After 30 years spent managing and showing Welsh and Dartmoor stallions, Shull can’t envision a future without ponies.

Hershell Shull leads me into a field of yearling ponies. Soft roans, fuzzy bays and winter grays look up as we walk toward them, their tails swishing, interested. A few take a first step in our direction, and within moments they’re all ambling as a herd: not rushed, just eager.

This North Carolina breeder has found unexpected rewards in producing young horses and owning a Grand Prix stallion.

Twenty years ago, Maryanna Haymon was just looking for a way to subsidize the expenses of her horse.

“My husband and I had five kids between us, and we barely made ends meet. I said, ‘I’ll buy a mare, we’ll have a foal every year and sell it, and that will pay for the gelding’s show career.’ But it never works out that way! I was a bit naïve at the time. I still have that first foal!” she said. “I never imagined where it would end up.”

Everyone dreams of breeding together two of the best horses in the world—Sarah Willeman has done it.

On May 7, her phone lit up with a photo text message of an adorable chestnut filly with a big white face. If genes have anything to say about it, this filly should be a giant in the reining world, since her sire is 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games team and individual gold medalist Gunners Special Night, and her dam is 2011 FEI Reining World Final winner Darlins Not Painted, both ridden by Tom McCutcheon.

Now in its 21^st year, the wildly successful sale moves some 2,000 ponies annually.

When founders Padraic Heanue and John Sweeney first conceived the idea of a small sale of Ireland’s much-loved Connemara ponies during the annual Clifden Connemara Pony Show in 1990, they had no idea it would lead to two decades of involvement in what has become Ireland’s biggest sales of these native ponies.

While producing the next Totilas is every dressage breeder’s dream, closely examining the traits that make this stallion so special can refresh any breeding program.

Totilas may well be the greatest dressage horse we’ve seen in the history of the sport.