1989 Appaloosa Grade mare
"TOPS"

Tops was a grade mare that we bought north of Winnipeg.  Since I had a very loud App filly when I was a kid I will always have a soft spot for leopard Apps.  I spotted the ad in the paper and convinced my husband that we should go look at this horse.  The owner said she was very quiet - I asked him how he thought she would trailer and he thought she would do okay.  Well we set out on our big adventure.  We had a little two horse bumper hitch trailer that we had borrowed out to a friend who was wanting to take a blind horse to the meat yard.  We were to meet up with him on the road and pick up the trailer from him and continue on our way.  When we met up with our friend we found that he had a very interesting time taking his horse away and his horse had literally hit the roof when he put him in our trailer.  There was a big piece of the roof flapping in the breeze.  We couldn't really do much to fix it on the road so now we had to decide if we were still going to follow through and go check this leopard App mare out.  Being adventurous and still not very bright we went ahead.  We got to the place where they were selling the horse and were immediately shocked at how big she was.  She was no ordinary horse and was big enough to have had some draft in her, though she didn't look drafty.  I think the poor fellow was quite taken aback when we pulled on with our little two horse trailer and he looked kind of skeptical when we agreed to buy the horse if we could get her in the trailer.  It didn't actually take very long and she was crammed in  and the doors were all shut - if she had wanted to get out she probably could have just farted and been out - but still being very stupid greenhorns we jumped in our truck - tickled with our purchase and settled in for the 2 hour ride home.  I'm pretty sure if the mare had even shifted her weight she would have probably rolled the trailer and the truck - but we, oblivious to the major wreck waiting to happen behind us, merrily chatted away, excited about our brilliant acquisition - and we had an uneventful trip despite the fluttering roof.

When we got her home we unloaded her and put her in our corral - it just so happened that a friend of ours who has lots of horse experience and I'm sure has shook his head a lot more than once at us, was down for a visit so we proudly showed him our new purchase.  We told him what we had paid for her.  He thought we did all right,  when we described her to him.  Then we told him she was going to have  foal - he said we had gotten a pretty decent deal - then we took him outside and showed him our jolly giant - he took one look at her then at our beaten up little two horse trailer and then back at her and asked us incredulously "You got that mare in that tiny little trailer and she rode all the way home with no incident? You got one *%&^ of a deal he said."

And that was our initiation to Tops.  Tops went on to provide us with 3 foals - all big and loud like she was - all nice foals.  We took Tops to the Rocking W sale in Brandon and sold her and her baby Daytona through the auction ring when we decided to try to move up to registered horses.  I really do regret selling her.  She was a big, kind, sweet mare and we really didn't know enough about horses when we had her to fully appreciate her.  I would sure like to know where she wound up and I can only hope she is in a good home.  
Oh, she did have one drawback though - she ate enough to feed 5 horses.