BENTLEY | 8 YEAR OLD GYPSY VANNER | CYPRESS, TX

Bentley is an 8 year old black and white Gypsy Vanner with a white star. Bentley comes from foundation stock in England. He has lived in Canada and the West coast, and finally came home to Cypress, Texas.

Oh Bentley. I could have spent hours photographing this handsome boy and his mustache! Bentley is the ultimate giant teddy bear and was so incredibly well behaved for his pictures, and he loved posing and showing off his mustache, I think he is quite proud. I think if he was a person, he would be a total hipster and be the president of the mustache club, walking around town and flaunting his stash everywhere he went.

This handsome Gypsy Vanner lives with his owner, Angela, and is trained by Sally Elliot of Firecreek Stables. The pair does Western pleasure and trail. Angela loves his slow as molasses jog. Gypsies are a draft breed despite how short they are. He’s built like a tank and is not at all set up for speed. He shuffles at all gates and it’s like riding a comfy couch.

Angela shares about Bentley, “I’ve had Bentley for a little over a year. I have wanted a Gypsy Vanner for years and finally moved to a place where I could have a horse in my backyard again. Gypsies are not easy to find and I looked all over the U.S. as I was getting ready to bring a horse home. It just so happened that I found Bentley a few miles away from my house in Cypress! I had looked at other horses and didn’t like their manners or training. Bentley was different. I rode him twice before I bought him – the second time was a pretty long trail ride. He was fun to ride and has some great training that I don’t think anyone has ever really put to use. I think he decided I was his person before I decided that he was my horse. I had a shadow. He would just stand near me with his head down, waiting. I brought him home about two weeks later and right away he’d run to me in the field. He loves his people and is like a big puppy with us.”

Angela says Bentley is awesome and a punk. She believes he knows he’s pretty and likes to pretend he’s ‘Fabio’ as he runs through the field, tossing his mane around and bucking to show off. He has a lucky gypsy mustache and is nosy and wants to be involved with everything! If you don’t watch your tools, he’ll walk off with them. He takes things out of the farrier’s pockets all the time. Bentley is the boss at home and loves Mrs. Pasture’s Cookies!

Angela had Quarter Horses as a kid. She did 4-H, camps and typical things with her sisters. Once she left home, she got away from it, but missed the horses terribly. When she finally got back to a place that she could have horses, she can’t believe she was away from it for so long. There’s a lot of peace in horses and she says she loves that about having them around. Angela recommends that With the gypsies the secret is mineral oil. For instance, Bentley loves mud and dirt and water – everything that will break feather. It makes him hard to keep looking like a “proper” gypsy. Angela uses mineral oil on his legs to help keep the mud from breaking his feather and the cheapest food grade stuff seems to work better for that than anything on the market!

Angela shares her favorite memory with Bentley, “I was outside working on something in the pasture with my kids over the summer. They were 4 and 5 years old. They were in the pasture not far away from me sitting on the edge of my wash station. I had asked them to pick up rocks and put them in a bucket to help me out. They were mostly cooperating, but it was taking forever because they would pick up a rock and study it and talk about it before putting it in the bucket. The horses were around but not in the way so I was just keeping an eye on them. Bentley loves kids and walked over to them to see what they were doing. Without missing a beat, they included him in their process. They would pick up a rock and show it to him. He would lean in and look at it and watch them put it in the bucket. Then he would stick his head in the bucket – like he was checking that it went in. He would wait for the next one and do it again. It went on for about 30 minutes – the three of them just slowly putting rocks in a bucket. He is so sweet with the kids – like he knows they are different than adults. He’s a good family horse that way.”