Standing in a muddy pasture, Sherry Boyd grinned and rubbed the nose of Jasco, a Dutch Warmblood she calls “the foundation” of her horse breeding business.

“Jasco helps support the farm,” she said.

The farm, Kilkenny Crest, is a sport-horse breeding operation located near the Bend Municipal Airport. Kilkenny Crest staff breed and train horses, some of which compete in international competitions. Last year, a Kilkenny horse jumped to a $75,000 victory in the World Cup Grand Prix in Las Vegas.

Jasco is a handsome, personable chestnut stallion who has won at show jumping competitions and has several Grand Prix successes. He’s now retired from competing, but has sired some 50 offspring. One of them recently started training with an Olympic gold medal equestrian.

Boyd originally thought she’d breed horses just so she wouldn’t have to buy them. Her aspirations have grown. “I would love to breed a foal that goes to the Olympics,” she said. “That’s my goal now.”

It’s not unthinkable.

In October, Olympic gold medal equestrian Will Simpson and his wife, Nicole Simpson, an internationally known rider with numerous Grand Prix victories, agreed to train and ride seven Kilkenny Crest horses, including one of Jasco’s offspring. Those horses are boarded in Thousand Oaks, Calif., where the Simpsons live. Boyd pays the Simpsons monthly to ride them.

The Simpsons have been conditioning a couple of Kilkenny horses for the upcoming World Equestrian Game trials in Florida, Nicole said in a phone interview. The World Equestrian Games, held in Kentucky later this year, is the world championship competition for equestrian sports.

The Simpsons are not the first accomplished riders to grace the backs of Kilkenny horses, which speaks to Kilkenny’s place in the equestrian world, according to a February 2009 story in San Diego-based Riding Magazine (ridingmagazine.com).

The Simpsons said Sherry and her husband, Doug Boyd, are enthusiastic and passionate about the sport, and they’re on the cutting edge of breeding.

“They seem to really do everything first class,” said Nicole.

As Sherry pursues her dream of breeding a future champion, she’s creating a lot of really “nice and useful” horses along the way, according to Nicole. Will said the United States needs more breeders like the Boyds so that riders like him don’t have to buy horses from Europe.

Sherry said the higher-level horses typically come from Europe. Some of her horses have been imported, including Jasco.

The breeding business — what would become Sherry’s second career — was seeded when she and Doug bought 20 acres in 1996. Two years later, they bought 20 more acres next door. Now the facilities sit on 60 acres off Nelson Road, and they own another 80 acres nearby for cultivating hay to feed their approximately 50 horses.

Sherry, 60, rode horses as a youngster. She started show jumping — competing only at a local level — at age 45, when her young daughter was into it. She doesn’t compete anymore but still rides, especially horses coming off an injury.

Sherry gets excited when talking about her horses. When two yearlings were playing together in a field, she stopped her conversation, pointed out their cute behavior and beamed like a proud mom. But despite her affection for her horses, it’s clearly a business. Every horse is for sale. She spends her days bookkeeping and marketing, she said.

As Kilkenny Crest grew into a viable breeding and horse-selling business, so did Sherry’s drive to have her horses compete in prestigious equestrian circuits.

“You can’t breed and sell if you’re not out there competing and showing their ability,” she said. A horse is often valued largely on its competitive performance, she said. Hers typically sell for between $10,000 and $250,000.

Sherry, a Bend High School graduate, had a career in nursing research before she returned to Bend and started Kilkenny Crest. She had specialized in parent-child relationships. Now, she said, that still applies to what she does: creating trusting horses from a young age who evolve into easy and pleasant creatures.

The business is harder than her nursing research career was, she said. In this business, there’s no day off. When it’s cold, it’s a constant struggle to keep water running and horses comfortable.

“When I began this business, I didn’t understand the challenges. I just thought I’d breed a few horses. I had Jasco,” she said. “I thought it’d be easier.”

But the challenges don’t appear to dampen her enthusiasm. Over the years, Sherry has watched the quality of her breeding improve, she said, and she’s optimistic.

“Two horses that we bred at Kilkenny Crest … are showing high potential to go all the way,” she said. “We are all very excited.”