Team & the Ranch
Team
Dr. Chantal Spleiss
Chantal Spleiss owns the Rocking Wolf Ranch since 2005. She bought her first Quarter Horse in 1998 in Canada and rode with the amazing mare Angel from a village outside Toronto called Caledon East all the way to Manitoulin Island. When Chantal started the trip she had no experience with horses at all but she met along the way many great and helpful people and learnt her share about horses. The best teacher was Angel herself and she will always be dearly remembered! After the trip, Chantal returned to Switzerland, where she was born and raised. In 2004 she travelled with her Quarter Horse mare Shyenne from Zurich, Switzerland to Castagneto, Italy. Again, Shyenne was an incredible teacher of so many things that escape any wordly description but stamps one's soul.
While any rider but especially a trail rider is well aware of the fact that the horse and not the paper is ridden, Chantal's passion are pedigrees. She studies pedigrees since 1999 and her first book will be published in 2019: "Pedigree Patterns of Thoroughbreds and The Theory Behind". Please visit MagicMatchGenetics or join the FB group!
She graduated in 1997 with a Master of Science in Biochemistry and in 2005 with a PhD in Technical Sciences both from the Swiss Federal Insitute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland.
Lisa Mayer
Lisa Mayer joined the team in 2012 and became head trainer at the Rocking Wolf Ranch in 2017. She trains and shows the horses and always strives to better her methods! Lisa also helps out on the ranch with breeding, foaling and doctoring horses as well as handling the cattle. The disussions with her about bloodlines and breeding theories are most valuable! Lisa started out showing our former herd sire, Ka Cee Smoker, and advanced to his son, RVVR Vanquish, who is more athletic. She now rides a range of ranch, cutting and speed bred horses with Paldur Puff and RVVR Mira Bell being her two main NRCHA show mares for 2019.
She earned AQHA Open Performance Points and qualified our horses three times in a row for the NRCHA Celebration of Champions (2016, 2017, 2018)! In February 2019 she placed in the TOP TEN in the Finals of the Ltd Open Bridle at the NRCHA Celebration of Champions!
Lisa was born and raised in Austria where she completed her formal vocational education in confectionary.
Rocking Wolf Ranch
The area was settled around 1900 when the house and the barn were built. The ranch was later on owned by George and Gerty Golem and in 1951 Bill Cooke bought the ranch for $6000. From 2000 - 2005 it was shortly owned by a couple who mainly renovated the house. When I bought it in 2005, the ranch was still referred to as the Cooke Farm.
