Hi! I am Teresa Fedak, owner of Red Devil Stable (model horses) and your hostess for this show. I have loved horses ever since I can remember. I was the typical horse crazy little girl. My dad liked to bet the horses and he would take me to the racetrack so I could watch the horses. I also collected Breyer horses since I was 5. Yes, my mom has pictures from my birthday parties and I am usually holding a Breyer horse. Breyer horses were the first item on my birthday and Christmas wish lists. I started taking horseback riding lessons when I was 10. The park district offered lessons in the summer. It was English style riding at a local stable. My instructors always said I was a natural rider. I won a blue ribbon at my first show, a schooling show, on a lesson horse. I progressed to jumping lessons at another stable and was jumping courses. I love jumping! I rented my favorite school horse, Woodstock, for a local show. We took the Junior Working Hunter championship! That is Woodstock to the left, I am 13 in that picture. My first "job" was at a local stable the summer before I started high school. I helped around the barn, cleaning stalls, grooming and tacking livery horses, etc. I was also a trail guide. One day I overheard the barn manager, Jean Hejmanowski, say something about Breyer horses. I asked her if she collected Breyers and told her that I did. She then told me about the hobby. I had no idea! She invited me to her house to see her collection. I remember being shocked when I saw a repainted Breyer, a Family Arab Stallion, and saying "oh, I could never do that to a Breyer". Famous last words. I started into photo showing. For a photo show, you send a close-up picture of the horse to be judged. The big live show each year, Model Horse Congress, was held in the Chicago area by Marney Walerius, one of the founders of the hobby. I am from the southwest suburbs of Chicago. After a couple years in the hobby, I convinced my parents to let me go to Congress. I roomed with Janice Meixner and Kim Groverman from Florida. I had a blast! There weren't many live shows in Illinois then, so once I got my own car, I would go to live shows in Indiana (Indy Con) and Michigan (Kalamazoo Live) and Iowa (Triple B). When I was in high school, I got a job cleaning stalls at a horse farm. They had standardbred racehorses (harness racing). They had a swimming pool for the horses, and I would help swim the horses. They stood a stallion, Prize Winner, a son of Bret Hanover (my childhood favorite!) and would have a couple foals each year. I loved working with the foals! I also would help at the track when the horses raced. They owned Childewood Hanover, one of the top pacers in the nation at the time. I went with him to invitational races in Ohio and Canada. I quit working for them when I got a "real" job at a factory. Real life called and I needed a job that paid more and had benefits. At the factory, I became friends with a girl who kept her horse at her dad's house, a block behind my house. As she lived farther away and didn't get out to see her horse much, Cinnamon became "my" horse. I loved riding her! She was very spirited but sensitive and obedient. I only had to barely loosen the reins and lean forward slightly and she would break into a run. There were farmers' fields nearby that we could ride around. We did a lot of exploring. I rode bareback a lot. We became so in tune to each other, it felt like magic.
Since I lived in Illinois, I went to Breyerfest every year (it was about a 6 hour drive). I moved to Colorado in 1998. I love it here - the scenery, the wildlife (I had never seen elk and moose and mountain goats except at the zoo), and the sunshine! I went to my first NAN (North American Nationals) in 1999. It was held in Kentucky right before Breyerfest. I had a few Top Tens and was so proud of them! I went to Kentucky every other year, for Breyerfest and NAN, for a few years. I also went to California, to NAN and Jamboree, in Pomona. I have been to a couple other NANs, in Las Vegas and Texas. When I haven't been able to go to NAN, I have had local hobby friends take some of my horses and proxy show them for me. I have had Top Tens and some National Champions and Reserves. That is the ultimate goal for a model showhorse. I started judging at local shows, thanks to the urging of local hobbyist Fran Lowe, about 2000 or 2001. Then I started holding live shows in 2003. My model buddy and best friend, Heather Roell, and I had plans for a large, all inclusive, model show. We started out with a smaller "warm up" version in May 2003. It was so much fun, I also started my Red Devil Live shows that year. I hold this Breyer show, plus another one for OF Stones, OF chinas, and custom glazes. In 2004, Heather and I held Devilish Kokopelli Live, a large model show offering all divisions, plus we flew in judges from out of state. That became an annual event. In 2011, instead of our DK show, the Stone Co. used our dates at the fairgrounds to hold Springamathing Live, which Heather hosted for them. That is now an annual show here, so far. I have judged there, plus at Rocky Mountain Rendezvous. That is my favorite model show weekend. It is sponsored by the Stone Co. and held in September every year at Winding River Resort in Grand Lake, CO. There is a model horse show on Saturday, and the whole weekend is nothing but fun with friends in the mountains. It is a beautiful setting, especially that time of year. Sometimes the aspens are changing into their bright gold colors. You hear elk bugling every evening. You can usually see elk, and sometimes moose! We have a trail ride on Friday into Rocky Mtn National Park. Sometimes we see elk on the trail ride. The pic above right is me with Diablo Kennedy, one of the trail horses at Winding River. He is a standardbred and a grandson of Bret Hanover, the harness racehorse that was my childhood favorite. I did "meet" him at Castleton Farm in Lexington, KY, where he stood at stud. So it was really neat to get to ride a grandson of his.