When your trainer describes your horse as “great-minded, beautiful and elegant,” there’s obviously cause for celebration.

So, it goes without saying that Elizabeth Jakovich is eager for the 2020 show season to open back up so she can hit the pen again with her beautiful 3-year-old gray mare, Helloo Gorgeous.

It’s been a long time in the making, and it seems Jakovich and Helloo Gorgeous were just getting started when the Corvid-19 pandemic shut everything – including all horse shows – down.

“My first show was the Arizona Sun Circuit where I ended up Circuit Champion in the L1 Amateur Hunter Under Saddle,” she explained. “I planned to compete at the AQHA Level 1 Central Championships in Oklahoma City in April. Sadly, that did not happen.”

Jakovich’s trainer, Alyse Roberts, raised Helloo Gorgeous (Stormy), sired by Allocate Your Assets and out of Roberts’ own mare, Tribal Dancer.

“I knew right away she was special,” she said. “She was so pretty, sweet and a nice mover right away.”

It was hard waiting for the stunning filly with the incredibly easy-going attitude to grow up enough to get her under saddle.

“I put 30 days on her in February of her 2-year-old year and then I turned her back out,” she explained.

Roberts was not looking to sell the incredibly easy-going filly but when Jakovich asked about her in April, Roberts agreed because she would get to keep Helloo Gorgeous in her own training program.

“The first time I saw Stormy she was a weanling in Alyse’s pasture,” Jakovich said. “I loved her as soon as I saw her but, at the time, I wasn’t looking for a new horse.”

Elizabeth, her husband, Brett, and sons, Cole and Kellen live in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where Brett, an F18 pilot with the United States Navy, is stationed. Elizabeth met Roberts in 2017 when, while awaiting the arrival of her youngest son, she sent the Oklahoma trainer a Paint mare to finish.

Then in April of 2019, shortly after Brett was deployed, Elizabeth took a trip to Alyse’s place, just outside Purcell, Oklahoma, and rode the mare for the first time.

“As soon as I rode her I knew I had to have her,” Elizabeth recalls. “I remember sending my husband an email telling him we needed to make an offer on her and that she was ‘the one.’ Thankfully, he is 200% supportive of this horse habit of mine and said, ‘If she’s the one, make it happen.’ To this day, we call her a deployment present!”

Ironically, the name “Helloo Gorgeous” was Brett’s idea.

“When my husband and I started dating he always started his texts and emails to me with ‘Helloo Gorgeous,” Elizabeth explained. “After 12 years together, multiple deployments and training detachments, he still says this to me, so when we bought her it was his idea to change her name to ‘Helloo Gorgeous.’”

All along, Roberts has had one goal – to let the mare’s natural talent come out.

“She has been a rock star right from day one,” Roberts said. “She never says no and she learns very quickly.”

Roberts took Helloo Gorgeous to the National Snaffle Bit Association’s World Championship Show last year and says the mare was competitive but she needed some more time to grow and mature, so she and Elizabeth decided to turn her out for the rest of the year.

Stormy wasn’t shown again until the Arizona Sun Circuit early this year where Roberts said she was very competitive in the Level 1 Open Hunter Under Saddle with her and helped Elizabeth win the Circuit Championship in Level 1 Amateur Hunter Under Saddle.

“Her strengths are her fluid, pretty movement coupled with an incredibly easy going, willing attitude,” Roberts said. “What sets her apart is her balanced gaits, both at the trot and the canter, and of course she is such a looker.”

Roberts and Jakovich hope to get to show Helloo Gorgeous at the NSBA World Championship Show in August and at the Quarter Horse Congress in October. She is also eligible for the Premier Sires classes, currently scheduled for May 27-31 in Lexington, Kentucky.

“I look forward to Elizabeth showing at the Quarter Horse Congress as it will be her first time to show there,” Roberts said. “She has so many strengths. She is a pretty rider with nice quiet hands and a great feel.  She loves to have fun, but when she enters the show pen, she’s all business.”

In fact, Alyse says Elizabeth has a work ethic like no other.

“She is a mother to two incredible young boys, her husband is in the military and has had long deployments,” Roberts said. “She doesn’t miss a beat.  We all like to call her Superwoman.”

That work ethic has followed Jakovich her whole life. She has been involved with horses for as long as she can remember. In fact, she says she was born into it as her mother has always bred and raised APHA horses.

“I started showing on the Hunter Jumper Circuit in Michigan where I grew up,” she explained. “Eventually I decided I wanted to show Paints and have been competing at APHA events since I was 14.

In 2012, Jakovich owned Agent Dinozzo, a then 2-year-old gelding that she had in training with John Yarnelle, of Fort Wayne, Indiana.

“I rode him in the 2-Year-Old Non-Pro Western Pleasure Sweepstakes at the APHA World Show and we ended up Sweepstakes Champions,” she said. “And, Randy Wilson rode him to a Championship in the Farnam 2-Year Old Western Pleasure.”

But a few years ago, Jakovich decided she wanted to make the switch to Quarter Horses, which is why she chose Roberts to finish that 3-year-old Big Sensation mare she sent her in 2017.

“We showed the Big Sensation mare her 3- and 4-year and then we sold her to a youth girl,” Roberts recalled. “They make an adorable team.”

Jakovich knew once her Paint mare was sold that her next partner would be a Quarter Horse and Helloo Gorgeous has turned out to be just what she was hoping for.

“I’ve always had dreams of owning a Quarter Horse and showing at the Sun Circuit and the Quarter Horse Congress,” she said.

Other than showing at the Congress, Jakovich says there are no long-term goals. She just wants to focus on her horse.

“I kind of just want to enjoy the ride with her and not overthink it,” she said.

Roberts thinks that’s a good plan.

“She really is special,” she said. “Maybe down the road, she will carry on the bloodlines as a broodmare.”

When she is not practicing or at a show Elizabeth stays busy raising her two boys, who she says shares her love for Helloo Gorgeous.

“They actually claim Stormy as theirs and call her ‘Storm Trooper,” she said.

Work also demands a lot of Jakovich’s time. She owns and operates Jakovich Marketing, a graphic design and marketing firm for small business and the horse industry.

“I started doing freelance design work after my husband and I got married,” Jakovich explained. “We move around quite a bit so I decided that working from home would be a good fit. I have been in business for 10-plus years. I love my job. I have some of the absolute best clients that truly give me creative freedom to have some fun.”

That connection to people in the horse industry has proved invaluable to Jakovich over the years and especially in the past year while her husband was deployed.“This last year with my husband being deployed was probably one of the hardest,” she said. “He was extended four times and set the record for the longest nuclear powered aircraft carrier deployment ever. The horse community really helped me stay strong through it. It was truly amazing the number of people in the horse community that reached out and just said ‘hey, we are praying for you.’ Such a little gesture made all the difference and it’s something I will always remember and for which I will be grateful.”