Paddock School of Horsemanship

12/02/2023

Blast from the past. Enjoy!

07/26/2023

Blast from the past

07/28/2022

FOR SALE: Beautiful 17.0 hand, 15 year old Friesian/Percheron gelding for sale.

Sweet and gentle disposition, in your pocket type of guy. He adores people, loves to be groomed, bathed, and handled. Stands like a gentleman on the cross-ties and easy to handle.

Cary is trained to drive and ride. He is 100% sound without any history of lameness or illness. He is barefoot.

Asking $3000 for Cary

Willing to sell the carriage and his harnesses with him or separately.

Marathon Carriage (single or double) $5,000
Two harnesses: one heavy duty, leather farm harness, and one Biotech driving harness: $800

If you have any questions or are interested, please contact Tom directly instead of sending any messages through here.

Tom: 507-775-6818

07/28/2022

07/26/2022

07/26/2022

Can you name these horses?

12/25/2020

Merry Christmas to you and your family.

11/30/2020

In her late 20's my mom, Leah Allert, left Merrywood Farm in Forest Lake and moved to Rochester to begin her stable. She started The Paddock School of Horsemanship in 1967 and rented a couple of different stables to run, including Cairnbrae and Mayo Wood. After a couple of years and with rent increasing exponentially, she decided that it was time to have her own place, and she knew what she wanted in a property.

After talking to a couple of different realtors, one realtor mentioned a property for sale and gave her the address: R1 Box 111 Byron, Minnesota. She drove out to look at it and instantly fell in love with the property. Over the next few days, she would spend her lunch breaks there, sitting in her green truck, parked on the shoulder of the field road entrance overlooking the bare land. Each day as she did this, she visualized what she would do with the property.

One day while in Apache Mall, my mom was shopping in J.C. Penney when the power went out. The young clerk working at the time told the customers that she could complete the transaction for anyone who had the exact change. No one except for my mom had the exact change, so she went up to the register to make her purchase. The young clerk and my mom began talking, and the conversation quickly went to horses. The young clerk was horse crazy and enjoyed talking with my mom, so this conversation was very natural.

A few days later, while my mom was parked in the field road entrance in her green truck eating lunch, a vehicle pulled up behind her. A gentleman stepped out and asked what she was doing. She said she was told this property was for sale, and she was sitting there looking at it. He told her that he owned the property, and it was not for sale.

That evening, the gentleman was having supper with his family, and he told them of the woman, sitting in the green truck eating her lunch and who thought the property was for sale. His daughter quickly realized that it was the same woman she met in J.C. Penney and adamantly told her father that he should sell it to that woman.
Later that spring, that man, whose name was Wayne Hoffman, and his family sold the property at R1 Box 111 to my mom.

When my mom moved out to the present-day Paddock, no buildings or pastures existed. With one of her students' help, she put every fence post around the property's perimeter by hand. She did not meet my dad or get married until several years later. Within the first year, she had the indoor arena built and made an outdoor riding ring.

She lived in the basement of the house across the road, which she rented from Hoffman's for the first year. She eventually bought a white & red mobile home onto the property. My parents met in the late '70s when my dad took Horsemanship through the college, which my mom ran. They got married in 1979, and I was born a couple of years later. In 1987 they built the stable and the clubroom, and in 1989 they built the house. My mom dedicated her entire life to horses. Her focus was to enable her students to safely and knowledgeably work with horses. My parents dug every fence post hole, built every fence line, and every jump, making it into the place that my mom envisioned while parked in the field road, in her green truck eating her sack lunch.

Before my mom's passing in 2017, she had not retired. But in her later years, she and my dad would talk about would look like when she eventually did. As my mom put it: "I've worked with thousands of students and horses in the last fifty years and feel very grateful to have built my life around horses and teaching. This is above and beyond any expectations I ever had."

Well, that time has come, and I want to formally announce (although many already know) that we have sold the property. My dad and I spent this last weekend finishing up a couple of items around the place and ended with taking down the Paddock's sign.

This is the beginning of a new chapter for both my dad and me. We are both sad because we will not be making new memories at The Paddock and because The Paddock and my mom were one and the same. But we are also excited about the adventures that await both of us. We are forever grateful to Wayne and Margaret Hoffman and their kids for their kindness and for taking a chance at selling the property to my mom. -Aynsley Allert

11/30/2020

Leah Allert, Frank Fleishacker Sr. and Mr. McCabe in the last 50's or early 60's at a horse show. (From Merrywood Farm's photos)

11/05/2020

Beautiful evening for lessons outside

10/04/2020

1979

10/04/2020

1978

10/04/2020

1977

10/04/2020

Many of those who were around pre-1990 will remember Helmer Underberg

10/04/2020

Traveling back in time almost 40 years...