This is Jen's heart horse, SS Princess Pur Krystallyze, or "Liza."  Liza has grown with our farm since our first summer of steep acquisitions (of Gypsy Vanners) from a weanling into a startlingly beautiful mare.  When we purchased her, we found out that equine insurance companies will not insure a horse until they are 90 days or 6 months old depending on the insurance company.  Because of that, we placed a deposit on her after asking the seller if it would be ok to pay the balance for her when she was 90 days old and we could insure her.  The seller said, "I can tell that this isn't your first rodeo."  We took that as a compliment, but we were very young to remote purchasing and transport for horses.  It was quite honestly our second or third rodeo in this area (we purchased and picked up Mason ourselves, and I can't quite recall if we put a deposit on Princess Dawn or Liza first that spring).

The reason Liza is horse number 11 is that we had to wait for her to grow and wean before we had her shipped to us.

Liza, like Mason, is Buckskin Tobiano, but she also carries one copy of the SW1 (Splash White 1) gene, which contributes to the whiteness of her face, Egyptian eyeliner, and crystal blue eyes.

She was a wild child as a filly!  A complete maniac...haha.  As she grew older, though, she spent some time out in the paddocks with older horses, and she developed one of the most human-friendly personalities.

One of the earlier days with her, I was busy mucking out her and her companion's stalls in the barn.  She wouldn't leave me alone.  She kept putting her face right up into my face over and over and over again.  I like help, but this was no help at all.  After taking about three times as long as it would normally take, I was in the house later telling Jen all about it.  She looked at me and said, "Oh, yeah.  I forgot to tell you that I showed her how to give kisses."  We had a good laugh.  All Liza wanted was a kiss on the nose.

To this day, if you wrap your arms around her or back into her chest, she'll wrap her head around your shoulders and give the horse version of a hug.  She also still enjoys kisses on the nose.

The second year we had Liza, and we hired some outside help for training and grooming, the gal that we hired said that it took her about five minutes to teach her how to bow on one front leg.  Which is cool, but we also had to train her not to do that when the farrier was working with her.

Another later groomer/trainer said that she is very willing and tries really hard with all of her heart.  She was very happy with how fast Liza picked up new things, and how easy she is to work with.

Liza is just plain beautiful, smart, willing, and loving.  She's everything we want in our horses and we cannot wait to see her with her first foal and/or hitting some shows.  We would like to eventually train her and Mason to be a driving team of buckskin tobiano horses.  She's a once-in-a-lifetime horse.