PrintPatience pays off for this busy Texas architect and amateur eventer.
It’s dark when Samantha Garbarino’s alarm clock goes off, typically at about 4 a.m.
As a full-time architect and determined and successful event rider, Garbarino makes every minute count in her day. She gets up and cares for her three horses and donkey at her Argyle, Texas, home, before commuting to Dallas to begin her workday as a senior associate architect at Urban Design Group.
“She juggles a million things, and I really admire her for how she handles it. I don’t know how she manages to ride at the level that she does given all of the other things she does,” said good friend and fellow eventer Lynne Partridge.
All of the long hours and hard work paid off on Sept. 25-27, when Garbarino pulled off a big win in the CIC* division at the Poplar Place Horse Trials (Ga.). Garbarino, 43, isn’t afraid to say she cried during the awards ceremony at Poplar Place.
“I was just sitting on my horse, blubbering. It was an emotional moment for me. It put the icing on the cake,” she said.
“It was fantastic that she got a good win, but it certainly wasn’t handed to her on a plate,” said Mary D’Arcy, Garbarino’s good friend and trainer. In fact, Garbarino and her Chasing Liberty, or “Toby,” have overcome amazingly long odds for that long-awaited win.
In December of 2007, Toby contracted a liver infection that almost claimed his life. Garbarino had developed Toby from an off-the-track Quarter Horse into a consistent campaigner at the preliminary level, and she painstakingly nursed him back to health. He was back on form in time to compete at the Pine Hill Horse Trials (Texas) in April, and she thought they were back on track. Little did she know then that this would be their only event of the year and an even tougher battle was about to begin.
A Horrifying Accident
As she was leaving Pine Hill on April 5, her birthday, Garbarino was rear-ended in her truck and trailer.
“I was picking up speed, heading to the highway,” she recalled. “I just heard a loud bang, and the next thing I knew I saw my horse galloping up the road past me into oncoming traffic.”
Garbarino got her truck stopped and leapt out to chase Toby. Someone who had been driving behind her stopped to pick her up and took her to Toby.
“The lady who stopped and picked me up said she saw it happen and that he’d fallen out backwards, flipped over, and got up. He had a big puncture wound in his chest, but, luckily, it missed anything major. He had a huge hole in his knee, but it didn’t puncture the capsule, and he just had road rash everywhere. He was a bit of a mess, to put it mildly,” said Garbarino.
D’Arcy, who accompanied Garbarino and Toby to the veterinary clinic, added, “I don’t know how he ever came out of that in one piece—he was in bits. That horse could have been killed. It was horrendous—he was galloping down a major road with traffic coming the other way. It was just by the grace of God that nothing worse happened. He had some horrible injuries, but she took wonderful care of him, and he’s all healed now.”
Garbarino spent six weeks treating Toby twice a day—cleaning the wounds and wrapping his knee. She also used laser and Game Ready Equine equipment and a chiropractor to help Toby mend. After six weeks, she got the go-ahead to get back on Toby for long walks and put him back to work a month later.
