If honoring horses' true nature and emotional wellbeing comes first for you, we are your people.
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Lost Creek Fjord Horses is located within the ancestral homeland of the Mountain Band Molalla, situated along the banks of Lost Creek in beautiful, sheltered Lost Valley just south of unincorporated Dexter, Oregon. We — Jim Krowka and Gwen Ingram — have bred, raised, and trained Classic pack llamas here since 1986. (Click here to visit the Lost Creek Llamas website). We've had horses, ducks, geese and cats with us for all those years, too (although our remaining ducks had to be rehomed in early 2022 after we were unable to prevent repeated predation by a bald eagle).
The beginning of Lost Creek Fjords
When the first of our two retired Arabians passed away in early 2013, we set about finding new equine companions. We knew we wanted hardy, moderate sized horses (13.3-14.0hh +/-) that could be kept barefoot; Fjord horses certainly were on the short list right away.
We were totally unprepared to discover just how radically different and unique the Norwegian Fjord Horse temperament and disposition really are. After all, the promo lit for Every. Single. Equine. Breed. touts how “smart” and “calm” and “versatile” and “athletic” and “long-lived” and “people-oriented” that breed is. Typical advertising copy, ugh! We were stunned to find out that Norwegian Fjords REALLY ARE all that — and more! No animal is “born trained” nor an instant best friend nor 100% safe. Norwegian Fjords are as close as it gets for equines.
At that time, Fjords were affordable for us, but scarce! Our first Fjord, yearling Yamsi, came home with us in June 2014; two-year-old Legolas arrived that fall. Our treasured red dun mare Winny finally joined us in mid-2016. Unfortunately, that aforementioned scarcity of Fjords meant we could only "buy before you try" ... which is definitely the backwards way to do things. Of the three, only peace-loving Winny was a good fit for us and vice versa. In our entire lives, it has been extremely rare that we have re-homed ANY animals that we had chosen, and that initial 67% failure rate truly gutted us. The long turnover period also resulting in ongoing unrest in our horse herd's mental and emotional states, which didn't do us or them any favors. That initial Fjord selection-and-failure-rate experience has definitively shaped the way we do business: To best serve BOTH our human customers and the young horses leaving us, suitability and stability of the horse-human match is a non-negotiable bottom line.
How our horses live
All our Fjords live together as one herd. Most of the time, the herd is in a bare-ground track paddock (for weight control and hoof health). They enjoy daily turnout time (when safe) for grazing and cavorting in larger pastures.
Keeping our horses together definitely means extra time and effort to meet differing nutritional needs, but it's WAY worth that effort in exchange for keeping our horses physically fitter, emotionally well-regulated, and healthier overall.
Our horses are our friends and our partners. That doesn't mean our horses walk all over us (rather the opposite). As in any truly consensual relationship, our horses do get to voice their opinions. We also get to decide whether we consent or not. For instance, being pushed or pulled around or getting mugged for treats are some of the things we do not ever consent to. Our horse-human interactions incorporate PEBLS/Horse Speak® and an approach aligned with Lynn Acton and Emotional Horsemanship®. We have never had such deeply gratifying and safe relationships with equines before!
What we do with our Fjords
First and foremost, we enjoy our Fjords' companionship every day.
We primarily trail ride, which — as any trail rider knows — places significant mental, emotional and physical demands on the horses. We also greatly enjoy playing at liberty with one or more horses at a time — something we can do nearly every day, right here on the farm, even on days when time or daylight is limited, or the weather can't decide what to do. Our new (2020) 80' x 128' grass-surface outdoor arena has opened up whole new worlds for us and our Fjords, from liberty and in-hand work to ridden physical and mental development. Unfortunately, we do not live in a year-round riding climate, we aren't well-off enough to be able to afford a covered arena, and haul-in opportunities clash badly with our schedules, so even with the on-site improvements we are fortunate to have, all of our riding is strictly seasonal.
We were highly successful in performance (and halter) competitions with our llamas, but we're totally over the competitive world now. We've come to realize that the fleeting and artificial recognition from humans (whose priorities are out of sync with ours) just impedes our journey — we'd rather strive for top marks from our animals all the time, and not have any pressure from the attention-from-humans thing distracting us (we are, after all, only human; that pressure IS distracting!). When we do consider entering formal or organized events with our horses, it's strictly for the opportunities those venues might present to further our horse-human relationships. So far we have managed to avoid equine events with competitive components.
We also very much enjoy introducing other people to Fjords. After all this time, it's still hard to contain our enthusiasm for the breed. :-)
The evolution of breeding Fjord horses at Lost Creek
Because yearly Fjord births in North America (and in most countries worldwide) had been running below replacement rate with genetic diversity in jeopardy, we initially stepped up and bred our mares rather than letting their prime reproductive years pass by.
We were not the only ones who stepped up, though, and a lot of filly sales during that period resulted in new breeders becoming established, too. It wasn't long until there were once again enough young purebred Fjords in North America to maintain critical baseline numbers and genetic resources. This ended any urgency or responsibility on our part to breed, which is totally fine with us — responsible and ethical animal breeding is a time-consuming and expen$$$ive endeavor ... and it entails risks.
Additionally, a significant number of young stallions who are closely related to our mares began contributing to the gene pool. As such, breeding our mares no longer significantly enhanced or preserved genetic diversity in the US and Canada. That is also good. We don't resonate with high-volume, for-profit breeders whose many horses are "loved" only during the portion of their lives that they are adding to the financial bottom line ... and that's a constituent any mare owner with uncommon and/or desirable bloodlines will end up attracting, whether they want to or not (and yes, we speak from experience).
Now that Winny is excused from further broodmare duties, we have paused all breeding to address some much-needed infrastructure improvements, which will be vastly easier to accomplish without juggling construction around the logistics of breeding, birthing, and having young foals right in the middle of the improvement zone.
Our breeding pause has serendipitously happened at a time when we have had to face and address our new reality — the unintended negative consequences of our recent and incredibly positive horse-human relationship evolution.
Horses move to new homes and families; this shocking and unwanted change is normal for most mammals (including wild horses) as they transition towards adulthood. If a horse goes to a similar or better home, they'll adjust well and thrive. But if they go to one that they perceive as too strange or just plain worse, they will struggle considerably, and unnecessarily. We have always felt that placement in the latter home would be an ethical failure on our part.
However, our experiences with Nyota and Roslyn have raised the bar. From birth, they have known humans as beings who always use intrinsic body language with them and who engage regularly in two-way dialogue. This has been extremely rewarding for us, and for them! They expect we will give them clear advice and direction that they can understand — even when we are giving you-must-do-this orders that they disagree with — and that we will also listen to their opinions, needs, and fears through reading their precise body language and responding with, at minimum, acknowledgement. Compared to our other horses, who started out with traditional training, they are eager to communicate all kinds of minutiae to us that they find important; they expect us to "hear" them and communicate our perspective in response.
For hypothetical foals raised like Nyota and Roslyn but then sold on the open market, the likelihood of serious culture shock is going to be all that much greater now that we have become EVEN LESS like other horse homes and other horse caretakers.
Putting ourselves into their hooves ... how would we feel if, upon leaving this home, we found ourselves in a world populated entirely by humans who don't even acknowledge the existence of our language, let alone use it. Imagine politely saying, "My water is empty" or "There's a bunch of sketchy-acting dogs over there" or "That tree is gonna fall" or "We can't go any farther because I can hear a hornets' nest" — or just expressing a happy "hi!" — and having those clear, honest communications completely ignored ... for the rest of your life. Imagine pausing to think carefully about something and getting slapped or snapped with a rope or whip ... and, having now been mislabeled "lazy", getting slapped or snapped pre-emptively ... before you even have a chance to comply.
Nope, we refuse to bring a foal into the world without first knowing it won't be put through that.
We also can't put the PEBLS/Horse Speak® genie back in the bottle (um, why would anyone even want to??!?!?!?).
Our decision: Going forward, we will only breed foals on commission, and we will only agree to breed on behalf of people whose approach is congruent with ours in order to best ensure that the resulting foals would be thrilled to join them as lifetime partners.