Horse Report

Deep in the Piney Woods, down a long dirt road and surrounded by forest on three sides lies a hundred and twenty-acre haven for English performance horses in their sunset years.

It was 20 years ago this August that Dawn Johnson, tired of the "rice paddy" flatland of Houston and longing for trees and rolling terrain, bought this farm after two decades of teaching hunt seat equitation and breeding warmbloods in the suburb of Cypress.

Cottonwood Stables is near Latexo (an acronym for the old Louisiana Texas Orchard Company), five miles north of Crockett and halfway between Houston and Dallas. It was too far for Dawn's clients to drive for lessons, but by word of mouth they began to bring her the older or injured mounts they had retired from competition in dressage, jumping and eventing.

Passionate about horses since the age of three and an expert in their care, the former vice president. of Houston design and architectural firm 3D/International runs no ordinary boarding facility.

The horses are carefully matched for turn-out groups, limited to four, with access to run-in sheds and shade trees. They are only stalled in case of bad weather or medical injury and never for long periods of time. They are fed three times a day quality senior grain, soaked alfalfa cubes and beet pulp, free choice coastal Bermuda hay, and mineral blocks and salt. They are given supplements and. medications as provided by the owner. They are regularly paste-wormed, trimmed, groomed and bathed in the summer. Dr. Corey Tucker of Crockett visits to give annual vaccinations and perform dental work. Every quarter, Dawn sends photos and email updates to the owners.

"We're not fancy, but we're safe and clean," says Dawn. "We don't have a fly problem, and there's not a piece of barbed wire on the place." She does most of the work herself, from mowing the Bahiagrass pastures to cleaning the stalls. "These horses are on Social Security, you might say, so I do everything I can to control costs."

The monthly fee for retirees is $425, and there are currently 28 at Cottonwood Stables. Dawn has an adaptable approach to each one and has managed many conditions- arthritis, Cushing's syndrome, laminitis, dental disease, blindness, and osteitis, among others. When a horse dies, it is respectfully buried in a special memorial area.

"But the best result for the client to come after a time and take the horse home for retirement." She mentions one couple who was posted to Scotland for four years, but then. drove out and picked up their elderly Quarter Horse when they returned to the States.

Dawn also accommodates some that come in for temporary lay-ups, such as an 18-hand Irish Sport Horse currently recovering from tendon surgery. There is a convenient water therapy facility at nearby Centerville Ranch.

She has welcomed many breeds Selle Francais, Haflingers, Trakehners, Holsteiners, Friesians, Hanoverians, Fjords, Thoroughbreds, Quarter Horses and Paints.

Robins Reprise, a 30-year-old gray overo Paint Horse and multiple champion, is a current resident, along with two of his daughters in their twenties. Young show-jumping stars Wilton and Lucas Porter, now based in Wellington, Fla., have retired four of their Grand Prix horses to Cottonwood. The oldest horse on the farm is Promise, an Anglo-Trakehner mare that Susan Shiba of Roseate Dressage brought to Dawn at the age of 18. She's 36 now.

A native Houstonian, Dawn Johnson fondly remembers her aunt taking her to Old Braeswood Park and buying her "miles of tickets" to ride the ponies when she was three.

When she was six, her family moved to Tripoli, where her father, O.D. Blankenship, was helping develop the Libyan oil fields in the 1950s. They lived in a Mediterranean villa, where Dawn rode a donkey named Petunia, who habitually nipped the buds of the flowers to the fury of the family gardener.

Then the Blankenships moved to Rome, where Dawn attended the American Overseas School and learned fluent Italian. She rode and took lessons at the D'Angelo brothers' posh stable and, when the U.S. Equestrian Team came to train for the 1960 Summer Olympics, she became acquainted with Bill Steinkraus, the team captain, and his young colleague, George Morris. (The United States won the team silver.)

The Blankenships also spent two years in Holland, where Dawn's father helped develop drilling projects in the North Sea. They lived in Den Haag (The Hague), and she was a student at the Dutch Riding School, which dates from 1744.

"You had to earn every piece of your tack," she says. "Our instructor always wore jodhpurs and was constantly slapping his riding crop against his tall polished boots. We had military-like inspections, and the punishment for infractions was to have to ride without stirrups on the long North Sea beach exercises, It was some of the best instruction I ever had, and I learned a lot about horse husbandry."

The family returned to Houston when Dawn was 18, and she enrolled at the University of Southern California, her father having rejected the Eastern seaboard schools as far too liberal (to put it mildly). Subsequently, she was enticed by her parents back to the University of Texas, with the promise of an apartment, a new Mustang-and, decisively, a place to board her horse. Dawn majored in English, with minors in art and languages.

In 1968, she married a Navy pilot she had met at USC and for the next five years, they moved to new posts about every six months. That was not conducive to owning a horse, so Dawn worked as a freelance illustrator for ad agencies. It was 10 years before she bought another horse a Pin Oak hunter champion.

The couple eventually purchased 10 acres in Cypress. They named it Cottonwood Stables, and Dawn began teaching hunt seat equitation to young riders. It was a discipline she had to relearn herself, since she had concentrated on jumpers in Europe. One of her early students was Dawn Chamorro, now head trainer and manager of Isabella Farms in Houston.

Having ridden warmbloods in Europe, she also began breed- ing Anglo-Trakehners. She bought some Thoroughbred mares and bred them to Beauté, a Trakehner stallion owned by Judy Yancey, then living in Grapevine and a pioneer breeder of warmbloods in the United States. Dawn sold her homebred babies for many years.

Today at her Piney Woods stable, she also has her own aging horse, Crimson, a 23-year-old Trakehner and former hunter by Peter Pletcher's champion stallion, Schatten Spiel.

"We just ride for pleasure across the creeks and through the forest," says Dawn. My knees aren't what they used to be, so we're a good match for each other."

She adds, "I try to give these horses the best-quality care possible at this stage of their lives. They've earned it, and I love having them in my life."

For more information, visit cut- tonwoodstables.com or call (936) 546- 2211.