Raised on his family’s hunter/jumper farm in Walpole, Massachusetts, Aidan Kennedy says he grew up abiding by the rule that there are “no days off” with horses. So when the unthinkable happened earlier this month—a fire that destroyed a historic barn and killed eight horses at the Kennedy’s Mor Linn Farm—Aidan woke the following morning knowing what he had to do.

“He didn’t go into his room and not come out,” Catherine Kennedy said of her 18-year-old son. “He put on his breeches the next day and kept going, and kept the horses that were healthy riding, and was ready to go horse show. Because he’s like, ‘This is what I can do.’ ” 

Aidan had been at home with his younger sister Lucy, older sister Elizabeth, and parents Catherine and Cormac, on the night of July 8 when they heard frantic honking outside. A passerby who had noticed the fire from the road had driven up their driveway to alert the family. Flames, possibly caused by lightning, were tearing up the 150-year-old barn directly next to the family home. 

That night, Catherine was amazed by her teenage son’s instincts to save their horses. Now, she’s awed by his resilience. 

“He’s going up to Saugerties [New York] tomorrow to show at HITS, and just two weeks ago, he was running through a burning building trying to save his little 8-year-old sister’s pony,” she said. “He ran into that burning building faster than I could get my shoes on—because he didn’t put his shoes on. He ran in barefoot.”

As the fire grew and an storm raged outside, Aidan and his parents were able to get 10 of the 18 horses out of their stalls to safety. Catherine said that the horses who couldn’t be saved were on the second floor of the bank barn, where the smoke was thickest.

“My husband and Aidan went into the upper level where the smoke was the worst—you could not see the hand in front of your face, and you could not breathe in there,” she continued. “The smoke was so severe from the fire and from the wood; it was an historic barn, and that wood was so old and so hard [that afterward] some of the floors were fully intact. They were just smoking, like charcoal briquettes.”

After the fire trucks arrived, Catherine walked through the dark field counting the panicked horses they’d just evacuated from the flames. After her final count, eight remained missing, including Lucy’s jumper pony, whom Aidan and Cormac had not been able to convince to leave her stall. But among the safely accounted for was Barney Rubble, Aidan’s junior jumper and a longtime staple of the family farm. 

“Barney” first arrived at the farm when Aidan was so young, he remembers thinking of the larger-than-life horse—whom Catherine jokes is a “bull in a china shop”—as untouchable.  

“He’s been in the barn as long as I can remember,” Aidan said. “He was absolutely wild when we imported him. The pro rider we had riding for us at the time was jumping him in the 1.40 [meter] classes. I remember watching that and being like, ‘There is no chance I’d ever be able to ride this.’ ”

But that chance came when Aidan, who primarily trains with his father Cormac, was about 16. Aidan felt ready to move up to the higher jumper classes but didn’t yet have the horse for it. Cormac and Aidan were in Wellington, Florida, with a few Mor Linn horses, including Barney. Fatefully, Barney had just become available after the end of the lease, but the family still had a month of their Florida season where the horse would be riderless. Cormac suggested Aidan give the gelding a shot. 

“Within the first week, it was the low [junior jumpers], second week the medium [junior jumpers], and third week was the high [junior jumpers],” Aiden said. “I still remember my first high class. That was a really, really big part of my memory of show jumping, was jumping the highs with my friends.”

The pair quickly jelled, and the horse a younger Aidan once thought he’d never ride became his winning partner. Over the past two years together, the duo has become a fixture in the junior jumper ring, earning podium finishes at the Winter Equestrian Festival (Florida) and Old Salem (New York).

“It’s funny. Coming up the ranks, it just takes one or two good horses, and you can go from just messing around to jumping the 1.40s, which I never thought I would do,” Aidan said. 

Catherine acknowledges her son’s opportunities as the child of trainers, but gives Aidan credit for how much he’s been able to do with a horse that wouldn’t be rideable for most juniors. 

“He’s also the kid that’s riding an extremely difficult, not expensive or fancy, Irish Sport Horse, and managing to be champion on it at WEF in the high juniors against horses that—for what we paid for Barney—is not even comparable for the horses that they’re competing against,” she said.

“Every kid in this sport has to work really hard. I don’t care how much money you have, to get down to a 1.45-meter oxer in the International Ring at Wellington, you still have to come with a certain amount of grit and work ethic,” she continued. “But I think it is a little different for the kids—and Aidan is not the only one—but it’s a little different for the kids that don’t have the same resources.”

This year, Aidan and Barney’s hard work earned them a spot representing zone 1 in the junior jumpers at the North American Youth Championships, beginning today in Traverse City, Michigan—until the fire upended their plans. 

“There’s more disappointments than victory moments in this sport,” Catherine said. “Obviously, these have been some really extreme setbacks.” 

After examining the Kennedy’s evacuated horses, their vet determined that Barney had suffered smoke inhalation. While the prognosis is good, his timeline for recovery is uncertain. The Irish Sport Horse gelding (Cobra—Smart Nicky) needs rest for his lungs to heal, forcing the pair to withdraw from the championships.

With the 2025 NAYC off of his calendar and Barney in recovery, Aidan pivoted to focus on other riding goals. Last weekend, while his parents stayed home to focus on rebuilding Mor Linn, Aidan traveled to Saugerties, New York to compete at HITS-on-the-Hudson with Heritage Farm. 

Aidan began riding with Andre Dignelli at Heritage just over a year ago, when the teen began to get serious about making riding his future career. His parents felt it would be valuable for Aidan to get some outside training and to round out his riding with equitation. 

“They’re a great family, and we would run into them at local shows,” Dignelli said. “His dad was training him; his mom was there; his sister rides. You could see that they were good horsemen and they were running a nice family business—and for sure I spotted that he was a good rider and there was talent.” 

With mentorship from Dignelli, Aidan refined his riding for the equitation division.

“I always just rode with my dad, so riding with someone else I really enjoy, because Andre, as you know, is very decorated and very knowledgeable,” Aidan said. “There’s no one else I’d rather train with. So it’s been a very smooth transition.”

Dignelli respects what Aidan already knows and does well as a rider, Aidan said, which is a lesson he tries to mirror in his own coaching. The teen has been giving lessons to Lucy, and often helps prep her in the warm-up at shows. Now that he’s thinking about how to teach, he looks to his father and Dignelli’s coaching with a new perspective. Aidan has even found that thinking from a coaching perspective betters his own riding. 

“When you’re helping a kid out, you watch them just trotting around, you’re like, ‘Come on, you’ve got to put a little more effort in,’ ” he said. “I’ll tell something to Lucy, and I’m like, ‘Lucy, do this, [and I think] wait, maybe I should do that!’ ”

Catherine wasn’t surprised that Aidan took an interest in helping his younger sister. For years, she says she’s been getting calls from horse show people about her son: like the booth retailer who said a pre-teen Aidan had introduced himself with a handshake, or the trainer with a young son that Aidan took under his wing, knowing boys are rare in the sport. 

But his relationship with his sisters highlights Catherine’s favorite thing that has come out of raising her three children on the farm: their bond. That’s a bond that’s been strengthened since the fire.

“My kids are really close,” she said. “They’ve grown up on this farm, supporting each other and helping each other.

“I got lucky with all of my kids,” she continued. “And I think the luckiest thing to me, my greatest success as a parent—which was not is not my success, it’s their success—is how close my kids are with each other and how supportive they are of each other.”

For all their recent bad luck, the Kennedys acknowledge the good luck they’ve had in being able to lean on one other, and the compassion of the horse community that has rallied around Mor Linn. 

“When something as tragic as this happens, knowing there’s a community, there’s people there to support you, makes a massive difference,” Aidan said. 

Dignelli said that it’s been easy to offer support to the family who has long stood out for their integrity.

“I think that they handled it exactly the way you knew they would,” he said of the fire. “Their head is up high. They’re forging forward. Yes, it’s a major bump in the road and horrific event that happened that they’ve had to endure and take part in. But they just have that sort of strong, good, human quality, and they’re going to just rally as a family, and you could see that the community has rallied with them.”

At his first horse show back from the fire, Dignelli said that it was clear to see how happy people were to see Aidan walking around as same outgoing, funny kid he’d been before July 8. 

“I think the community was all kind of supporting him, and happy to see that he was back out there doing it,” Dignelli said. “I think the best is yet to come for them.”