PrintThe young rider and pony have defied many odds to be successful at the intermediate level.
It’s not the way most young riders find their first upper-level horse. Courtney Sendak started to help someone load Wil’ya Love Me onto a trailer and ended up buying him on a whim.
And “Willy” isn’t a typical upper-level horse. He’s borderline pony, standing 14.21⁄2 hands. But he and Sendak, of Baltimore, Md., have belied their improbable beginning and Willy’s diminutive size to become consistent contenders at the intermediate level.
“Our story is totally green horse, green rider,” Sendak said. “We’ve gone through every bump in the road you can imagine, because neither of us knew any better, but we both thought we knew everything. It was a recipe for disaster, but, thankfully, we’ve overcome it!”
Sendak, 21, remembers the day Willy, a Connemara (Grange Finn Sparrow—Lady Doreen), came into her life, suddenly and improbably. She and her mother had arrived at the hunter/jumper barn where Sendak, then 10, boarded her large pony. They saw a horse trailer in the parking lot.
“The woman who owned Willy brought him out and we were going to help her load him on the trailer, but my mom said, ‘Wait, we’ll take him.’ I don’t know what possessed her!” she said.
Sendak had never ridden the rising 3-year-old pony, who’d come to the barn to be broken and sold as a hunter. “He had a bit of a screw loose and would buck people off. He wasn’t hunter material, and no one wanted him,” Sendak said.
Sendak and Willy, now 14, have overcome a fall that injured Sendak badly and an infected knee joint that almost ended Willy’s career. Yet they finished the 2009 season with an intermediate win at the Virginia Horse Trials and
started 2010 with a second place at intermediate at the Full Gallop Farm Horse Trials (S.C.).
“It’s quite something that she’s had that horse since he was 3, and she’s basically done everything with him,” said Julia Wendell, who has helped train Sendak. “That really says a lot about her and the partnership she’s developed with Willy.”
Working To Put The Shoes On Their Feet
Sendak, a full-time student in her senior year at Wake Forest University (N.C.), does it all on a shoestring.
“I don’t sleep!” she said. “Between the horses and working and teaching and riding for different people and trying to maintain a decent GPA, it’s crazy. No wonder everyone takes a pause from horses when they’re in school.”
Sendak’s parents aren’t into horses, and they make school a high priority. “Ever since Day 1, my first riding lesson, I’ve had to help pay for it, so I’ve always had to work to earn money to ride,” said Sendak. “And I’m not allowed to do any of it unless I’m earning a high GPA.”
Sendak works as a supervisor at a fitness center, babysits, braids and pulls manes, and whatever else puts cash in the bank. A B-rated Pony Clubber, Sendak also teaches for Pony Club and hopes to get her A rating this year.
Even though Sendak has built a nice clientele of students and trains horses, she’s reluctant to commit to life as a professional horsewoman after she graduates this spring.
