This is DC Dawn’s Sugar Hiccup, “foal life” name Sugar, and “new life” name, Percy.

He was the beginning of our journey as Gypsy Vanner Horse breeders, our first Gypsy Horse foal, and, because of that, he will forever hold a special place in our hearts.

We purchased RG Encore’s Mason as our first Gypsy Vanner Horse in the autumn of 2020.  It is because of how wonderful Mason was that we centered our attention on the Gypsy Vanner Horse breed.  To this day, he is just as sweet and lovable as he was the day we picked him up in Florida.

It is because of Percy, though, that our eventual plans to breed Gypsy Vanner Horses came to fruition.

In the spring of 2021, we went on a horse buying spree due to our newfound love for this breed.  We connected with a gal in Massachusetts that had a small piebald mare that she described as an experienced broodmare and an all-around “easy keeper.”  That mare had previously lived on a farm in West Virginia.

This mare was Lucky Acres Princess Dawn.  When weighing the options of whether to call her Princess or Dawn, we chose “Princess,” and that name stuck.  We didn’t know that we would later have multiple horses with “Princess” in their official registered names.  To clarify foal origins, though, all of Princess’s foals have her real name of Dawn in their registered names.

When purchased, Princess was very late in foal to a beautiful buckskin tobiano stallion.  She wasn’t supposed to foal until late June.  Early May transport setup.  Subsequently, transport delays occurred.  During transport, she was also, due to some scheduling conflicts, going to have a pit-stop at a layover farm in Ohio.

Sure enough, the first night at the layover farm in Ohio in-transit to us, she foaled out.  The layover farm did a fantastic job dealing with this unexpected situation (and they seriously loved having him around for a bit).

Born on the road, this meant that he needed a few weeks to get his legs beneath him before he could be cleared to ride the rest of the way home.

This is how we decided his name.  He was a “hiccup” in the plan, and by all measures, super sweet.  Sugar Hiccup fit.

Sugar ended up being one of the all-time sweetest foals we have ever had the pleasure of raising.  His entire life seems somehow charmed.  If our first experience raising a Gypsy Vanner foal had been anything more challenging, we might not have made the life-altering decision to go all-in on becoming a breeding farm for Gypsy Vanner Horses.  He was many of our “firsts” in this industry.  Every time we took a step outdoors (he pre-existed separating horses into fenced pastures on our farm early that first summer), he was right there to greet us.  He loved playing games with his humans, loved petting, and he was…just perfect.

Sugar, now a gelding, and now called Percy, found a fantastic home and is living a beautiful life on an island off the Pacific Northwest coast.  We get updates from time to time, and we love hearing what he and his owner are up to.  He might be getting his first riding lessons in the coming year.