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ferent in their own way. Work- ing together for fourteen years, they still have a palat- able enjoyment and respect for each other. Tracy Baer and Mike Nielsen are examples of a working relationship that has seeded itself and matured into a comfortableness you can al- most reach out and touch. Tracy Baer is from Cana-
T
da, Vancouver to be precise. With a passion for horses for as long as she can remember, she did not ride for the first time till she was eight years old when her father gave in that summer and sent her to the Diamond J Dude Ranch outside of town. Her summer love was a scrappy little paint pony named Apache who she couldn’t get out of her mind. Her pleads to go back for another week were heard and back at the camp she ran straight to Apache’s stall to find him there with a bow… she now had her first pony - but no lessons. Formal, educated riding for
Tracy started when she was fourteen with Caroline Weeks, and with no money Tracy be- came a working student. “The foundation I got from Caro- line was amazing,” says Tracy. “She taught me what a good work ethic really was and I adore her to this day partly because of that! Her influence sort of set the stage for what became my life’s work! One
This Page, Top to Bottom - Tracy and Apache; Mike and friend, 1965. 67
hey answer questions at the same time with the same answer, then they laugh. They talk seriously but with an inside joke at the same time. They multitask as mirror images of each other, but they are so dif-
of the people Caroline worked with in the United States was Scott King who hired me to come work for him at Sand- stone after I got out of school. I could officially only stay a year because I was not a US citizen…and man did I work hard there!!” “I decided to stay in the states to
work with Jamie Mann at Orange County Fairgrounds. During the time with her I got offered horses to ride by Mike Nielsen who had a nice business at Huntington Cen- tral Park Equestrian Center. He sponsored my quest for US citi- zenship and my plan was to open my own business when the paper- work was in order. A lot of things sort of fell into place. There were some owners looking for a rider for their horses and Mike wanted to judge and design courses more. The natural step was for us to work together to cover all bases.” Mike was born in Indiana but
took the long route to Califor- nia through Albuquerque, New Mexico and Denver, Colorado. The only way a higher education was available was to work his way through, and the opportunity pre- sented itself at Cal Poly Pomona where he showed and trained the Arabian horses the school is famous for. In those days the next step for young men was the service and he ended up in the Marine Corp stationed at Camp Pendleton before a one year stint in Viet Nam. “After the service I had to fig-
ure out what I wanted to do,” says Mike. “Since I loved being around the horses I took a job with Glenn Gimple at Eaton Canyon Stable, long gone now. The industry was different then and trainers usually had a variety of horses in their barn, but specialized, and Glenn’s specialty was western horses. He didn’t really like the hunters and
Photos Courtesy Tracy Baer & Mike Nielsen
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