his beginning an Arabian business. “That’s really how I got started—through Chuck and Kitty,” he says. “They lived up in Tyler, Minn., and I got to know them in 1965. A couple years later, I bought my first Arabian mare. I had a few Half-Arabians before that, but Chuck and Kitty had some really special stallions and mares.
Kara Larson (the author of this article) pictured with her grandparents, Claire and Margaret Larson.
As the proud parents of six rowdy, and today successful, boys, Claire and Margaret certainly had an interesting— and exhausting—situation on their hands. “I was a tomboy myself, so I really enjoyed my boys,” says Margaret. “Claire was gone a lot, trucking, when the boys were growing up, so I tried to spend a lot of time with them. If they were doing chores out in the barn, I was right there with them. In 1965, we moved out to the farm to keep those boys out of trouble because an older neighbor was complaining that they were taking crabapples off his tree. So, we decided to get the boys out of town. They had a lot of room to play out there and they always had each other, which makes a huge difference.” The farm was in Pipestone, Minn., and one of the best options for not only keeping the boys busy but teaching them some life lessons by involving them with horses. “The first horse we brought home to ride was a Morgan mare with a big, broad back, so the boys wouldn’t get hurt,” says Margaret. “She could ride three at a time. We had a Shetland as well who was just a rotten little thing, biting the boys in the pants and always being naughty. So Claire traded him off and got a Half-Arabian.” “When I bought my first Half-Arabian mare, she was a 2-year-old and her name was Lady, and we would also own her full sister, who was named Rusty,” Claire tells me. “Your dad used to ride Rusty a lot, and she bucked him off more times than I care to remember. She ended up living 34 years, and she was pretty enough to be a purebred. Such a nice mare to be around.”
Arabian Beginnings
Those Half-Arabians were Claire’s first ties with the breed. He credits a couple named Chuck and Kitty Wagner for 54A | A r A bi A n Hor se T i mes
“She was a retired schoolteacher and had just about every Arabian horse magazine ever printed,” he remembers. “She was a real Arabian horse person. She’s the one who really taught me about everything I ever knew about pedigrees. She knew every pedigree, and had all of the Arabian horse registries from the very first horse up until they quit doing it that way—it’s like an entire library of Arabian books. She’d go to a horse show and sit there from the time it started until it was done that night, no matter what time it was, back when the stands used to be full. They had no kids, so Margaret and I took care of them to the end. They were very good friends of ours. They were life members of the Arabian horse, and, well, so am I.” Claire’s first purebred Arabian was a 6-year-old mare named Kalari, “a gorgeous dark bay” purchased in 1972 with a filly at side. Not long after, he and his two oldest boys, Gary and Greg, took a few horses to North Dakota for one of their first horse shows. “I took our blue International pickup with a topper on the back up to North Dakota, Valley City, I believe it was,” he says. “We all slept in the back of the pickup on a box spring mattress. I showed Kalari in the mare class with the filly at her side, and I ended up winning the mare class. And then I came back and won with the filly too. That was our first big win.” He laughs. “I kept that mare and she raised me a few more foals, but she colicked and died in the pasture when she was very young.” Since this humble beginning, Claire’s relationship with the Arabian horse has blossomed into something that he could never have anticipated. As he bought and sold fine Arabian horses year after year, his passion was stirred by their unmistakable beauty. “I’m always searching for the best horse I can find, and that’s what makes it exciting,” he says. “I truly enjoy buying and selling Arabian horses because I like the idea of selling a horse to someone who will enjoy the horse more than I do. Whoever I might sell the horse to, I just want to make sure that they will enjoy the horse more than I