When Hey Scooby and Ella Tarumianz were called to the ring for the large pony championship photo at the Devon Horse Show, Patricia Griffith was standing on the rail among the crowd clapping for the 18-year-old pony and his teen rider.
Suddenly Griffith heard Scooby’s trainer Stacey Weiss, her daughter and business partner Sam Schaefer at heels, holler at her from halfway into the ring: “Come in the ring with us!”
“At first, I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ ” said Griffith, who works a trainer at Heritage Farm. “I had nothing to do with this.”
“Yes, you did!” Weiss insisted, and Griffith followed them into the ring to join the group for the photo.
Griffith had spent over a year and a half with “Scooby,” when her Heritage Farm clients leased the pony, and had helped rehab him twice after a deep digital flexor tendon injury.
Scooby originally came into Weiss and Schaefer’s lives in August 2019, when their client Ava Berman leased the warmblood/Welsh cross of unrecorded breeding to compete in the large pony division. That lease had a purchase option at the end of its term, which Berman’s parents passed on because she was fast outgrowing the pony. Instead, Schaefer and Weiss purchased Scooby in August 2020.
“We loved Scooby so much that we had to keep him in the barn,” Schaefer said. “He’s the most perfect pony; he never puts a foot wrong.”
It didn’t take long for Scooby to catch Griffith’s eye, and she told Schaefer she wanted to be next in line for the gelding. Once Berman’s lease was over, Griffith leased him for her client, Mimi Maddock.
“You cannot beat his natural canter rhythm and jump,” Griffith said. “The kids learn what the canter is supposed to feel like; Scooby shows the kids the distances. As soon as the kids ride him, they’re able to ride all the other ponies better. If you put in a great round with him, it’s a 90—Scooby’s expression and jump earn that.”
Maddock showed Scooby successfully up and down the East Coast in 2021 and 2022 and competed him at USEF Pony Finals (Kentucky) in 2021.
“There’s an aura about Scooby: he knows what he’s doing, and he’s always trying to win,” Griffith said. “Some of them really understand the game, and he knows when it’s time to shine. You can always count on him.”
At the end of the Winter Equestrian Festival (Florida) in April 2022, Scooby got hurt.
“My assistant, Caroline Passarelli—she always gets Scooby ready before he shows—called me one morning and said Scooby didn’t feel right to her,” Griffith said.
Griffith was very protective of Scooby because of his age—he was 16 at the time—and an old check ligament injury on a front leg, so they never longed him before he showed. “I thought maybe it was an abscess, since he was totally fine until he wasn’t,” said Griffith. “Scooby hadn’t taken one lame step before that day. But then Caroline told me she felt it behind, and I told her to get off.”
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They called their veterinarian, Kit Miller, DVM, to assess Scooby. After an ultrasound, Miller diagnosed a tear in Scooby’s deep digital flexor tendon in his left hind leg. Ten days later, Scooby was at Palm Beach Equine Clinic in Wellington, Florida, for a scoping surgery with Bob Brusie, DVM, to debride the tear and clean up scar tissue. The prognosis looked good, and the veterinarians were hopeful that after two months of rest, Scooby could start a rehabilitation plan that began with tack walking, then trotting at three months, and then slowly working back up to cantering and jumping. If everything went according to plan, Scooby should have been able to show at indoors in fall of 2022.
“The Maddocks were heartbroken when Scooby went lame, and I give them so much credit: They paid for everything that was suggested to help Scooby get better,” Griffith said. “Whatever Scooby needed, they did. They were amazing through the entire process.”
Three weeks after Scooby’s surgery, the vets injected platelet-rich plasma into his left hind leg to encourage the healing process. When Heritage Farm migrated to its northern base in Katonah, New York, Scooby followed and stayed at Griffith’s farm in Warwick, New York, to rest and recover.
But after two months, Scooby wasn’t trotting sound for a lameness exam. “Based on the vets’ original prognosis, I felt like something was wrong,” Griffith said. “We should have been seeing more improvement than we were.”
Despite the PRP injections and changing his shoeing behind, there wasn’t much improvement.
“Scooby has always had really low heels—even in front, he’s built the same way,” Schaefer said. “We’re always trying to bring his toes back when he gets shod in order to keep him comfortable. So after Scooby’s surgery, they tried putting wedge pads on him behind with the idea of correcting the low heels, and that did not help much.”
By August 2022, his veterinary team suggested Scooby undergo a second surgery, a tenoscopy, where the annular ligament is cut to improve the gliding function of the deep digital flexor tendon and the superficial digital flexor tendon. During the surgery at Pine Bush Equine Services and Veterinary Hospital (New York) on Aug. 9, the surgeons discovered Scooby had a 6-7-centimeter tear in his deep digital flexor tendon, and Mike Ross, DVM, MBA, DACVS, was able to debride that area. Ross suggested a “prolonged course of rehabilitation” and two more PRP injections over the course of several weeks following the surgery. Scooby had a month of stall rest at Griffith’s farm with handwalking sessions that progressed from 10 to 20 minutes.
But even after the second surgery, there was little improvement. Reluctantly, Griffith sent him back to the Schaefer family’s Shadow Ridge (Maryland) in November 2022 to give him more time to heal.
“Scooby stayed home with the couple of rehab horses we left at home that winter and we had our vet actively looking at and rechecking him all winter,” Schaefer said. “There were days he looked really good and then there were days he looked not as good. But while we were in Florida, my mom and I were hopeful that Scooby would make a full recovery.”
When Schaefer arrived home in May 2023, she had her veterinarian, Brittany Williamson, DVM, evaluate Scooby again. It didn’t go as well as Schaefer had hoped.
“At that point, we were turning Scooby out in a small medical paddock—we were protecting him from injuring himself again—and he was going on several daily handwalks in addition to his light hack,” Schaefer said. “We were being conservative with his turnout time, as you would for any rehab horse. Brittany felt that we had done everything medically that we could to help him heal. But she was also worried about him being an older pony and that his conformation wasn’t helping him heal either, so Brittany said, ‘Look, I think you need to turn him out for a bit and see if that helps. Let him be a pony.’ So that’s what we did.”
At the end of May 2023, they pulled his hind shoes turned Scooby out with Emblem, a young pony. “Ironically, we made the decision to turn Scooby out for the summer almost a year prior to his win at Devon [this year],” Schaefer said. Near the end of the summer, Sam texted her barn manager, Haleigh Landrigan, to bring Scooby up in they could jog him.
“Haleigh was like, ‘Sam, you’re crazy,’ ” Schaefer said with a laugh. “And I was like, ‘No, no—I watched him trot across the field the other day, and he looked really, really good!’ So sure enough, we jogged Scooby, and he was sound, so we slowly started him back to work with no expectations or pressure.”
By November, he was casually cantering small cavalettis. By the end of the month, the Shadow Run team decided to put Scooby on their last load to Ocala, Florida, for the winter.
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“At that point, Scooby looked super solid,” Schaefer said. “He didn’t have any hind shoes on either, which I thought was ironic because we were always trying to keep them on him.”
Scooby remained sound once he arrived in Ocala, and Schaefer let junior rider Elizabeth De Meric show Scooby in the children’s pony hunters at the World Equestrian Center-Ocala in mid-December. The pair won four jumping classes to win the division championship.
“At that point, I just wanted to see what we had,” Schaefer said. “I was watching him show and was like, ‘Oh my gosh, he looks incredible!’ Scooby just cruised around like he had never missed a beat.”
Tarumianz took over the reins the first week of WEC-Ocala’s Winter Spectacular series in January. They claimed the tricolor in the larges, marking Scooby’s return to the 3’ division for the first time in two years.
“There really weren’t any major goals in mind—I don’t think any of us thought that we would be qualifying for Devon in that short a period of time, with a pony coming off of an injury,” Schaefer said.
But when junior rider Emi Richard competed Scooby in the $2,000 USHJA Pony Hunter Derby during the sixth week of WEC-Ocala, Schaefer didn’t think he looked quite right.
“He wasn’t lame, but he didn’t look like himself,” Schaefer said. “So I told Ella that we weren’t going to show him that weekend. I think that was the biggest setback he had—it was more of a ‘Hey, let’s just respect him for a second,’ and we did, and he was fine. Scooby hasn’t looked back since.”
She gave him two weeks off, injected his hocks and stifles, and at the suggestion of the vet, put hind shoes back on him through the end of the WEC circuit.
At the end of Florida, they sent Scooby home on the first load of horses so he could get back to his turnout routine.
“I wanted him to go back out in his paddock on the northern grass,” Schaefer said. “To this day, Scooby goes out in the biggest turnout field we have; he loves his grass and his turnout time. We also pulled his hind shoes off again—we wanted to go back to doing what was working best for Scooby.”
The Shadow Run team had no immediate showing plans for Scooby after Florida, so he hacked at home and enjoyed his turnout. Two weeks before Devon, they learned Scooby and Tarumianz had qualified. Scooby hadn’t jumped since Florida, so Schaefer’s sister, Maddie Schaefer, jumped him over a small course at home. “Scooby was his usual perfect self, and he was sound,” Sam said. “So off we went.
“When he won at Devon, there were so many people that were happy for Scooby and Ella,” Sam added. “He’s taught so many kids over the years, and he’s always been the teacher who gave kids confidence. A lot of people were cheering for him—he has a big fan club. I think he and Ella have a unique partnership: I think Ella feels really invincible when she rides him; there’s no stress or pressure associated with Scooby, and I think that’s why she rides him so well too. She can totally trust him.”
Although the Schaefers have no immediate goals for Scooby, Tarumianz might ride Scooby in the USEF Pony Medal Final at Pony Finals in August. “I’ve said that if at any point I feel something is wrong or off, or if he didn’t look like he was into it anymore or he became uncomfortable, that we would stop showing him,” Sam said. “Scooby is all business at his job—he’s always been. We’re just happy to have him back and sound; anything else Scooby gives us at this point is a bonus.”
Do you know a horse or rider who returned to the competition ring after what should have been a life-threatening or career-ending injury or illness? Email Kimberly at kloushin@coth.com with their story.
