overo stallion and Tobiano mares,” she said. “I knew I would get wild color. We just had to wait for everybody to grow up.”

In addition to the breeding operation, Lisa and her husband farrier Lance Roe run a Miniature Horse rescue.

“I started in rescue when I went to buy the stallion in Texas,” she said. “I saw this mare; she was very emaciated. I said to the owner, “I’ll buy her”. I wasn’t even sure she’d make it home. Now she roams all over our property. When I go to shows and auctions, I see abuse and neglect. I teach classes at schools and talk about abuse and neglect. We take the Miniatures to nursing homes. To earn extra money, we go to birthday parties. We bought a carriage and now we can do weddings. When the rescued horses are healthy we adopt them out to good homes.”

To learn more about Lisa’s horses and the rescue, visit the web site at www.DBMCminihorses.com.



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