Olivia is a registered Clydesdale mare born on February 25, 2009. Her registered name is Wolf Mound's Princess Olivia but we like to call her Livi. Olivia rides and drives single and double.

Where we got Olivia

Olivia came from a Clydesdale breeder in Illinois and we purchased her as a 6 month old. She came to live with us on September 6, 2009. Olivia was quite a challenge as a baby - full of energy and attitude. Below you will find pictures of her mother - Wolf Mound's Megan, her sire Eel River Victor's Nootka, and of Olivia as a baby. Megan is the horse with the white stripe (necklace) around her neck and Nootka is the really beefy horse - we can see where Olivia gets her "chunkitude"!

Pictures of Olivia before we moved to our own property

Finding pictures of Olivia without her eating was challenging since it's all about food with this horse! She was so much fun to work with but also challenging since she definitely had an opinion about everything and it usually came out in michievious fashion.

Training Olivia

Starting Olivia under saddle was pretty straight forward and she seemed to enjoy the process. She was also showing a lot of progress in the driving department. Ground driving her was a lot of fun - Jane and Olivia explored the new property as well as the neighborhood to build Olivia's confidence. Here are some pictures of her training and various other fun shots.

Driving Miss Olivia

Putting Olivia to the cart was another fairly straight forward endeavor. She took to driving nicely thankfully as Jane had been prepping her for this since she was a year and a half old. The following are pictures starting with the first time hooked to the cart and then various driving pictures.

Random shots and silliness of Olivia

From balancing cones on her ears to just being goofy, Olivia is always fun. Sometimes she is too clever for her own good but she always makes us smile even when she is trying to get in trouble.

Shows

We took Olivia to her first "official" show in June of 2014 at the Blue Ribbon Driving Show in Kalamazoo, MI. She had been to a couple of local fun shows for riding and halter classes but this was her first driving show. She did very well in her draft horse classes and even the Ride and Drive class. We weren't able to take her to this show the following year (2015) due to her being sick on the same weekend as the show but we did return in 2016 with her and William. Unfortunately she developed an abscess in a front foot right before the show, pulled out of her lameness enough to take her and then upon entering the ring, had to pull her out since she started limping. Maybe in 2017 we'll have better luck.