blend of helpful and playful. “We’ll talk about baseball teams and the Patriots — Tom Brady is from Michigan, you know — but we always get serious when we talk about horses,” Mike says. As a relative newcomer to halter showing, both Skip and Mike credit Charlie with being a hard worker with the focus and stamina to learn and do all he can to win. “Most people get into this, and then they get out and they never get back,” Mike says. But when Charlie sent Mike a list of his short and long-term goals for halter showing, Mike says, “I knew the man was serious about what he was going to do.”
Casey and Sarge
After a couple of false starts looking for the ideal Quarter Horse for halter competition, outgoing Charlie approached halter horse breeder, trainer, and judge, Don McDuffee at the American Quarter Horse Congress in Ohio. “Charlie said he was looking for a horse that would be competitive, sound, and easy to show,” Don says. “I told him, ‘Everyone’s going to say they have one of those, but I really do.’ ” The horse that Don sold Charlie was a sorrel gelding with a sprinkling of roan. He has a broad white blaze, one long, flashy boot behind, and a rose blossom of white on his right front knee. This well-mannered gelding is registered as Broker Special (but called Casey) and, with Don as his trainer and Charlie owning and showing him, Casey was the 2014 American Quarter Horse Association High Point Halter Gelding. “He’s a really, really nice horse,” says Don, dotingly. “He’s earned 900 points and over 300 grand championships. I didn’t want some young kid taking this horse. So he’s with me, retired to Florida now. He’s out in the sunshine.” Even though Casey is retired (Charlie transferred his ownership back to Don), Charlie remains prominent in the show ring. He has a new horse, a fiveyear-old Quarter Horse gelding called Hez Packing Heat, or Sarge, purchased from Jeffrey Eldon Pait of Aiken, South Carolina. This new competitor has splashy white socks in front, leggy boots behind, “ . . . and he has a beautiful, beautiful blaze on his face,” Charlie says, holding out a picture. Physically, Sarge resembles Casey, but that’s where their similarity ends. “Casey has a great disposition. Sarge is young. He thinks he’s a baby still,” Charlie says. Usually, Sarge’s impetuousness makes him appear bright and alert for the judges. Occasionally,
however, it’s a distraction. Regardless, in 2016, Hez Packing Heat placed second in the nation. Like Casey, Sarge lives on Don’s farm in Ocala, and Charlie keeps himself busy traveling up and down the East Coast. As early as December, Charlie softens his Worcester winter by competing at Florida and Georgia horse shows. With a bounty of prize belt buckles, sweatshirts, show coolers, gift certificates, and jackets, Charlie’s basement is a veritable pirate’s cave full of Quarter Horse booty — much of which he donates to youth organizations. He keeps meticulous records of all the shows he enters and how his horses place, and, whether he’s traveling on the show circuit or chasing grandbabies in Worcester, Charlie Cerrone seems a bit like his young horse, Sarge — always competitive, but plenty playful, too. Some shows, for example, are four to six days long. At these events, Charlie grooms, exercises, and shows his horse, but, he says, flipping to an 8 x 10 photo in his record book, “You see what we do when we have spare time?” He points to a group of about a dozen people, Charlie amongst them. They are male and female, young and old(er), clustered conversationally, relaxing in lawn chairs, sipping drinks, socializing. All are smiling. Like Charlie, they are content to be surrounded by beautiful horses and pleasant people who share their passion. Charlie is crystal clear about the most important wisdom he’s gained over the past few years on the halter circuit. “I’ve learned two things by showing,” he says simply. “One is to have fun out there. The other is to make lifelong friends.” Andrea Bugbee is a Pony Club mom, an IEA mom, and a backyard horse enthusiast. She does most of her writing while she waits for her daughter in the parking lots of numerous wonderful stables scattered throughout western Massachusetts and northern Connecticut.
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