LUCKY LAKE, Sask. – Horses have different personalities, says Shauna Getz, who has spent half of her 29 years training them.
Her business, Getz Performance Horses in Lucky Lake, puts her in contact with many of those personalities each year. She offers mare and foal care, horse and human training in reining and riding, and breeding to her registered Quarter horse stallion.
Based in west-central Saskatchewan near Lake Diefenbaker, Shauna and husband
Tyler also help on her family’s Whitby Farms, which is receiving a century award this year.
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Shauna inherited her love of horses from her father, Doug Jones. While her grandfather owned workhorses, her father liked the riding ones and Shauna has a photograph of herself on the back of a horse that was taken before she could walk.
This rainy spring day means little riding can be done, but Shauna, Tyler and her new employee Melissa Dueck are tending to the ones inside one of two barns. They are shoeing one horse, watching the vet check the teeth on another and keeping an eye on their one-day-old Palomino colt.
Shauna gives a pat to her nine-year-old stud The Jewel Snipper. She bought it in Montana as a yearling and trained it herself. It is a well-schooled versatile horse that can turn out rope, rein and ranch prospects, she said.
“All these show horses get used for sorting and working the cattle,” Shauna said. “We want to breed athletic horses.”
Added Tyler: “They’re used for everything. It makes a difference.”
Shauna said a multi-use horse is needed in her part of the country and people want a horse that can work with cattle.
Before agreeing to service a customer’s mare, Shauna and the customer sign a stallion contract. The customer will pay for the service and mare care while Getz promises a live foal. Most customers will come to the farm because they like to visit and see where their horses will stay.
“Reputation is everything. If you do something wrong in the horse business, it gets around.”
Snip, as Shauna calls her stud, can breed up to 40 mares a year. Semen is collected and the mares are artificially inseminated in a metal stock cage built by Tyler’s brother. Breeding season starts in May, followed by horse shows and riding and training the colts. In the winter, the Getzes move to an indoor arena so training can continue despite bad weather. Last year they were in Lancer, Sask., while other winters have been spent in Brooks, Alta. They eventually hope to build their own arena on the farm.
Shauna began taking lessons at the age of six from a local trainer, Vickie Braun. At 15 she started working with other people’s horses and worked 31/2 years for Braun at her clinic. She then took courses in barrel racing, horse reining, colt starting and cutting horse training before venturing out on her own.
“I get such a variety of horses. Some are talented, some are not. I get lots of show horses in and get colts to start and pleasure ride. A variety of things.”
For the fourth year in a row, the farm will hold a jackpot event on July 10 as one of about eight events held by the Saskatchewan Reining Horse Association. Doug and Shauna are both directors. She said it’s important to give back to the industry but just as important to become known by fellow horse enthusiasts.
Shauna often rides in the reining event, in which a horse is required to follow 10 specific patterns according to its rider’s instructions, including circles, spins, backups, direction changes and a sliding stop. In 2000, in Moose Jaw, Sask., she and Snip won the National Reining Horse Association limited open class for futurity horses.
“I teach them to feel my body,” Shauna said while explaining how the horse follows directions from her legs to her weight distribution and posture in the saddle. Sometimes the animal has practised the patterns so often that it anticipates the direction. When that happens, Shauna has to teach it to wait for the rider’s instruction.
Once Shauna has taught a horse the reining commands, its owner may also need similar schooling.
She doesn’t believe in the gentle art of horse whispering, saying training needs to be about discipline. Although she and Tyler own up to 25 horses of their own, none are pets and they can be traded or sold.
Tyler is a farrier by trade and a rodeo athlete by nature. Through the year he travels two to six days a week shoeing horses for regular customers in southern Alberta and Saskatchewan. At play he participates in calf and team roping and last month was leading in heading in the Saskatchewan circuit.
The Getzes still want to be on the farm 10 years from now.
“I don’t know if that’s a bright decision but it’s what I wanted to do,” Shauna said.
