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Leica may just be Julie McKee’s horse of a lifetime, but she’s also the most exacerbating, frustrating horse she’s ever dealt with.But McKee has persevered, and after 20 years together she and Leica have hunted with 19 different hunts, shown in the amateur-owner hunters and jumpers and evented to the preliminary level.
In a fitting tribute to the mare’s career, she and McKee placed third in the MFHA Centennial Field Hunter Championship Finals in May.
At 24, Leica was the oldest horse in the field. But in true Leica style, their performance included a few antics. As McKee and Leica stood on the rolling green front lawn of the Westmoreland Davis mansion at Morven Park in Leesburg, Va., on a warm day in May, Leica put on a little sideshow.
“We’d been standing around for hours, and she was hot and sweaty,” McKee recalled. “We’re standing in the line-up, waiting to go in the ride-off. And she put her head down. I thought she was going to get a bite of grass and thought to myself, ‘Poor thing, she’s been standing out here forever.’
“But she rolled. She was saying, ‘I’m sick of you being on my back—get off!’ Then, she wouldn’t get up. Everybody was worried because they thought she fell, because she was so sneaky about going down. She snuck her head down like she was going to graze or scratch her nose, and then kerplunk, she’s rolling and scratching. Everyone was cracking up.”
McKee got Leica back on her feet, regrouped, and proceeded to complete the course for third. “Things like that are pretty funny but frustrating. I can’t tell you how many times she’s bucked me off in the middle of the hunt field in front of everyone. She always waits until there’s an audience,” McKee said.
Over the years, McKee has been impressed by the fact that they’ve lived through everything together.
“She’s an incredible jumper and an incredible mover,” said McKee. “She’s also incredibly smart, which is part of the problem. But I’m just as stubborn and hardheaded as she is. A lot of people say we’re two peas in a pod.”
There Was A Hole Somewhere
Now 24, Leica, a Hanoverian by Linberg, has mellowed somewhat, but there’s no doubt as to who rules the roost at McKee’s Foxview Farm in Grantville, Ga.
“She’s a prima donna. Everybody calls her the queen,” McKee said. “We’re not very formal around here, and we just open the gate and everybody walks to their stalls. She’ll stop and make sure everybody is behind her, and then she’ll come through the gate. If anyone tries to pass her, she kicks them. Whenever I have any sassy youngsters, I tell them it’s time to go out with the queen, and she’ll teach them some manners.”
The battle of wills between Leica and McKee began in 1987, when a friend talked McKee into taking a chance and buying a green 4-year-old mare. Imported as a 2-year-old from Germany, Leica had started a
dressage career but quickly made her distaste for the little white ring known.
