A rising star in the para dressage world, Fortunato H2O has a string of achievements to his credit, including first place in all Grade I tests at the Tryon Summer Dressage CPEDI3*, a win at the Grade I FEI Para Grand Prix A Test, a grand championship at the Devon Breed Show, and a bronze medal at the 2022 Orifarm Health FEI Para

Dressage World Championships. Ridden by Paralympic gold medalist Roxanne Trunnell and his owner Lehua Custer, “Tuna” has had an interesting yet extremely successful career, and at age seven, he’s just getting started. Here are five things to know about the Oldenburg stallion:

1. Owner Lehua Custer found him on Facebook.

Acquiring Tuna was a very ambitious process for Custer. After looking for a horse for two years, she decided to buy him after seeing a picture of him as a newborn on Facebook.

“I was just scrolling through Facebook, sitting on the couch with my roommate, and I just saw that picture, and I said, ‘This is my horse.’ I don't know what struck me,” Custer said. “I didn't know the breeder. I didn't know much about the horse. … I asked if he was for sale and kind of pursued that until I figured out how to get the funds together to purchase him. It took me a month to actually make him mine.”

In addition to the risk involved with not knowing much about Tuna, Custer had to take out a loan from one of her clients to buy him.

“I'd been talking about him like crazy at the barn, and one of my clients said, ‘Listen, I want you to have him, so I will loan you the money,’” Custer said. “Of course, I paid her back, and she's still a very close friend of mine after all these years.”

2. He had some baby moments at first.

Trunnell started riding Tuna when he was six years old, and he still acted like a baby at the start of his training.

“It was common to hear in my lessons that we looked like a drunken sailor,” Trunnell said. “It's just a baby thing; you touch them in the mouth, and they think they are supposed to turn that way immediately. So my first thought was that I was riding a baby again, but the cool thing now is that I know how to ride the tests correctly.”

His childlike behavior makes sense; Tuna got his start as a para-equestrian horse very early, which initially surprised Custer.

“I didn't think that that would be happening anytime soon. I knew he had a really fantastic walk. He just kind of came out that way,” Custer said.

Because of Tuna’s athleticism, Custer commented to the USEF para-equestrian coach that he might make a good para dressage horse one day.

“He was only just coming six at the time. They just said, ‘Well, can we try?’ I was like, ‘Well, I guess I've opened that can of worms. I might as well see how far it goes,’” Custer said.

Luckily, when she started working with Tuna, Trunnell had plenty of elite para-equestrian experience behind her with her famed international mount, Tokyo 2020 Paralympics dual gold medalist Dolton.

“It was a pretty crazy thing to do with a young horse that's also a stallion, but … I'm not one to shy away from a challenge, so I thought to myself, ‘Let’s give it a shot!’” Trunnell said of the decision to train Tuna for para dressage. “With Dolton, my trainer, Andrea Woodard, was having to train Dolton and train me to ride the figures perfectly, so we learned together. With Tuna, I already knew how to ride the tests, so we are able to fully focus on putting it together with me and Tuna without that steep learning curve we had to tackle with Dolton.”

3. He’s a seasoned traveler.

Foaled in New Jersey, Tuna has made several trips across the country, including moving to Florida from California.

“He had to deal with trailering and stabling, and all of that as a foal next to his mom, which I thought was a really great experience,” Custer said. “And then as soon as he was weaned, I elected to have them shipped to California so I can get to know him better and raise him hopefully as a stallion prospect. I ended up flying him with another foal across the country, which was really great,” Custer said. “I didn't know that he was going to be going back and forth across like he has, but I got an opportunity to train and compete in Florida with another horse that I had been training. So I ended up relocating to Florida, and poor Tuna had to follow me.”

While Tuna was initially nervous to travel in a trailer because of his large size, Custer said he’s now a “really good boy” when it comes to traveling.

“He's gotten really fantastic, and now he can't wait to get in the trailer,” she said. “I had to really be patient with him to understand that getting in the trailer would be fine.”

4. He’s adaptable.

Custer is proud of Tuna for his adaptability, and Trunnell appreciates his maturity.

Custer specifically recalled an instance where she rode Tuna at a time when Trunnell usually rode him, and Tuna, thinking Custer was Trunnell, moved in a completely different way, thinking he was adapting to Trunnell’s balance needs.

“When Roxie's on, he's extremely focused on what her aids would be, which are completely different. Her balance is different. Her timing is different,” Custer explained. “He took me through an entire walk pattern and routine that he knew was what was expected of him, even though I was the rider on him. He was trying to fulfill the needs of what he thought was supposed to be happening with Roxie, and it was fascinating to be able to feel the difference.”

Trunnell explained that she has noticed “how he is growing up and turning into a very mature show horse.”

“Just doing a CPEDI3* at Global is a different feeling for a horse, since they have to compete in the stadium separated from the other competition arenas. Horses are herd animals, so to be all alone even for that brief time is hard on a horse, especially a young horse. Tuna has never had a problem with it,” she said. “He just goes into the ring and does his job, and that's that.”

5. He’s an interior decorator who likes a nap.

“He's a big sleeper. He'll lay out, legs straight, head down, out like a light,” Custer said. “And if he's in the middle of a nap and a bomb’s going off outside, he's not going to be bothered by it. The most recent time we were at Devon, you know, they have to be braided a million times, and he would just lay there so we could braid him. No halter, nothing, just napping and just so cute.”

Tuna also has an affinity for rearranging his stall.

“We have to hide his grain tub or he's throwing it out the window all the time,” Custer said. “He tries to create his own little world in his stall, arranging his hay box and his grain tub and all of that. It's just really cute that he definitely has his own routine that he sets and his own way he likes things.”

Will Tuna pass along his personality to a new generation? Very possibly. Thanks to Tuna’s status as a frequently collected breeding stallion, there is a new generation of tiny Tunas on the way.

“He's had three babies in the last three days, and they all look like little, tiny carbon copies of him. They're very, very cute,” Custer said. “That's a fun thing, to see that there's going to be more of him out in the world.”