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Horse Sense

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By Cheryl  Bentley | The Suncoast News

Published: December 6, 2007

NEW PORT RICHEY FL - NEW PORT RICHEY FL - Cars speed by on busy Massachusetts Avenue, where law offices, a chain drugstore and a pizza parlor tell of modern life.

A few blocks away, horses neigh in their barn stalls.

Sun falls through tall, old trees.

Shoes touch the earth on rugged paths.

It is the New Port Richey of yesteryear, and through Daniel R. Gulbrandsen, it softly holds its own against the encroaching 21st century.

Gulbrandsen still owns 10 acres of a once thousand-acre homestead that his parents bought for as little as 36 cents an acre in the 1930s and 1940s. His Cypress Hollow Ranch is a working horse ranch, with facilities for boarding, training and shoeing horses.

Parents' homestead
His property, north of Massachusetts Avenue, a few blocks from the New Port Richey city limits, was once the western boundary of his parents' homestead.

It roughly extended to the Jay B. Starkey Wilderness Park, on the east. Other boundaries were River Crossing Boulevard on the south and Massachusetts Avenue on the north.

Gulbrandsen lives in a loft above the barn. The barn has nine of his own horses and a few equine boarders. His daughter Shannon Pfaff and her two children Bridget, 7, and Ariel, 9, live with him.

The 67-year-old Gulbrandsen is a farrier, or horseshoer. He found his passion for horses early on in his life on the farm.

He remembers Little Bit. "I kind of grew up on her," he says. He worked cattle with the horse.

By the time he got Little Bit, the 1,000-acre farm, his parents Paul and Hannah had homesteaded, had shrunk. To build a dairy barn, the Gulbrandsens had sold most of their acreage.

"Hard working" is the term Gulbrandsen uses to describe both his parents.

Norwegian immigrant
An immigrant from Norway, his dad was "very strict, not affectionate" and his mom was "more affectionate, but hard working."

Gulbrandsen's overriding memory about growing up is working hard. "I didn't have much of a childhood," he says.

Foxes, black panthers, turkey, deer, tortoises and bobcats were among the animals Gulbrandsen regularly saw as a child.

From the time he was 7 years old, he worked "from daylight to dark" milking the family's 200 cows and doing numerous farm chores.

Saturday nights were the family's fun time. Gulbrandsen had three brothers and a sister, now all deceased. They went in a wagon to a movie at the Vogue, now the Richey Suncoast Theatre, on Grand Boulevard, in downtown New Port Richey.

It cost 10 cents to get in, and 5 cents for popcorn, Gulbrandsen says.

Not developed
The area between their home and the city had not been developed.

"It was mostly woods to New Port Richey," he recalls.

Along with Little Bit, Gulbrandsen had other equine buddies.

He recalls them by name. A favorite, Texas Twister "would run his heart out for you and loved it." Gulbrandsen still has a picture of himself at the age of 25 barrel racing with Texas Twister.

He went to Pierce Elementary School, now the site of the New Port Richey Public Library, and later Gulf High School, as did his wife, the late Cherie McCray.

Cherie was not a farm girl, "but she became one," Gulbrandsen said. Along with daughter Shannon, the Gulbrandsens had a son Douglas.

The couple later divorced.

Attended farrier school
Gulbrandsen worked on his parents' diary farm until he was about 30 when he attended farrier school to follow his passion working with horses. He established his ranch in 1970.

The closest the usually laconic Gulbrandsen gets to showing emotion is when he talks about horses. "I love them," he says.

He tends to horses from Brooksville to Palm Harbor shoeing the animals and trimming their hooves.

There are enough horses in the area to keep him busy. "It's still a good business," he observes.

What does he think of "The Horse Whisperer," the book and movie about a man who was able to calm traumatized horses by communicating sensitively to them?

At first, Gulbrandsen describes it as "a lot of bull," but later acknowledges he agrees with much of the horse whisperer philosophy.

Believes in firmness
But he also believes in firmness when horses try to take charge from humans.

"You get results horse whispering to a certain point as long as the horse is gentle with you."

He describes a horse he got about a year ago who "hardly had felt a human hand."

Through gentle contact, the animal has lost its fear of him, he says.
"You get a lot more done with honey than vinegar," he notes.
Gulbrandsen leads his feisty champion stallion Kid McClu out of his stall. The Appaloosa Horse Club in Moscow, Idaho, has named the horse reserved world champion at halter, and supreme champion color at halter.

Horses' personalities
Gulbrandsen continues walking, appearing to pay the animal no attention when he starts tugging on the reins. A few seconds later, Kid McClu is walking calmly beside him. The other horses begin neighing when Gulbrandsen leads Kid McClu back to his stall.

"It's a neighborhood, just like when you walk down the street," Shannon laughs while talking about the barn. "You have your busybody and your recluse."

Gulbrandsen, the man who had no free time as a child, manages to get in some down time these days by attending church socials at the First Baptist Church in New Port Richey.

"I've been going there since I was knee high to a grasshopper," he says. Four generations of Gulbrandsens have attended that church.

But just as when he was a boy, country life demands commitment.

Gulbrandsen says he is kept busy mowing grass, weeding and trimming his property's numerous trees.

He will stay on his land as long as he is able to care for it.
"I always say I was born and raised here and will probably die here."

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