Joe Cathy Mccarter

        My husband and I have owned Andalusians since 1987.
     We got our first horse from the Westmoreland ranch when he was only 6 months old. We only planned on riding him at the time. We fell in love with the breed right away. It was not long before we were looking to buy more Spanish horses, and expand to breeding. We had a long history of animal attraction as it were. I had been breeding birds and dogs for some time and Joe trained and still does animals for the movies. We have a wonderful daughter Erin, who is very very into horses. She belongs to the local Pony Club. She loves to show. She is quite the rider. You can watch for her at up coming shows.

     The purchase of our second mare Devota D was the catalyst that led us to where we are today. The owner of Devota at the time was a wonderful woman named Nancy Occhipinti. Nancy proceeded to lead Joe and I through the journey of her horses' bloodlines and introduced us to her stallion the breathtaking and indominable spirit of Axis/Ingrato IX. We fell in love all over again this time with not only the breed but also this incredible personality that was Axis. Nancy moved Axis to our barn shortly after we met in 1998. We had Axis at our place for many years. In 2002 Axis decided he needed more room to run and we needed fresher air so we moved to Montana. Nancy decided it was time to bough out of horses and graciously handed Axis over to us. I will be forever grateful to her for that.

For those of you who do not know Axis/Ingrato IX, the most important information about him in a nutshell is that he is indeed related to the very famous stallion Maluso. Maluso's lines are known for breeding true to type with incredible cadence and proper athletic movement. Maluso had several famous sons. Agente is the son in our pedigree. The Agente line bred such horses as Leviton who of course sired RegaladoII owned by Gremlan farms many years ago. Agente's most famous son, to the Spanish, was Lebrijano III. Lebrijano III was bred and owned by Jose Luis Escalera. He also stood at the Spanish stud for several years before being sold at an older age to another breeder. He is important for many reasons but mainly because if a horse had Lebrijano III in his paper work he was almost assured to be a top notch Dressage horse. This holds true to this day. For those of you who watched the Olympics there was a horse on the Silver medal winning Spanish dressage team named Invasor. Invasor's grandfather was Lebrijano III. You can find more in depth information under reference stallions on this site.
And that is a very short story (or not so short) of Axis/Ingrato IX, and the Spanish Gate that I call home.