It all began for us around December 2003. A family headed by Donald and Barbara Eltom, we are five siblings; Paul, Mark, David, Lesley, and Melissa although one of us joined the team through marriage. This particular story commenced the day our father figure, Don, conspired with Santa to bring about the most memorable Christmas idea ever! The idea? To purchase a few “nags” to have as pets that could be enjoyed together as a family.

In typical Eltom fashion, we had all barely digested the news when we found ourselves already visiting the first group of potential candidates. These unfortunate creatures were products of the PMU crisis and were being sold off at bulk rates. While we thought it would be nice to rescue and care for some of them, we were later warned that we might wind up with a lot of vet bills and broken hearts at the end of the deal. Besides that, our involvement could potentially draw us into the public controversy surrounding the crisis, and that was a lot of risk for horses we may not even be able to ride far into the future if we ever felt so inclined. With no guarantees as to what we were getting ourselves into, we ended up deciding it was best to forgo that idea. 

With that in mind, however, the next route pursued was a meeting with a horse dealer who guaranteed any purchases for a month. That was all we needed to hear before loading the two chosen pets into our new trailer after finding a place to board them in a hurry! Both pets were “returned” within a few weeks... The appaloosa mare was afflicted by the two neurotic habits of cribbing and weaving, while the other gave the ex-Wyoming wrangler of the family, Melissa, the ride of a wild mustang! (Luckily Melissa was one family member not new to the world of horses, who had once even owned the initiating breed of horse for Eltoms; an appaloosa)!

The dealer refunded the wild one and promised to find another appaloosa for us in exchange for the neurotic one. He was true to his word and the Eltom family acquired Denny shortly thereafter. 

While we had quickly graduated from pets to trail horses, we never would have anticipated the levels to which we would ascend! Who would have thought that bringing in a trainer to fine tune and keep our trail horses exercised and safe for family rides would pique our interest to join the world of showing!? Indeed, the show world was a sector new even to Melissa, and when she and Mark found themselves competing against world champions less than a year from the birth of the Christmas idea, it became clear that the Eltom family had evolved unusually quickly in the milieu of horses. Indeed, what a difference a year makes and we’re sure our long list of equine family members at present will attest to this (see: Our Horses link).

As for Don’s original goal of producing more family time, well, it had gone much further than that, to become a new way of life for us. Suddenly we shared a passion, had our own equine family to visit and take care of as well as many an excursion to take together, both horse-related and horseback. Even the many decisions and mishaps along the way strengthened the Eltom family bond.