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Christmas Pony 2025

The Michigan Hoof Beat is celebrating one lucky kid and her Christmas pony.

Karen Hopper Usher

— 2 min read
Christmas Pony 2025

What's more precious than gemstones? Kids and their ponies, of course. The Michigan Hoof Beat is celebrating one lucky kid and her Christmas pony.

Smiling 9-year-old girl in a speckled purple and black coat wearing a white hat with the word "MERRY" in multicolor lettering poses to the right of a chestnut horse with a star and a wide snip against an indoor background of wood planks.
Photo courtesy of Melissa Rinke

Lucy Rinke, age 9, of Plymouth, welcomed Leo's Double Eyed Jewel home in time for Christmas, writes mother Melissa Rinke.

"We had been searching for our first horse for a few months when Leo’s Double Eyed Jewel, aka Jewel, came into our lives," writes Melissa.

Girl, about the same height as the horse's muzzle when the head is lifted, tilts her head upward to kiss the muzzle of a chestnut horse wearing a light green halter, in cross ties; girl on left, horse on right, both in profile.
Photo courtesy of Melissa Rinke

The Rinkes are care-leasing Jewel, a 22-year-old mare who produced one colt of her own in 2011, Rinke says.

Chestnut horse with a star and a wide snip sticks her tongue out in red-and-green cross ties while wearing a light green halter and a red bow around her neck. The horse is facing the right side of the picture and the photo is angled slightly.
Photo courtesy of Melissa Rinke

Jewel is being boarded at a farm in Ypsilanti and "will be the perfect horse for our 4-H adventures," Rinke wrote in a December email to The Michigan Hoof Beat.

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