By Karen Smith

Rugged Lark and Carol Harris unwind at Bo-Bett Farm in Ocala, Fla. Photo courtesy of Carol Harris

American Quarter Horse Association (AQHA) two-time Superhorse Rugged Lark died Oct. 26, 2004, at the age of 23. Take a look back at three strong and adventurous women and how their lives, dreams and philosophies converged in the handsome bay stallion.

The story begins 60 years ago when a pretty, headstrong teenager named Bobbi Steele crept out the back door of her family's Illinois farmhouse to run away with a traveling rodeo. In the rodeo, the horse-crazy teen learned trick riding along with the fine art of jumping steers over six-foot fences. A few years later, she left the rodeo to pursue a childhood dream: joining the circus.

Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey at that time employed a number of sophisticated European trainers to work with the valuable animals that performed in the big-top acts. One of these trainers, Capt. William Hyer, was a German dressage rider who set up riding lessons for Steele and 20 other female circus employees. Only Steele stuck it out, and a few years later she was doing High-School movements, such as piaffe, passage and pirouettes, aboard circus horses under the big top.

In the 1940s, Steele left Ringling Brothers and toured the country, living with her own horses in a rebuilt refrigerator truck. She gave exhibitions of advanced dressage movements, done to music--probably the first dressage kurs performed in North America. She played such high-class venues as Madison Square Garden and the Royal Winter Fair, as well as the usual run of small-town fairs, circuses and carnivals.

Touted as "the only woman in the world today to practice the difficult and exacting art of dressage," Steele was written up in Life magazine in the summer of 1943. She eventually settled down in the outskirts of Sarasota, Fla., in a subdivision of 2 1/2-acre hobby farms where she could keep a few horses.

Eleven-year-old Lynn Salvatori leaned on the handlebars of her bike and stared from a distance at her neighbor's shining horses, immaculate red barn and fresh white fences. It took some months to overcome her shyness, but one day the child gathered her courage and walked through the gate. The year was 1963, and it marked the beginning of a career that would take a horse-crazy middle-class kid from the suburbs to heights she couldn't even begin to imagine.

Bobbi Steele took the child under her wing, teaching her the dressage fundamentals that she had been building on for years. Salvatori became the daughter that Steele had never had, the heir to the riding and training knowledge that she had amassed.

It wasn't always fun as the child struggled with difficult balance and coordination exercises. Her instructor made her work hard and challenged her to do better. But Salvatori was eager to learn, idolizing Steele and emulating her as much as possible.

Here, Salvatori got her first experience with bridleless training and at-liberty work. But she also spent long hours working on the elements of the classical school of riding. After she had ridden for Steele for six years, she began competing in dressage at fourth level under Steele's tutelage. By that time, Salvatori was determined that her life's work would be with horses.

To achieve that end, Salvatori knew she needed to continue her equestrian education. In 1970, she talked her parents into sending her to Golden Hills Academy, a private school in Florida that had a riding program. Salvatori made friends with a classmate named Allison Winans whose mother owned Bo-Bett Farm, a big Thoroughbred and Quarter Horse operation near Ocala, Fla.

Leaning back against a solid fence rail, Carol Harris, Allison's mother, surveyed her farm, Bo-Bett, a 350-acre spread on prime Ocala land featuring five immaculate barns and a training track.

On this day, her attention was drawn to an 8-month-old bay colt grazing in a nearby paddock. At the time, Harris was looking for a buyer for the colt, who was a son of Harris' Thoroughbred stallion Really Rugged and the champion Quarter Horse mare Alisa Lark; the Striegels, who owned Alisa Lark and her colt, had wanted a filly. Harris eyed the little fellow intently. There was just something about him, his fine neck and head, the big, soft, intelligent eye--something special. He seemed to be looking right at her.

A few days later, Harris was hit with a sudden realization: "For months I had been traveling the country looking for a stud that would be a good outcross for my breeding program. Meanwhile I was helping the Striegels look for a buyer for the Alisa Lark colt," says Harris. "Finally, I literally woke up in the middle of the night and said to myself, 'Why am I looking all over the world for a stud when I have this colt on my own farm?' It was like that old saying about 'acres of diamonds in your own backyard.' When it finally hit me, I couldn't wait for morning."