Concord couple has big love for miniature horses

Miniature horses are so tiny when they are born that they can be held in one arm.

When fully grown, they’re shorter than a yardstick and seemingly fit in more at a dog kennel than stable. Rather than towering over an adult, their heads rarely reach chest level.After last month’s foot-deep snowstorm, the miniatures on Janet Lewis and Tony Benvenuto’s Concord farm didn’t frolic like standard horses because the snow came up to their bellies. The smallest couldn’t move and the larger horses would hop and then stop.

Because of their size, they have a high birth-mortality rate — often because they’re not strong enough to break the sac.

So Lewis and Benvenuto of Standing Ovation Miniatures spend foaling season ready to go at any moment to help birth.

“We have cameras and wear beepers so as soon as that horse goes down, our telephones are ringing, our beepers are going off,” Lewis said.

That careful breeding and a surprise gift from former clients has paid off. In October, one of their horses, Alliance Zodiacs Big Shot, won the American Miniature Horse Association’s world championship title in a senior stallion category. Another horse the couple trained won in 2008.

“A lot of the horses we’ve sold, they’ve gone basically all over the country,” Lewis said. “People are really getting into minis right now.”

In Virginia, there are about 75 farms dedicated to miniature horses that are members of the American Miniature Horse Association. At the end of 2008, the association had 3,661 registered horses in Virginia, which ranks 14th in the nation.

Pet-quality horses run about $500, but champions can run in the thousands, and even tens of thousands, of dollars.

Miniature horses are not ponies. They were bred for multiple reasons, including working inside coalmines. In addition to being shown and raised as pets, miniature horses are now used as therapy and guide animals. Kids can ride them and the animals can be trained to pull carts and buggies. They also can be trained to jump and do nearly everything a standard horse does. For miniatures that work indoors, companies even make tiny shoes that look like sneakers or boots to protect feet and flooring.

Most importantly, miniature horses are friendly, affectionate and gentle, making them great pets for children and aging adults, Lewis said.

“As we get older, the big horses are a lot to handle,” Lewis said. “They get really expensive. You have to have a lot of land for them, and with the minis, we downsized. If they step on your foot or anything, it’s more of an ouch instead of breaking your foot.”

Lewis started working with larger horses in 1985, and in 1997, she took over an area horse rescue for about five years.

In 2001, Lewis bought her first miniature as a pet. Two weeks later, she bought another. “You can’t just have one. You gotta have at least two,” she said. “(Otherwise) they get very lonely.”

That year, the partners took those first miniatures to a nearby horse show, where one placed second.

“We then looked at our horses and said, ‘oh my god; they’re like miniature Arabians!’ I think we can breed for even more refinement and everything,” Lewis said. “And that’s what we’ve been doing since.”

The Concord farm was designed for larger horses, but Benvenuto gradually converted it for smaller horses after the pair decided to focus on miniatures.

Lewis and Benvenuto don’t just raise their own horses, but train and house those belonging to clients. At one time, there were nearly 40 horses on the farm, but now there are much fewer.

Two years ago, a client gave Lewis and Benvenuto a small herd of pedigree miniature horses after her husband died. Among the herd was a former world champion stallion named Topsider, who previously sold for $62,000, Lewis said. Also in the herd was a young colt named Big Shot, who would become world champion in October.

The steel-gray Big Shot now occupies a large pen next to snow-white Topsider. They both have big bushy tails and snack on sweet-smelling hay. On the other side of the barn, which Benvenuto converted from a three-stall barn to eight, are two colts. One, named Ginger, was born in April. She’s less than two feet tall. But, Lewis said, she’s perfectly proportioned.

Unless the animal has been carefully groomed and clipped, miniature horses look like shaggy ponies. But the groomers clip most hair, highlighting the horses’ graceful legs and pointed faces, leaving a full tail and mane.

During show season, Benvenuto will shave the horses’ faces with a razor and spend hours grooming each one every few days while competing. When it’s winter, Lewis and Benvenuto let the hair grow out and let the horses be horses.

“They get a couple months off. They’re just horses — no blankets, no clipping, no kissie-kissie, pookie-pookie. They’re just our horses,” Benvenuto said.
“Come January and February, it starts all over again.”