The Wally Story
by Andrej
This is a story about Wally – buckskin Quarter Horse Stallion WALLA WHIZ A DUN IT, who was born in Utah USA, moved to Slovenia, Europe, became one of the Top 10 reining horses in his peak years, is among top 10 offsprings of the great WALLA WALLA WHIZ and is now an mazing companion to Amateur/Non-pro rider and a proud and joy of NiceRanch, Slovenia.
A long and interesting story. Want to explore some more details?
Idea
Back in 2016, we became close with a young trainer Gal from Slovenia, who organized also riding clinics that we attended. It is always hard for a young trainer to get access to good horses, so the idea was to get a young stallion with promising pedigree and create our own unique story. Why now and not later, when we would know each other better? The answer was loud and clear by Gal: “In 2018, Italian futurity is announced with biggest added money ever, and I am going to train the horse until then, show him and win”. OK, let’s go!
Quest
Let’s find a good yearling prospect. Easy? Well, it turned out not so. We were checking for horses in Italy, Austria, Germany, Slovenia – found a good one, but the vet cancelled the horse on vet check. What now?
“End of next week there is auction in Oklahoma. Shall we buy a horse in USA?”. “Are you crazy?” seemed like a logical response to such a question. But to cut the long story short, in a week we were buying plane tickets to Oklahoma for Gal and his friend Jure.
Journey to Slovenia
The days before and at the auction were intense. Out of over 100 horses, about 30 were picked as candidates. The vet checked all the x-rays and videos, only 3 came out clean. Yes, we had a very strict vet, that’s for sure. But we are grateful to Tamara because this paid back multiple times later, with Wally being sound all his career without any major issues what so ever.
Wally was one of the three candidates, and he was not feeling well. Our friend in USA helped us to arrange a local vet, who confirmed that it is just a cold, nothing more serious. Out of the three candidates, Wally was first in the row for bidding. Gal and Jure live at the auction, the rest of the team at home watching live stream. Bidding started, adrenalin was sky-high, sale was closed. “Did we get him?” – “No…… just kidding. He is ours”.
What is next? Well, we were really lucky to get in touch with Katie from Equiflight upfront. A “nobody” from Slovenia called a renowned person in international horse transport over the phone, and the kindness and helpfulness of Katie was gift from heaven and she helped us organize everything. Wally had to stay in quarantine for 30 days – great care was taken for him at Equiflight ranch, until he was airborne from Dallas to Amsterdam.
With our son Andraž we went to Amsterdam on the day when Wally landed. Our flight was a bit delayed, so when we came to the airport terminal where the horses were offloaded, Wally was already on the truck. We joined the driver, who took us to the horse “hotel”, where Wally waited for few days until the truck transport was organized for him to bring him to Slovenia.
First encounter with Wally – no words. Already as a yearling, he was well behaved, easy to handle and showed no stress. We brought winter blankets, as it was early January in Europe (with some snow), and he came from much warmer place. In few days, he came to Slovenia and to his final destination at Ranch Marina.
From first ride to first win
During 2017 and 2018, Wally was staying at the same place for training. On February 15th (we remember the date as it is Katja’s birthday) he was mounted for the first time. It seemed like a long time until he was first shown on Slovenian Quarter Horse Association show in May 2018, but looking back now it was a blink of an eye.
In August 2018 Wally entered his first international show – Austrian futurity. After 7 years from then, talking with another trainer about this event his words were: “He made a great impression”. Short after first training session “the big guys” approached us with an obvious question: “Is he for sale?”. We did not need a lot of thinking to keep with our original path. The answer was “No.”
In this first show, Wally was co-reserved champion in L1 and L2 and 5/6 place in L3 and L4.
The next thing was the “big” Italian futurity in Cremona. We went “all in” as far as our knowledge and capabilities allowed. Wally and Gal spent some training time in bigger arena in Italy, and we joined forces with Pierre Ouellet, who helped and coached Gal before the big show. The rest is history: Wally and Gal fulfilled their promise: they won L1 and L2, were 3rd in L3 and 8th in L4. This was more than we dared to dream of.
4 years of successful showing with Gal
The following four years Wally was trained and showed by Gal. Since the 2018 success pushed Gal to be a Level 4 rider, it was not easy for them as they had to compete against the best trainers and horses in Europe. In years 2019 – 2022 they were successful and brough Wally’s LTE over $70.000. Among others, they showed in Euro Futurity, German Breeders Futurity, Italian Futurity, Euro Derby, Italian Derby.
Becoming a breeding stallion
With such a successful stallion, we of course also planned for his life as a breeding stud. This was another completely new field, which we entered almost without any experience.
In summer of 2019, Wally stayed at the Tania place, with the plan to train him on the phantom, do all necessary semen evaluation etc. She warned us, that it is not possible to give precise estimation how long this will take, it could take months for the stallion to “switch” his mind from training and showing and to relax enough to get used to his new role.
After two weeks we got a call: “You can take him home, we are done”. As in showing, he also completed his new job with excellence. Easy to train, and most important: excellent semen quality.
Later in that year, after the German Breeder’s futurity, we took Wally back to collect semen and create stock of frozen semen. Although the quality of semen could suffer after being at the shows, that was not the case for Wally. First preparation for breeding season 2020 was done.
Wally was evaluated at the breeding show twice – as a young horse with 2 years of age and as an adult horse when he was 4. Both times he was the horse with highest evaluation score of the whole breeding show. His linear description evaluation is available to breeders on request.
In first two seasons as a breeding stallion, we offered only frozen semen. We wanted to keep Wally fully focused on training and showing. In 2022 we decided to join forces with Stallion station in Moruzzo, Italy. This was the first breeding season when also cooled semen was available, and we were able to reach more breeders in Europe.
It is great to talk to breeders about Wally’s foals. All of them are great minded, easy to handle, confident young horses; great conformation of course comes on top of all this.
Time for a change
After the show season of 2022, some difficult weeks followed. Due to some different views on how to move forward, our paths with Gal went separate ways. Since we were co-owners of Wally, everything was on the table. Selling him, buying out each other, keeping current ownership arrangement.
When we almost decided to sell him, two people helped us to make one of the best decisions ever. Our good friend Janez suggested to us to think again – if we would ever want to get such a horse in the future, it would be far away from the opportunity we have at hand. On the same day, we got a package from Ivka Kapustikova – a mare owner, who bought Wally’s breeding early in the year. In the package there were beautiful white wraps with Wally’s logo, and a nice message with it (see the photo).
Decision was made – we are keeping Wally!
What’s next?
Being an owner of a stallion for the first time, we had a lot of unanswered questions about what is best going forward. In the last weeks of 2022 Wally was staying at our friends Aljaž and Špela, as we decided to take him to Moruzzo station in January of 2023. During that time, I went to their place to ride Wally for the first time on my own (I just had few rides on him prior to that time). You can imagine he was full of energy, fresh, taking him out on a longe line made me think twice if I really want to ride him. Yes – he is our horse now, so no question about it. I went on – calm. Walk – calm. Trot – calm. Lope – calm. Next time our son Andraž joined (who is a much better rider than me). They were a team in a matter of minutes. A pure pleasure to watch them.
Back to serious thinking about the future. 2023 was the last Derby year for Wally. After some discovery we decided to join forces with Steve Ouellet, who was training in Munich area at that time. Next challenge was how (if at all) we could combine the training with the breeding season (we already had some bookings by that time).
We were lucky again getting to know Claudia, breeder in Germany, who introduced us to a vet, who’s station was just 30 minutes drive away from the training place, so we were able to fulfil our obligations to the breeders that already ordered the cooled semen. It was not easy to organize everything, but with good will of great people we managed to do everything.
Steve and Wally were together for a short time, but still they succeeded to add additional amounts to Wally’s LTE, which is now just a bit north of $77.500.
Home for the first time
Being 9 years of age, and at home really for the first time? Yes, that’s the life of an athlete in horse world.
After finishing his last show season at age of 8, Wally came home (better said “visited home”) for the first time, but just for 2 months. It was just enough time for him and us to recognize, that even in a more relaxed environment he remains to be a calm, friendly and overall nice stallion. He made his first contact with his “future buddies” (our two geldings), staying in the stalls next to each other.
For 2024 breeding season, we decided to bring Wally to Orlandini Equine stallion station. During long 7 months of the breeding season, we missed him a lot, and when he came back home in the night of July 30, we were finally able to say “welcome home”. He did not disappoint us, neither his buddies – just said a short “stallion hello” to them and continued with relaxed dinner 😊 (after 8 hours of driving).
We got several questions about our plans for him going forward – also if we are searching for another open level trainer. The answer was no. When Wally was started, the original idea was that after futurities he would be shown also with amateur/non-pro riders. After he excelled with his results, he continued to show in open class only. It was the time to return to the original plan and give him opportunity to prove he can be ridden by anyone, also outside of reining.
He also deserves to be “just a normal horse”, being in company with other horses, having a visual contact with all the horses at the ranch (even mares) and enjoying some free time in the pasture every day.
Amateur/Non-pro career
After Wally finally came home, we started our journey to become a team. The difference in our knowledge level (where one knew how things go, and the other didn’t – and it is obvious who knew his job) didn’t really help us at the beginning. We entered Horsemanship and Ranch Riding classes in September and November of 2024. In the second show we already made a significant improvement, but there was another highlight of that show.
Andraž decided to enter the show with Wally, after only few rides with him at home. They earned first blue ribbon for the win in Ranch Riding class, and made us as proud as we can be. Great end to the 2024 year.
In the year of 2025 the plan was to enter all the shows of Slovenian Quarter Horse Association cup, and to add also Reining classes to the Horsemanship and Ranch Riding. Doing a first sliding stop with Wally in March of 2025 was my entry into the Reining world. We made a good progress during the year, attending several clinics and training sessions with Pierre, Paolo and Taja. Thanks to them and to Wally for bearing with me, we finished the 2025 show season with:
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SIQHA Horsemanship Amateur Champion
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SIQHA Ranch Riding Amateur Champion
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SIQHA Reining Amateur Champion
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SIQHA All around Amateur Champion
