116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
‘Livery to Lipizzans’ details a life with horses
Cedar Rapids woman used ‘quiet determination’ to train hundreds of horses
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When she was a kid, Carole Gauger asked her parents for a pony every Christmas. Every year, her dad would say no, that they lived in town so a pony was out of the question. She kept asking. When she was 12, her parents compromised and began taking her to Upmier’s Stable in Cedar Rapids where, once a week, she could ride old, run-of-the-mill, livery-type horses for an hour. She was ecstatic and began reading every book she could find on horses.
One Saturday, Vern Upmier put her on a tall, skinny palomino named Peppermint, and Carole Michalek’s life with horses began. She was determined to buy Peppermint. She saved every dime she made babysitting, skipping milk at school so she could save that quarter.
It took two years for her to save $70 to buy the palomino. She renamed the horse Amigo and knocked on doors in the country until she found an older couple with an empty barn where she could board her horse for $5 a month. She fattened him up – almost killing him with too many oats – but he survived and was her amigo for the next 22 years.
Then came Startling Princess, an “outlaw” mare no one could tame. Carole started wooing the horse with carrots, buying her for $150. Two years later, after a lot of carrots and kindness, the renamed Misty was letting Carole ride her and winning ribbons as a Saddlebred.
By age 19, people were paying Gauger to train and show their horses.
“Other girls were getting into boys,” she says. “Not me. I was into horses.”
Over the next 40-plus years, she trained, rode, bred and sold more than 450 horses, first at stables in Iowa and then in Michigan, where she devoted herself to training, breeding and selling the magisterial Lipizzans, the breed developed by Austro-Hungarian nobility in the 16th century.
In the process, she won countless ribbons, trophies and awards at horse shows throughout the nation. She also rescued a number of horses destined for the slaughterhouse after being deemed untrainable … until Gauger trained them.
The book
Gauger retired in 2000 to return to Cedar Rapids and live in the house her grandfather built on 32nd Street NE. Now 88, she’s written about her career in “Livery to Lipizzans,” a book available on Amazon and at Prairie Light Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City.
It’s an enjoyable read, filled with stories about the horses she cared for and loved. Each horse had its own personality and quirks. One horse, for example, would lose its footing in a horse trailer if the driver turned left. The solution: Make a series of right turns to avoid left turns.
Show Gauger a photo of any horse she owned, and she knows that horse’s name and will tell you a story about them.
‘Hopeless causes’
Gauger, who’s as petite as her horses were huge, became known for her ability to tame, train and show “hopeless causes.” Some trainers used whips and chains, baseball bats or electric shocks, in unsuccessful attempts to tame outlaw horses. Gauger used “quiet determination.”
“Retraining a horse can take twice as long as training a young horse from scratch,” Gauger writes in her book. “Trying to erase bad habits and bad memories, I started with the ABCs of horse training.”
Talk quietly, touch gently, try a bridle. Try again. And again.
It worked, even on “Killer,” a pure white Lipizzan stallion – known as Pluto Bona II and nicknamed Beau – delivered to Gauger’s stable in Michigan in 1977, “kicking and screaming.” When she tried to put a bridle on the stallion, he reared and spun in circles. Gauger held on, confusing the stallion, who was accustomed to people running away from him. It happened again. And again. Finally, the big horse sighed and let Gauger put a bridle on him. It took many months, but Beau began winning every dressage competition he and Gauger entered.
“After my children, Jeff and Vicki, the greatest gift God had for me was Beau, the Lipizzan stallion I retrained,” Gauger writes. “Perhaps it is more accurate to say we retrained one another. He made 30 years of my career the very best. Because of him, I was able to breed and raise the next generation of these rare horses in this country. Lipizzans have exceptional athletic ability, … a blessed temperament and … are the most intelligent, adaptable and loveable animals in the world.”
Gauger put a painting of Beau on the cover of her book.
It took years to find suitable Lipizzan mares and make Beau a father, but Gauger eventually succeeded and moved into the Lipizzan business. You’ll find chapters in her book on some of Beau’s foals that will remind you of people talking about their beautiful, talented grandchildren.
Selling those foals, she says, was always difficult but necessary to running a business. And the death of Pluto Martina – “a future champion” Lipizzan who swallowed a tack and died at age 4 in 1993 – just about did her in. “My future appeared to die with him,” Gauger recalls. “I felt I had lost the best horse I had ever owned. It was devastating.”
She persevered, just as she had through other challenges, before semi-retiring at age 63. (Riding and training horses is hard on a body, she says.) Gauger sold her Michigan stable and found good homes for her remaining horses, though she kept training select Lipizzans.
“I have been extremely blessed,” Gauger says. “Even with the ups and downs, I would not change one day of my life. It is my hope that God’s plan for me has been fulfilled in my desire to pass on to another generation of riders the commitment to care for their horses with devotion, dedication, kindness and quiet determination.”
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