A New Partnership: VS The Fireman and Ingrid Miller Quarter Horses, LLC
Photo: courtesy of bar H Photography/Pro Horse Services
By Delores Kuhlwein
The VS Dispersal Sale on August 9, 2023, was indeed an historic evening for the entire stock horse industry. The Glover Galyean family made the announcement of the dispersal on July 1st of their plans to disperse their “World and Congress Champion stallions who carry on the bloodlines of the legendary Vital Signs Are Good as the family horse business moves their focus to their successful cutting horse breeding and training operation.”
The family held the sale at their ranch, Wes and Kristen Galyean Quarter Horses, in Claremore, Oklahoma, on August 9th, 2023. In their usual gracious manner, the family announced in advance that a portion of every horse sold in the VS Dispersal would be donated to the Walquist family benefit.
As the sale approached, bidders who couldn’t attend in person also registered online to place their bids for the 26 lots handled by Pro Horse Services LLC.
The impact of the Vital Signs Are Good line on the industry is already immeasurable, so when the hammer fell on the first lot, VS The Fireman, the 2019 Red Roan Stallion by Machine Made and out of VS Lady In Red (by VS Code Red), the stunning price of $2.25 million was the final number, and the buyer of the Multiple World and Congress Champion was Ingrid Miller of Arizona, of Ingrid Miller Quarter Horses LLC.
Viewers went wild – they were already crazy for the red roan stallion that carries on the VS legacy, and his sale video that showed him loping and changing leads with Aaron Moses had gone viral.
The Interview
Bob and Ingrid Miller at 2023 Scottsdale Arizona Sun Circuit
When The Equine Chronicle finally caught up to Ingrid Miller, her joy – and disbelief – at acquiring “Gronk” was evident.
“I started showing horses in the sixties and it has been a slow grind up the hill,” she laughs. “My first horse when I was twelve was Trixie, and we went everywhere either at a jig or at a dead run. We’ve come a long way, baby. I have also had some very wonderful horses, and I’m honored to have him.”
Ingrid adds, “I’m thrilled that my husband and I have achieved enough in our lives to have “Gronky.” We were married in 1973, and in December 2023 we’ll have been married 50 years. We started off going to college together, and we lived on $40 a week! So we have climbed a pinnacle that we can afford to have the honor of owning Gronky.”
She says the story about how it all came to be is kind of funny, because everyone who knows her well also knows she’s not very computer savvy, nor is she that interested in it, and her family knows they have to call her husband to talk to her because she never knows where her phone is.
She was sitting down in the family room and saw an ad for the dispersal sale, and she had asked her trainer, Anthony Montes of Vickery Performance Horses, about the sale, and they decided they would talk about it when she came to their place at the end of the week. “This was about three weeks before the sale, but I didn’t know if the sale was still happening or if it had happened last year,” she jokes.
So the end result after they met was that they put together Ingrid Miller Quarter Horses LLC just a few weeks before the sale. The next thing she knew, Gronky was hers.
“I’ve only met Gronky a couple of times, of course, we’ve watched him and just drooled before that,” she reveals. “He’s just nice to be around, not very studdy, and my hopes are in the future after he’s more mature that maybe I could show him a little bit.”
“Gronk” is out of VS Lady In Red (by VS Code Red), and that inspired his name, since “Code Red” is a fire code.
Ingrid explains she’s leaving the stud with Aaron and he’s going to show him in the Pleasure, and Anthony Montes will show him in the Western Riding. “He’s going to be in joint training – one hoof with Aaron and one with Anthony. He’s going to stay in the same program – he changes leads extremely well, and Anthony will just put more polish on that; Anthony just loves all the horses, and both Bruce and Anthony do.”
She explains the first time she saw VS The Fireman, they’d gone to Anthony and Bruce’s to see Aaron ride him, and then Aaron rode him bridleless. She adds that when Aaron jumped off and took Gronky’s bridle off, he followed Aaron like a dog. “Why would you ever break that up?”
“I am going to teach him how to eat an apple,” she continues, “and I hope to have a lot of little firemen coming along. I have a really nice mare named Cool Movin Lady, (aka Valentine, also a roan) and we have great hopes for her – she’s going to be his wife and we’ll have a lot of little roans.”
As one can imagine, she’s over the moon and everything is just starting to sink in. “We’re pretty excited about it,” she reveals. “It was very surreal for me, and when I got to the NSBA World Show in Tulsa, I was like – this is real!”
The Miller Family entering the Parade of Heroes at the 2023 Sun Circuit
When asked if there was anything else she’d like to add, her mind and her heart immediately went to others – as many know, Bob and Ingrid sponsor the NSBA Foundation Heroes on Horses at the Scottsdale Arizona Sun Circuit, and support for veterans along with first responders is a cause they champion regularly.
She asks for others to consider supporting veterans and first responders because it’s very important to honor them. One of their favorite causes is Tunnel To Towers Foundation, which she encourages people to look up and support. “It’s for first responders and veterans who have given their lives and their families have been without them, or they’ve been catastrophically injured,” she explains.
The charitable organization was “founded in tribute to New York Fire Department firefighter Stephen Siller, who died on September 11, 2001, during the September 11 attacks,” according to Tunnel to Towers. Since that time, their goal is to provide mortgage-free homes to Gold Star and “fallen first responder families with young children and by building specially-adapted smart homes for catastrophically injured veterans and first responders. We are also committed to eradicating veteran homelessness and helping America to Never Forget September 11, 2001.”
Ingrid has this to say: “They ran out of the tunnel and into the towers and many of them didn’t come back. We need to honor these heroes and keep that out there, because without them we would never be able to do these frivolous things we do,” she says.
Find Tunnel to Towers here: https://t2t.org/
The official press release for the VS Dispersal Sale: https://www.equinechronicle.com/vs-dispersal-sale-press-release/
