Like thousands of other horse lovers across the globe, Emilia Quaggiotto owns a Breyer model horse. But hers lives in the barn, and is a living, breathing black Welsh Cob stallion.
Emilia was stunned when in January, 2024, she received an email from Breyer headquarters in the US asking if she could meet on Zoom to discuss her 13.1-hand stallion Halcyonia Night Life (aka Ace), born on June 19, 2020.
“At first, I thought it was too good to be true, and I thought it must be a scam,” Emilia, who lives in Amherstburg, Ontario, admits. “A week and a half later, another email came.” She realized the query was legitimate and during an online meeting she was asked if she’d agree to have Ace immortalized as a limited-edition model horse for Breyer’s 75th anniversary in 2025.
Halcyonia Night Life (aka Ace) will gallop into Breyerfest as a limited edition model. (Breyer photo)
The Canadian-bred pony’s accomplishments so far in his young life include top placings in Welsh breed shows in Canada and the US for in-hand, driving and riding, and 2023 and 2024 USEF National Championships in Welsh Section C and D English Pleasure. In dressage, he has won multiple blue and red ribbons, scoring above 70 per cent. At the 2024 National Dressage Pony Cup, he was Reserve Champion in the four-year-old Futurity and Reserve Champion stallion in the Open Sport Pony Breed show.
“They [Breyer] said they were in awe of him for how young he was and holding his own in the show ring, and they asked if they could use him as a model for the 75th anniversary,” Emilia says. “I said, of course! This is an absolute honour and a dream come true for any horse owner.”
Ace will join the relatively exclusive club of Canadian horses who have become Breyer models, including Ian Millar’s Big Ben, Northern Dancer, an RCMP Musical Ride horse, Toronto police horse Trooper, Cheval Canadien/Canadian horse Cherry Creek Fonzie Merit, Shire Grayingham Lucky Lad, Clydesdale stallion SBH Phoenix and Lusitano Cossaco, among others.
Emilia, who will be 22 in February, is relatively new to the pony world, but has been training horses since she was a teen, often reforming problem horses that other trainers didn’t want. She trained Mustangs that she took to the US to compete, then worked on a warmblood breeding farm. While she was moving into breeding herself with a couple of warmblood mares, she was asked to put some training into a naughty pony.
“I starting thinking, I’m 5’2” and I need to make safer ponies,” she says. After selling a warmblood filly, she saw a Facebook ad for a two-year-old black Welsh Cob colt, with one half-blue eye, for sale in the Ottawa area.
“There was something about his photos. He was a gangly colt, but I’d thought I’d take a chance,” Emilia says, and bought him sight unseen. The colt had been bred by Louise Saunders of Borden, Saskatchewan, and had been purchased as a stallion prospect.
“I’d never owned a stallion, but knew they can have a horrible rap, and if he wasn’t respectful or manageable, I would have gelded him,” Emilia says. Ace was the first pony she owned and she plunged into learning all about the Welsh world, and started showing him at breed shows. After seeing women in driving classes, as Ace wasn’t ready to start under saddle, she sent him to driving trainers in 2023.
The young stallion ‘aced’ his training, so Emilia had to learn to drive and bought a carriage. The rookie driving pony and his rookie driver made their debut at the Sutton Fair.
“I had found an $800 carriage that was wooden and heavy, and after his trainers took him in one class and he didn’t put a foot wrong, it was my turn,” recalls Emilia. “I was smiling ear-to-ear and didn’t have a clue what I was doing, or understand what the judge was asking. But we weren’t dead last!”
Ace stepping out in the traces in a carriage class. (photo courtesy Emilia Quaggiotto)
She was on her own at the next show, where they did well (she was learning from others’ advice and watching YouTube videos), where Ace was all business despite being in a busy ring next to a fair midway.
“I figured if he could do that, we can survive the Royal,” she says. Emilia purchased a more suitable carriage, they went to the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in November 2023 where she and Ace again earned great ribbons.
“That confirmed that he is going to be a driving pony and that we would learn together,” Emilia says, although she was breaking him under saddle at the same time. “I was travelling every weekend to breed and performance shows, so I had no time to train him at home. He learned to canter at shows!”
In 2024, she pegged Sarah Pfaff, a professional dressage trainer, to start Ace’s dressage training. Sarah offered to show him, and soon the little black stallion was scoring in the 70s at training level and first level with top placings.
Ace has been approved as a breeding stallion with Oldenburg/ISR and Westfalen registries, and his first foal crop hit the ground in 2024.
“He had a lovely crop and they are the easiest babies to deal with,” says Emilia. She took one of his sons, Fearless Lonestar, to an Oldenburg/ISR inspection where the colt earned Premium status and was High Score Champion.
Now he’ll cap those achievements with a trip to Breyerfest at the Kentucky Horse Park in July, where his model, complete with one half-blue eye, will be released and he’ll meet with fans attending the event, which typically attracts 30,000-plus attendees in person and others from more than 100 countries attending virtually. Ticket holders will get the first opportunity to purchase one of the 2,000 Halcyonia Night Life limited edition models; tickets go on sale in February.
In 2025, Ace will make a return trip to the Pony Dressage Cup championships in Ohio, plus continue showing in driving and dressage, and breeding. The plan is to have him move up to Second Level in dressage and achieve scores that will give him permanent approvals with the Oldenburg and Westfalen registries. But the big excitement will be the trip to Kentucky, where he and Emilia can bask in his celebrity as a Breyer model horse.
“It’s been a wild ride,” says Emilia. “I had to keep it under wraps for the past year, which was difficult. I’m a younger person in the industry, and there are so many breeders who have been breeding for fifty years. This is a huge deal. It still doesn’t feel real.”
