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Harmony Acres Horse Featured in Japanese TV Special on Amazing Animals
Parade and trick horse Harmony Tarifa impresses foreign visitors

The Japanese TV Film Production Company Global Photo Associates flew five members from Tokyo and two from California to film Harmony Tarifa of Salem, Mi. doing tricks for an upcoming special two hour television special to be aired in Tokyo, Japan on March 31 from 7 to 9 PM. The program, entitled Pets and Animals "Pochi-Tama"---- Amazing Animals around the World will be featuring a cat, dog, and Tarifa an Arabian horse from Harmony Acres on TV Tokyo. The purpose of the show is to introduce amazing animals around the world, as well as animal and pet care programs. The shows contain interviews with professionals, pets and their owners, and studio discussion by celebrities and professionals.
Nancy Harm, breeder, owner, and trainer of Tarifa was contacted by phone after the coordinator of the program, Mika Yamamoto and the company saw the farm web site: harmonyacresparadehorses.com and were amazed with the beauty and brilliant performances of the Arabian gelding Harmony Tarifa. After viewing their website, plans were quickly made for the production crew to fly to Detroit to film the horse doing tricks and showing him relaxing, eating, being groomed and being ridden.
Tarifa was at his very best behavior during the 4 hour process. He demonstrated the easiest and first learned trick of fetching a cone and handing it to Nancy. He followed that with one of the most difficult trick combinations of picking up an orange tether "basket ball", spinning it around in a circle, dunking it into a child's basketball hoop, and then vigorously shaking a green pom pom.. as his own cheerleader! Tarifa followed that by placing a looped lariat over a full size plastic calf head, answering the telephone, and playing a Japanese Casio key board to the extreme delight of the film crew. Tarifa then pushed a doll carriage with a large stuffed pony after placing a rattle, a Zebra beanie baby and a baby bottle into the carriage. Tarifa also demonstrated his training in progress of color discrimination for red, yellow and blue. Tarifa gave several demonstrations of his enthusiastic and determined soccer ability by moving a soccer ball with his nose and all four feet on different approaches of the ball. Tarifa finished the trick presentations by painting a colorful art work with green, red, and yellow paints which was given to the reporter, Ms. Yuko Mizuno.
The crew which included a director, director assistant, camera man, audition technician, reporter, reporter manager, and coordinator seemed a bit quiet and careful around horses at the start or their visit, but soon warmed up and got up closer to Tarifa. They filmed with two cameras and an over head sound mike. Ms. Yuko Mizuno, the television reporter held, petted and gave treats to Tarifa. Before long, Yuko was asking about getting the horse to do tricks for her also. After a brief lesson on trick training she also had Tarifa retrieving a cone, doing basket ball, roping the calf, shaking the pom pom, answering the phone and painting. The delight and amazement on her face and that of the rest of the crew probably added to Tarifa's efforts to do especially well for such a very long session.
When asked if she would like to ride Tarifa, Yuko was delighted and that unplanned episode was worked into the program. The delight and pleasure shown by the entire crew made the day fun for all involved. Even Tarifa seemed to sense this was a special event as he gazed at the new visitors talking in an unfamiliar language with his name frequently mentioned in the midst of it all! Film Director, Tatsuya Serizawa wrapped up the day by shooting some special background scenes in Detroit and the crews flew home to Japan and California. In a follow up conversation, all the visitors were very pleased and they felt they got even more from filming Tarifa than they had expected.
Harmony Acres Horse Featured on NBC Broadcast
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