Meet your new AQHA president.

Johannes and Astrid stand Fritz Power, a son of Fritz Command, in Germany. Fritz Power is the all-time leading sire of the German Quarter Horse Association.

Devoted, knowledgeable and passionate. These are all words you could use to describe Johannes Orgeldinger in the American Quarter Horse industry. Through years of commitment to the breed and serving as an AQHA Executive Committee member, Johannes has earned his way to the top. He is your new AQHA president. Let’s get to know him a little better.

Johannes Orgeldinger has had horses as long as he can remember. He grew up riding with his friends on trails through the German countryside where he lived, and then graduated to jumping competition. Horses were something he really enjoyed, so in 1975, he attended a big horse fair in Essen, Germany.

Equitana, it was called, and at that time, it was the largest horse fair in the world. Exhibitions of all kinds showed off the many different breeds, but one that Johannes took a particular interest in was a demonstration by a trainer from California of some American Quarter Horses. There were almost no Quarter Horses in Germany at that time, and Johannes was attracted by the animals’ versatility in the demonstrations. However, he was also attracted by the saddle that the trainer rode. Other than in the movies, it was the first time he had seen a horse ridden with a western stock saddle.

The following summer, Johannes spent six weeks with the trainer in California. The next year, he bought his first Quarter Horse and brought him back to Germany. He also brought back a western saddle.

“That was the beginning of my involvement in the Quarter Horse industry,” Johannes says. “I started working with that horse, and then some friends and I started importing some others. We just continued to grow after that.”

Part of the reason he was able to grow in the industry was due to some Quarter Horse breeders in Alberta, Canada.

“Some of the larger Quarter Horse breeders in Alberta, back in the ’70s, had European backgrounds,” Johannes says, “and they brought 10 horses to another of the Equitana shows. I bought one of those horses and ended up developing a really close relationship with some of those breeders.”

During the next 10 to 12 years, Johannes spent a lot of time in Alberta. He went on trail rides in the Rocky Mountains, he visited friends, and he looked at lots of horses. But his primary mission was buying horses and importing them to Germany.

“There was a period in there where about 300 horses were imported to Germany,” Johannes says, “and not just to Germany, but all over Europe. We put on the first Quarter Horse sale in Europe and had a sale for five years in a row. But before long, we bought all the horses they had to sell in Alberta. So we started buying horses in the United States, especially in the Dallas and Oklahoma City areas, because that’s where the highest concentration was.”

Johannes says that he and his friends were sending so many horses to Europe that they had a problem with quarantining them in order to satisfy all the regulations for importing livestock into Germany. At times, they had 50 to 60 head going, and there was no place to quarantine that many. To satisfy the requirements, he bought a horse farm just outside of Gainesville, Texas, named it Main River Quarter Horses – for the river that runs alongside his farm in Germany – and set it up as a quarantine station. Requirements met, they continued to ship horses to Europe.

JOMM Ranches

In 1979, Johannes built his Quarter Horse farm near Grosswallstadt at the site of a gravel pit that he and his father had excavated and then refilled as a part of their gravel and stone business, Orgeldinger KG. It consists of an indoor and outdoor arena, a number of stalls, a round pen, breeding facility and lab, and pastures and paddocks. In the beginning, two different trainers – Lyle Jackson and Michael Marquart – worked out of the farm, and its name, JOMM Ranches, is a combination of Johannes’ and Marquart’s initials.

“Many of the trainers in Germany today actually came here to work and learn with Lyle and Michael,” Johannes says.

When Johannes and other Quarter Horse owners first started showing their horses in Germany, it was under the auspices of the Western Riding Club. AQHA rules were followed, but the shows were not yet approved by the Association, and they were open to all breeds. But in 1979, German Quarter Horse owners had their first AQHA-approved show.

“I’ll never forget it,” Johannes says. “Back then, everyone wanted to own a stud, and we all showed our studs in the halter class. Dr. Barry Wood came over from the United States to judge the show, and about 20 years later I saw a copy of the report he turned in to AQHA. He said that it was a really nice show, the food was good, the people were really nice, but in the stud class, he was worried for his life.

“And I was one of them,” Johannes says, laughing. “All these studs were running around on their hind legs, fighting each other. We had no clue.”

But they learned, and in 1982, Johannes helped start the European Championship, which became one of the top five Quarter Horse shows in the world in numbers of entries.

In addition to halter, Johannes showed horses in trail, reining, cutting and western pleasure. He made several European champions, as did his wife, Astrid, who was the first amateur versatility champion in Europe.

Johannes and Astrid met at a Quarter Horse show in Bern, Switzerland – Astrid’s home – and they got married in the United States immediately after the 1990 AQHA Convention.

“Everything with the Quarter Horse,” Johannes says, grinning.

Johannes has shown a number of good horses through the years, including some stallions that they have shown and then stood at JOMM Ranches.

“In the mid-’80s, everyone showed in everything,” Johannes says. “We didn’t have any specialized riders or horses. Maybe we had a pretty good reining horse, but we also showed him in halter, western pleasure and trail.”

Jae Bar Fox was a stallion by Doc’s Jack Spratt that they showed in nearly all the events, including reining and western riding, and then they bought Desperado Malbec by Doc’s Malbec by Doc Bar.

“We showed him a lot in cutting,” Johannes says, “but he also did really well in pleasure in some big shows.”

Their next stallion was AQHA Champion Demand Deposit by The Invester. He was a great western pleasure horse, earning 143 points in the event, but he also did well at halter.

“Before we bought him, John Hoyt showed him in cow horse, and Mike Moser showed him in western riding and pleasure,” Johannes says.

And then came Fritz Power, a son of Fritz Command out of a daughter of Beau Bonanza. Fritz Power has a Superior in reining and has qualified for senior reining and senior working cow horse at the World Show three different times. Fritz Power is the all-time leading sire of the German Quarter Horse Association, and he currently stands at JOMM Ranches.

The farm in Gainesville is no longer needed as much as a quarantine facility, so it has become a part of Johannes’ breeding program. Under the direction of farm manager Dick Herr, Johannes keeps about 10 top broodmares that he breeds primarily to reining and cutting stallions in the United States, and sells the foals.

Johannes and Astrid have now backed off on their showing and have pretty well limited their hands-on Quarter Horse activities to the breeding barn, although Astrid says she would still like to show a reining horse, and she goes to some cuttings when they are in Gainesville.

AQHA

Johannes has always been a supporter of AQHA and realized early the value of having approved shows in Europe. He is a founder of the German Futurity and Maturity and continues to work very closely with those events yet today, and he was a committee member of the Federation Equestre Internationale, the governing body for the World Equestrian Games. Johannes is discipline manager for reining in the games. In addition, he hosts an AQHA show at JOMM Ranches each year.

His farm has hosted every AQHA judges qualifying exam in Europe, going back to the late 1980s, and until he cut back on his operation there, he furnished all the horses that were used in the exam.

Johannes has been a member of the board of directors of the German Quarter Horse Association for more than 25 years and served as both president and vice president of that organization. He was elected to the AQHA Board of Directors in 1996, has served on the stud book and registration and nomination and credentials committees, and was a member of the Affiliate Council. He became the first person from an international country to be elected to the AQHA Executive Committee.

When asked whether he had any particular goals he wanted to accomplish during his tenure on the Executive Committee, he grinned and said that he had probably better get more accustomed to how business was handled before he set any goals to accomplish. He did, however, say that there was tremendous potential for the Quarter Horse in many of the international countries and that he would like to see the Association work toward developing that potential.

“I think that if we can develop a program where we can get the smaller countries interested in the Quarter Horse, help them develop an activity where they can play, show, race and trail ride, that it will be a tremendous boost for AQHA,” he says. “But it’s very important that when we do something, we follow up. It doesn’t do any good to go somewhere and show them how good the Quarter Horse is and never come back.”

But Johannes is not interested strictly in the international segment of the industry. He says he also wants to learn more about Quarter Horse racing – “because I come from the showing side of the industry” – and he is particularly interested in the history of the Quarter Horse and how the industry as we know it today started with the rancher.

“I know how good those ranch horses have to be,” he says. “They aren’t specialized in anything, but they can do it all. I have lots of respect for them.”

And they are ridden with a western saddle.