Zippos Amblin Easy (Zippo Pine Bar x Amble Easy) was euthanized April 5th due to complications from colic surgery. The 21 year old mare was owned for the past 11 years by Gerald Kimmel who purchased her from breeder Cheryl Allen. Amble was a four-time AQHA World Champion and three-time Reserve World Champion with 617 points and over $37,000 in lifetime earnings. She is widely regarded as one of the best western pleasure mares in AQHA history.
Retired from the show pen in 2001, Amble had spent the last nine years as a broodmare. She was at Colorado State University to be bred via embryo transfer when she colicked. This was her fourth colic surgery. She underwent the same procedure the year before while at Colorado State and had completely recovered. Unfortunately, that would not be the case this time.
“After her surgery, she was in critical condition and then she started going downhill,” owner Gerald Kimmel told GoHorseShow.com. “They told me she was really starting to be in a lot of pain and they definitely felt like she was not going to make it. Knowing that she was suffering made the decision easier to have her put down.”
Trained by Cleve Wells Quarter Horses throughout her entire show career, Amble has the distinction of winning four World Championships with four different riders and in four different divisions. For each of the riders, it was their first World Championship title. In 1993, she won the Junior Western Pleasure with Shane Dowdy. The next year, Jamie Allen won the Western Pleasure at the Youth World and later that year her mom Cheryl took home top honors in Amateur Western Pleasure. Five years later she won her fourth World Championship with E.H. Pait in the Senior Western Pleasure.
Amble was best known as the little horse with the huge heart. “She wasn’t real big, that’s for sure,” says Kimmel’s daughter, Chris Pearce, “but she had the biggest heart of any horse I’ve ever seen.” She also had a reputation for being incredibly consistent. Spectators would often marvel at how she was the same every time you looked at her. Kimmel recalls that “Her grit and toughness made her special in the pen. When she walked in there, she knew it was time to go to work.”
Kimmel showed her one time at the World Show and it turned out to be the last time she ever showed. “I showed her for the very last time at the World Show in 2001. It was a very tough decision to retire her. We ended up 5th and it was the best ride I ever had with her. She was awesome. She saved the best for the last.”
Amble has produced 11 registered foals and six of them have a performance record. They have earned nearly 700 points and have lifetime earnings of over $20,000. She is most notably the dam of Amblin Impulsion, the 2008 Reserve World
Champion Senior Western Pleasure horse.
Kimmel has many fond memories of Amble but, “The thing I will remember the most was last year when she came home from Colorado State. She was in her stall and I had been out of town. As soon as I walked through the barn door she let out a squeal, just a huge loud squeal like, ‘We are back together again!’ That’s just the way she was and she was like that with my granddaughter Lindsey, too. She loved people. She became a hit out at Colorado State. People would always want to go in her stall and pet her.”
Her loss is measurable to the Quarter Horse industry and to everyone who knew her. “I’m going to miss her,” said a tearful Kimmel. “She was part of our family and I will never forget her. We’ve got around 100 horses at my place, but she was a once in a lifetime horse.”
On behalf of everyone at GoHorseShow.com, we offer our deepest condolences to the Kimmel family and everyone involved throughout this great mare’s career.
