OTTOWA, CANADA--

Days of Summer, Day 53: Fitting miniature horses into shrinking fairs

 

Ivan Wyman harnesses one of his miniature horses at the Navan Fair.
Photograph by: Bruce Deachman
From: ottawacitizen.com
By Bruce Deachman, OTTAWA CITIZEN
August 11, 2013
OTTAWA — As the summers pile up like unraked leaves, Ivan Wyman finds he’s harnessing his team of horses a lot less often than he used to.
It’s not because, at 72, he’s too old. Nor have his 50 years of showing horses left him any less enthusiastic.
It’s the fairs, he says. There are fewer of them remaining, and many of those have dropped horse shows from their programs, or have kept only the heavy-horse shows.
These days, he competes with miniature horses. “I call them dwarves,” says the Carlsbad Springs native, smiling, “but not in front of miniature horse people.”
His father, a farmer and then railroad man, kept horses, and so Wyman grew up in their company. Originally a machine operator, he was in his early 20s when he first began to show horses at fairs — not the miniatures he has now, but massive Percherons, originally bred as warhorses.
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http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Days+Summer+Fitting+miniature+horses+into+shrinking+fairs/8775573/story.html