While in Germany, Ellie grew interested in animal nutrition. Stationed close to the Austrian border was a United States military canine unit, which patrolled for illegal crossings and contraband. She knew that dogs were good animals for this kind of work. Their ability to track and to smell was greater than most humans realized. As was typical, Ellie made her way over to the canine unit to observe and ask questions sparked by her curiosity and interest. She soon discovered that the canine unit handlers were feeding their dogs only once a day. Ellie reached into her supply of book-reading information to corroborate her notion that nutrition is lessened if a dog is fed only one meal. Never mind that she held no stature with the good veterinarians who took care of the animals’ injuries. Never mind that she lacked formal training in veterinary work. Her concern was only for the dogs when, most politely but emphatically, she informed one of the vets that it was better for a dog’s nutrition if it was fed twice a day. She was upset to be told that the canine units in Germany were allotted only so much food for the dogs, an allotment that definitely wasn’t enough. As Ellie confronted the veterinarian that day, a principle was taking shape inside her, one she would carry all her life: “Any animal entrusted to my care will, without exception and with the utmost of respect, receive the best of care despite any obstacle.”

  Breeding German Shepherds brought in money and satisfied, to some extent, Ellie’s need to be surrounded by animals. However, the ache in her heart remained: to have horses, lots of them. “That was why I had come west.”

  It was just before Rosemary and Bob McIntosh left the cabin at the Sodergreen Ranch to become ranch caretakers elsewhere that Bob did something that in other circumstances could be considered less than monumental. He told Ellie about a horse, born in 1952, that was for sale, cheap, on the UT Bar Ranch up the Big Laramie River, in Colorado. The horse was in poor condition, having been fed the same food as cows. According to the owner, the horse, named Khizan, was an active stud, or stallion, for a dude ranch and wasn’t used for any other purpose.

  Eleanor Smith saw more. “He was a black-bay stallion with white markings, a papered Arabian. I was never so excited in my life. I had never seen anything so majestic, so beautiful. I honestly didn’t know I was going to breed Arabians until I found Khizan. I bought him and immediately set to work on his health.”

  The four-year-old stood only fourteen hands, two inches (or fifty-eight inches tall at his withers) and was very thin. Ellie started right in with proper, nutritious horse feed, and it wasn’t long before he gained stature, up to 15.1 hands (sixty-one inches tall). He had white feet, which are notorious for being weak, but his were strong. Ellie made sure that they would stay that way by applying a mixture of equal parts of bacon grease, Neatsfoot oil, and pine tar, the latter holding the mixture onto the hoof. This home-made, tried-and-true recipe had been given to her by a farrier at Estes Park, Colorado.

  Khizan quickly showed an aptitude for endurance, as is common to the Arabian horse breed. Every day, the young Joyce Johnson watched in fascination as Ellie “took Khizan up and down a high, steep hill just south of the ranch and across the river to muscle him up and wear him down a bit. Ellie couldn’t wear him out. We never saw anything like it.”

  Ellie started taking Khizan to horse shows at Estes Park, but the show horse in Khizan was a lot to handle. Ellie found it necessary, before any class, to run him on the racetrack. “We went out early before showing him in his class. I raced him around, trying to get that energy out of him. He was a horse who wanted to get going. He didn’t do well in Pleasure classes, where you want a quiet, laid-back horse. He wanted to move.”

  When Ellie first showed Khizan in conformation classes, the judge told her that her horse was in the best condition of any horse in the class. The only problem was that he wasn’t fat enough. Ellie dove into research on nutrition and the second year, with continued proper diet and a year of racing Khizan up the nearby mountain slope, Khizan was carrying “hard fat.” He won Reserve Champion at the 1960 National Estes Park Arabian Horse Show, qualifying him to show at Calgary, Canada, in 1961. There, he placed in the Canadian National Arabians Championship Top Ten Arabian Stallions at Halter. For Ellie, this was a pivotal point in her life and in what was fast becoming her career. It would be good, as well as essential, she realized, to show her well-maintained horses and have them place and receive awards. Likewise, she knew that people would now notice Khizan and would want to breed to him. She was pleased that after all her care, “Khizan finally looked healthy and fit. You have to remember that Arabian horses were bred for endurance. Khizan looked like he could do the work of endurance. He was beautiful. His silhouette was correct and smooth. He showed a smooth line from his poll (between the ears) to his withers (the swell on the backbone just below the neck) and to his croup (the swell above the hip and thigh). He had big jowls and nostrils, the Arabian head, and a high tail and flat croup. Because of his ancestry, he was a horse of good disposition, willing in task and easy to handle. The bottom line was that I now had the interest of those who wanted to breed their mares.”

  The stud fees came in handy, to say the least. It was because of Calgary and Khizan that Ellie decided she could go full-time at the ranch. As an interesting aside, the Calgary experience resulted, not surprisingly, in Ellie’s success as a writer. In 1964, she published five articles on horsemanship for Arabian Horse News. Owner, breeder, handler, writer. Was there anything she couldn’t do when it came to horses? No.

  Out of the limelight, Khizan was an all-around champion in his own right. As grand as he was in the show ring, he was equally utilitarian on the ranch, especially when gates needed to be opened or bridges needed to be crossed. He was willing and able to complete any task asked of him. It was all a matter of mutual trust, according to Ellie.

  Riding on Khizan, Ellie sensed that her freedom was complete. Because she loved him, and because exercise was part of good equine care, she rode Khizan every day, and they learned together how to thrive on the land. Once, during her first year at the ranch, Ellie rode Khizan across the highway to Sheep Mountain, her lunch packed for an enjoyably long day. Soon, the horse and rider spied a herd of animals in the distance. Ellie thought they were cattle but soon realized they were mountain elk. The curious horse and rider kept looking, the rider assuming that they were watching at a safe distance. The elk, however, alerted to the scent of unfamiliar human and horse, took off, gathering together and gaining momentum. Ellie marveled that they crashed effortlessly through ranch wire fencing. Even though she was upset that she and Khizan had spooked the herd and made them run, and concerned about the fence damage, she couldn’t help but feel elation at the sudden sighting of wildlife running free and wild. “I’ve never lost that feeling,” she said. “It is an amazing sight. And often, you can only see that on a horse.”

  Another door of equine opportunity soon opened for Ellie. Two mares became available to her. Joyce Johnson was delighted with this addition to the herd that had begun with Ranger, the big bay, and Joyce’s favorite mount Prince, the smooth Saddlebred with an aptitude for cattle work. Spending time with the two new mares, Joyce decided that the tall Tammy was an “easy going sweetheart.” On the other hand, the registered Arabian filly named Kataffa “always seemed to have her ears back, as if they were on wrong. There were times when she was definitely not happy—a grump, in fact.”

  Born in 1958 and purchased in Lander, Wyoming, Kataffa had been a late foal in the season, a fact interestingly attributed to a stallion who had made an unsupervised trek one night over his fence, which had been buried in packed snowdrifts. What most impressed Ellie about the filly was that “she fit in well with Khizan. Katie, as I called her, followed Khizan everywhere. He wasn’t afraid of anything, and clearly neither was Katie. When Khizan walked into water, she did as well, and that was unusual. Fillies aren’t supposed to follow a stallion around, but she did. Add that to her sound disposition and that she loved to get hugs, and I was ecstatic to own her.” Khizan and Kataffa were from the very breeding that Ellie knew she wanted for her own foals for sale. When her stallion and favorite mare became her show horses at Estes Park, Colorado, she couldn’t have been more pleased.

  Khizan was sire to another wonderful addition to Ellie’s growing herd. El Khilet, born in 1961, became, when gelded, Ellie’s favorite school mount, especially when Ellie gave a demonstration in dressage—the precise cavalry-born movements asked by a rider to improve a horse’s suppleness, balance, cadence, and obedience. At Estes Park, El Khilet showed in dressage, jumping, and trail riding, and was then nominated to show in the Arabian Canadian National Champions Top Ten Halter Champions in Calgary.

  A doctor in Salt Lake City owned an Arabian stallion named Fasaab. The 16-year-old horse was out of shape and flabby, and the doctor couldn’t take care of him anymore. He decided to sell Fasaab at a low price. Ellie Smith decided to buy the black stallion.

  In examining the horse and his pedigree, Ellie said that she was “thrilled to death.” Fasaab was by Fadl and out of Bint Bint Sabbah. He was a straight Egyptian stallion, one of three brothers imported by Babson Farm in Illinois. Ellie offered a 2-year-old colt for the horse, the deal was accepted, and the broker soon arrived at the Sodergreen Ranch with the pure black horse. Ellie was “almost in tears when that horse stepped from the trailer. He was everything I wanted in a stallion.” Her joy was short-lived because the broker soon wanted to sell back the colt. It frightened Ellie that Fasaab might be suddenly sold to someone else. “Some guy down the road would have paid all kinds of money, and even though we had Rob’s income and my money from selling pups, we didn’t have that kind of money. I was scared to death that I might lose that beautiful horse.”

  The ending to the story was a happy one. Ellie was able to keep Fasaab, who soon topped “happy” with “remarkable.” After working with Fasaab, Ellie developed a keen desire to show Fasaab in the Costume class at Estes Park. Khizan showed well, but it was Fasaab who seemed to delight in being in the limelight. He would be perfect for Ellie’s grand plan. Ellie admitted to Margaret Johnson and a neighbor, Dorothy Orton, that she hated sewing—“I’m really not good at it. At all. That’s it.”—but needed an elaborate costume. Neither of the two experienced seamstresses flinched when Ellie explained that she needed “a Bedouin costume, for me and for Fasaab.” The two women agreed to sew whatever Ellie needed. Loose-fitting pants and a flowing blouse were quickly designed and created. That was the easy part.

  Ellie also needed a cape, stressing that the costume’s flair and drama were important to the judges. The cape had to be flashy. The seamstresses turned a substantial bolt of rich scarlet material into a long, billowing cape that would cover Fasaab to his croup and down almost to his hocks. Ellie knew that the cape wasn’t authentic to the Bedouins of the desert, “but I wanted it to be stunning. I wanted the judges to be impressed. Back then, showy stuff was popular. Bedouin-realistic desert colors were not popular, although my pants and blouse underneath and my veil and headdress were tan, like the desert.”

  Stunning, according to Ellie and her seamstresses, required something more than just the flare and color of the cape. It required something that, according to Ellie, made the cape actually flash. That something was mirrors. Ellie had no idea where the women found them or what their original purpose was, but the tiny square mirrors attached with adhesive to long strips of paper were perfect for a Bedouin costume that had to catch the attention of judges and spectators alike. Margaret and Dorothy, with Ellie’s help, assumed the task of cutting out sections of the little mirrors and pasting them as unique multi-shaped designs all over Ellie’s cape and Fasaab’s tack. Mirrors adorned his breast collar, and covered his bridle between his ears and over onto his forehead. Even the stirrups were covered with mirrors. With the slightest of movements, the mirrors reflected light, causing the flash Ellie had hoped for. “Oh, my,” Ellie reminisced, “we used an awful lot of mirrors.”

  Ellie requested as well that there be tassels, many tassels. She envisioned tassels “that waved in the wind from Fasaab’s back and his croup. I wanted the tassels and the flashing mirrors and the billowing cape and my blowsy blouse to look like we were blowing in the wind through the desert. I wanted to get the people’s attention. I wanted people to look at me, even though they couldn’t tell if I were a veiled woman or man. I wanted them to look at my horse. I suppose it was an ego thing. I guess I wanted to show off, to give it my all. But gosh, people who go to a show want a show, and I was determined to give them one!” Costume, horse, and rider were soon ready to perform.

  The Costume class called for a walk, trot, canter, and hand gallop, which is a faster and flashier canter. Entering the ring on Fasaab, Ellie gathered the end of the cape with her right hand and held it high in the air, as if the cape were floating away from the rider. “No one had ever done this,” she excitedly recalled. “I think I might have started some trend.”

  After some time, Ellie realized she was heading into a predicament. “I remember that I wasn’t scared, and I knew I had to make it through the class, for me and for Fasaab.” Ellie was riding with a cavalry saddle, which was open but narrow in the gullet. Fasaab wasn’t narrow, so the saddle perched without fitting down over the horse’s broad withers. As Ellie and Fasaab dazzled the spectators, the saddle started moving to the right. “I didn’t want to go down with Fasaab, in case he stumbled and fell, so I shook my feet out of the stirrups and kept going. The saddle was soon on Fasaab’s side. Everything was going sideways. I kept wiggling to move me to where I should be, and the whole time, one of my hands was on the reins and one was still holding out the cape. It could have been a catastrophe, but Fasaab, even though he sensed that my body was giving him a wrong signal, never lost his footing and never lost his rhythm.”

  Ellie and Fasaab made it through the hand gallop. They even took second place, although Ellie wondered if the judge awarded them a second-place ribbon because Ellie stayed on the horse and Fasaab maintained his beat. After the show, Fasaab was surely lavished with a long brushing and a good meal.

  “And this,” Ellie said, “was the same horse who, in the Cheyenne Frontier Days parade, threw up his head at one point, probably showing off to the mares, and managed to toss off his bridle. I jumped from the saddle, slipped the bridle back on, and re-mounted. Fasaab and I never broke cadence. He was certainly the showman. He loved being on stage.”

  Fasaab and Khizan showed their worth on the ranch as well. Both horses knew the difference between working alongside the ranch mares and breeding the mares. They never acted up around the mares, and they never confused their roles, even though the showman Fasaab was often described by Ellie as “stallion-ish.”

  Although the Costume class dilemma and Fasaab’s launching of his bridle into the air could have resulted in injury or disaster, they did not. In both situations, Ellie and Fasaab never lost their established and understood synchrony. Ellie’s meticulous training certainly played a part. There was something else, though. As the situations were developing, Ellie, without any degree of mental or verbal articulation, knew in her heart what she needed to communicate to her horse. Fasaab sensed the message. Had anyone been aware of the quick, intuitive dialogue that passed between Ellie and her horse in the ring that day, this might have been the conversation they heard: “I trust you. And I trust you. I know you. And I know you. This is not just about me. No, it’s about us. I know what you’re thinking. Likewise. I know you care. I care too.” Horse and rider were as one.

  How did this ability to create synchrony with her horses develop? Some might say it was the result of the young child’s sitting amidst a horse’s hooves at the age of four. It surely came as well from groundwork, grooming, learning, and loving. It came from catching the horse, caring for his or her needs, mucking the stable, measuring out the grain, engaging in words-and-nicker conversation. It came from gentleness and firmness. It came from respect. It came from losing one’s heart and listening. From feeling and sensing. From living among them. As partnership first, ownership second.

  Ellie’s philosophy had crystallized. It motivated her in training, breeding, and caring for her horses. It would guide her every time a person came to her and said, “Teach me how to ride. How to really ride.” The philosophy was this: Know your horse, and it shall follow, as the day the night, that your horse will know you.

  Fasaab and Ellie had their moment under the lights, and Ellie returned to the task of searching for “lots of horses.” She was looking mostly for mares, to be used for breeding to Khizan since she needed breeding stock. She soon purchased three mares from a horse dealer, considering herself lucky since horse dealers weren’t always trustworthy people and a buyer never knew what he or she might get. Ellie knew her horses, so there was very little about luck in the purchases. She wanted sensible horses and knew how to spot them. The little Grey Girl fit the bill. So did an amazingly fast trotter, when motivated, named “No Name” because no one could agree on a proper name for her. According to Lynn Hornby, a young girl who hailed from a ranch in Arlington, Wyoming, and eventually became one of Ellie’s Western instructors, the gentle No Name appeared to have been “put together by a committee. It didn’t help that her bottom lip was always hanging out.” The third horse’s name has been forgotten, but without exception, if she became one of the Sodergreen horses, she had the makings of a good and sensible horse.

  Daisy, an eventual purchase out of Walden, in the North Park of Colorado, looked like she had curly-hair horse breeding. Her specialty was running barrels and jumping. Lynn Hornby discovered one of Daisy’s delightful quirks: “She loved to jump. She would actually point at something and then jump it.” Daisy, a large, red mare, was known as well for taking care of all the foals. Even on trail rides, she shared her milk.