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LILI WEIK PHOTOS What's In A Name? Derek Petersen would showcase his fun-loving, easygoing style by asking Promised Land, the horse who opened the biggest doors of his career in 2004, to buck on cue during their victory gallops. He would spend four years there and meet his future wife, Anita, the sister of a co-worker, in the process. Until she met Derek, she had no interest or background with horses. "I'm very family-orientated, always have been, so I tracked down where my brother was working and went to see him and met my husband!" she says with a laugh. "So I've learned a lot. And now it's just normal; it's all I know." Following their wedding, the pair moved to South Florida and started a small lesson and training business. They lived day-to-day, sale-by-sale, by picking up Thoroughbreds off the track, retraining and selling them. They lived in a barn and slept on a mattress on the floor. "We were so poor!" Anita recalls. "I remember mice and everything and praying, 'Oh God, do something for us, please.' " That something showed up in 2000 in the form of a hulking 17.1-hand, 6-yearold Holsteiner with the grimace-worthy moniker of Lemon Tree. At first glance, nothing about the equitation prospect screamed "special," but Derek sensed something. He'd always believed he had the ability to ride at the grand prix level one day—he just needed the right horse. "I was reading Exodus, about how God had promised Moses he was going to take him to the promised land, and there was this new horse," Derek recalls. "I was told, 'This is going to be the one that's going to take you where you want to go.' So I called him Promised Land, and it turns out he worked out pretty good." "I remember showing up at the West Palm Beach show with this ratty, rusty trailer, and we'd win," Anita recalls with a laugh. "We were nobodies, but it feels good because we worked hard for what we have. We haven't had it handed to us, that's for sure." Derek made it to the grand prix level and then some; aboard the gelding he Derek Petersen's success with Promised Land in 2004 helped his Legacy Farm business snowball, but the gelding's name was also the beginning of a new family tradition. The Petersens have since given countless horses—both sales prospects and products of their own breeding program—biblically inspired monikers. "I'm a deacon at our local church, and it's hard to be on the road a lot and missing church and missing Sundays," Derek admits. "As a deacon, you're supposed to be there, but we figure if we can't be in church, at least we can take church with us. We try to create some conversation by naming the horses John 3:16, Heaven, Promised Land, Leviticus, etc." The naming tradition was in full swing by the time Derek's son Jared got his first horse, Titus 2:11. Like his father, Jared wanted "to spark conversation and get people thinking a bit about God," he says. "I was reading Titus and thought that sounded like a cool name, and then I read verse 2:11, which says, 'For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all people,'" Jared recites from memory. "It doesn't get any truer than that." That said, the Petersens aren't zealots, and they know how to have a little fun. Derek bursts out laughing when asked about a horse listed on his website named Al Pacino. "I bought that horse in Germany and sold it to one of my customers," he says. "Can't do 'em all. Wrong Bible!" C H RO N O F H O R S E .CO M W INTER 2013 43

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