About GWF
Gentlewood Farms is a small breeding facility, located in central Oklahoma, about 20 miles east of Oklahoma City.
We take great pride in each and every appaloosa foal that is born here, and we believe that by staying small, we can give each foal a solid foundation and education, beginning with the development of a loving and respectful relationship with humans. Every foal that is born at Gentlewood Farms is handled every day, beginning with immediately after birth. All of our babies have grown up to be sane and sensible individuals, and because we have a small number, we know each one’s personality intimately. We believe that this knowledge can help us help you find your next prospect.
Several of our foals, including our younger stallion, have come from leased mares. Our farm has an excellent local reputation, and frequently we are contacted by mare owners about putting a mare into our program for a year or two. We are thankful to these many mare owners for offering us the opportunity to raise a lovely foal from bloodlines that are not included in our GWF broodmare family. By leasing a mare to breed, we get the added bonus of freeing up one of our GWF owned mares for a year or two of “non-mom” duties. All of the GWF owned broodmares are saddle broke, and we enjoy showing them, trail riding them with our friends, and leasing them out to local Pony Clubbers for ratings and rallys. It works out great for everybody!
You may also notice that the ApHC stallion Spendthrift is featured in our broodmare bloodlines. Spence entered our lives in 2000 on a breeding lease from Ramblin Rose Ranch. He’s gone on to bigger things since the two short years he lived with us - specifically a successful national champion hunter campaign with Nick and Amy Kinsch of Kinsch Show Horses - but his impact on our program will be felt for years to come. Spendthrift left us with five daughters and two sons, identical in frame, disposition, and talent — a legacy to build our program on. He also produced a filly and two colts to outside mares. We are so grateful to Rosalie and Tom Moffett for allowing us to lease this incredible stallion, and we wish him and the Kinschs continued success in their campaign endeavors.
After Spendthrift was sold, we moved our program and our goals forward with the help of GS Sporthorses and Frankie Wapenstein, a fabulous son of Wap Spotted. Everyone we spoke to said, “Oh, I remember his baby picture! How did he grow up?” Frankie had been injured as a young horse, and the extent of the damage meant that we would never be able to show the world his natural talent in the dressage arena. Frankie moved like nothing we’d ever seen before. We kept thinking that if he could float like that with a major pelvic injury — well, it was just impossible to conjure up a good picture of what he must have moved like before he got hurt. Frankie’s premier foal for us, a black and white filly out of one of our proven TB mares, was better than we even dreamed of.
And then disaster struck. Frankie was involved in a freak accident in the pasture at his home barn, and the stress of recovering from the injury sent his system into shock. He fought bravely with his incredible will and strong heart, but his body just finally gave out on him, and he left his family many many years too soon. He left a huge hole in our hearts and is sorely missed by all who knew and loved him.
But our story does not end there. Frankie’s parting gift to us was a colt. And such a colt as we’ve never seen. God simply reached down through our grief and touched our little farm in an incredibly special way. Frankie’s son, Faroh, is the kind of horse that dreams are made of and legends are built from. His time in the spotlight has arrived, and we are so excited, proud, and humbled to present him to the world and have the world approve. Every time Faroh walks into an arena, he attracts attention. Everything about him demands to be seen — his conformation, his talent, his color, but mostly his attitude — he’s competitive and driven to win. We will continue to tirelessly promote him as a primary contender for the next generation of appaloosa sporthorses. We owe it to Frankie. We owe it to the world. But most of all, we owe it to Faroh.
We’re also very excited about the recent return of our founding partner, Kris Hartman, and her fantastic dressage stallion, Innochi. Kris and Ichi reside in New York, where Ichi is astounding the dressage world with his amazing “Ichi Bounce.” He is campaigning on the New York dressage circuit and his First Level debut scores were as great as we hoped they’d be. Ichi isn’t a tremendously tall horse, but he’s a tremendously big horse — big mover, big boned, and big hearted. His test foal crop — five babies produced for Duninspots Performance Horses — all displayed his incredible talent for tremendous movement and trainability. We can’t wait to see what he does when we start breeding him to our big sport type mares!
As for the Spendthrift offspring — they’re moving on to bigger things too. Of the seven Gentlewood Farms Spendthrift foals, six of them have gone to homes of their own. Three of them are successfully beginning under saddle show careers of their own — two winning their debut dressage classes and the third preparing to debut in the ApHC hunter arena. One is bringing delight to her family as a dependable trail mount and another is demonstrating the GWF motto of sane and sensible in a summer camp equestrian program. The last one is living the life of a pasture pet until her family decides exactly what they want to do with her.
The three outside foals are also experiencing tremendous success in the show ring. The colts are both successfully competing on the ApHC hunter circuit. Yahoo Serious Spender finished his ROM in four outings and placed top ten at both the 2005 National and World Hunter In Hand stallions classes. Babes Something GBar is showing successfuly on the regional level. The filly, Easy To Spend It On Me, displayed a tremendous natural jumping talent and an extremely quiet and trainable mind, and was sold to a national champion hunter rider. Easy is currently being prepped for a national and world ApHC hunter campaign, and we plan to be in the stands when she debuts at the next ApHC National Show.
We did keep one of the Spendthrift daughters with us as a broodmare hopeful. She got off to a late start — illness as a yearling set her growth back a bit — but she managed to catch up and her sport horse in-hand debut was amazing. She performed as a seasoned veteran and brought home a respectable second place showing with scores in the mid seventies. The last thing we want to do before sending her to the breeding shed is start her under saddle and enjoy some riding time with her.
We thank you for visiting our pages and hope you’ll stay a while, meet our breeding stock, and take a look at our prospects for the future. And if there’s a young lady or gentleman that catches your eye, we hope you’ll contact us. We take great pride in raising sane sensible sporthorses to be lifetime companions, and we’d love to help you find yours!
Pat and Kris
