Like most stables around the country, my little riding facility in Gibsonia, Pennsylvania, depends upon extra help during summer camp season. The bulk of our counselors are our own teenage lesson students who drag themselves out of bed early a few weeks every summer to help campers glue plastic gemstones to horseshoes, steer school ponies around rainbow-colored plastic cones, and unwrap stubborn string cheese and yogurt tubes at lunchtime.  

But this summer, our program has a new counselor. I’ve never had to ask her to put away her cell phone. She’s never arrived at camp with friend or boy drama. She never complains that 9 a.m. is so early. She’s the first one down the driveway every morning and the last one bustling around the barn after all the campers have departed for the day.  

Phyllis Frazier is—how do I say this without her killing me?—a bit more “mature” than most of our other camp counselors. She barely clears 5 feet tall, though her spiky gray hair might give her another inch. She has tattoos and a strong Pittsburgh accent and recently celebrated her 70^th birthday at an AC/DC concert with her grandson. 

Our teenage counselors yell “PHYLLIS!” down the aisle every morning (while they are sipping their coffees and checking their latest snaps on their phones) as she’s undoubtedly bustling around, setting up for the day. 

Our horses know that her pockets are full of peppermints, and the ones that haven’t lost stall guard privileges nuzzle her as she walks past. 

This summer, she’s brought so much joy and life to all of us at the barn.

A Decades-Long Dream

For as long as she can remember, Phyllis has loved horses. 

“I’ve always thought they were so beautiful,” she said. 

But raised as the oldest of six siblings, she knew that riding lessons just weren’t in the cards. So Phyllis grew up. She raised a daughter. She married, divorced, remarried and was widowed. She became a grandmother. 

She was well into her 60s when she decided that if that dream of riding was going to become a reality, it was now or never. 

So she started taking weekly lessons with us in 2021. But two years later, she had a fall in a lesson. Though she—like any die-hard equestrian—climbed right back on, a pain in her back when she re-mounted actually made her nauseous. A trip to the emergency room revealed that she’d crushed several vertebrae and would need to take a three-month hiatus from the saddle. But the real kicker: X-rays also diagnosed her with osteoporosis. 

After months in a brace and numerous doctor’s visits to track her progress, Phyllis’ back healed. She asked about returning to riding, and her doctor said that she could return to the sport, if she wanted to. 

But—as both her doctor and her daughter reminded her—her bones weren’t as strong as they once were. The older we get, it turns out, the less we bounce. The osteoporosis diagnosis, more than anything, worried her.

Phyllis thought long and hard before making the tough decision to hang up her helmet. She absolutely loved the barn and the horses, but another fall just didn’t seem worth the risk. 

But she wasn’t willing to completely walk away from the horses she loved, and after months of hounding on our part, she took us up on our offer to just come and hang out. For almost two years now, she’s been coming to the barn a few times a week to groom and pamper our herd. 

She checks our lesson board to see what horses have the day off and rotates through the barn on her visits, currying dirt from coats, applying hoof conditioners and medicated creams to cuts and scrapes, brushing manes and combing out tails. When she’s done, even our retired schoolies look show-ring ready. 

Then she walks the aisle, topping off water buckets and filling hay nets. 

I learned recently that before she leaves the barn, she photographs the horse she groomed, posting the pictures on her Facebook account so her friends can share in what brings her so much joy. 

“Everyone loves seeing the horses,” she said. “They’re always asking about what I’m doing at the barn.”

Student Becomes Teacher
Sometime in late spring, Phyllis was in the stall brushing out Moose’s tail when I paused at the door to chat. She told me how much she loves her time with the horses, and how much happier she feels for the rest of the day, despite being covered with hair and sweat and dirt.

I don’t remember exactly how the topic came up, but I think I joked that if she wanted some serious quality barn time, she was more than welcome to come and help out at summer camp. 

“Count me in,” she said the next time I saw her. 

She’d found the camp dates on a flyer on the barn bulletin board, she said, and she’d penciled them in on her personal calendar. I wasn’t sure if she knew what she was signing up for and suggested that she plan on coming for the first week to see how she felt about it. If it wasn’t too much torture, I said, she could certainly stay for the summer. She came that first week, and she’s stayed for every camp that followed.

Since grooming is Phyllis’s forte, I assigned her to a rotation that introduced the campers to various aspects of horse care. Every day, Phyllis guides campers ages 4 to 12 through the tasks around the barn that she has come to love. 

She shows the kids how to brush Bear’s long mane from the bottom up, after applying detangler to ease out the knots. She demonstrates how to safely pick Gypsy’s hooves. She points out the body language of the horses being groomed, and she helps fearful campers become more comfortable around the horses. 

But she does so much more than this, too. 

Every morning, she marches into the barn in her shorts and paddock boots. She bustles around the barn, setting up folding tables, passing out daily schedules, organizing handouts for the day ahead. 

She’s a role model for our teenagers who take a little longer to ease into the day and have to be reminded, occasionally, that their main job at camp is not to film TikTok videos. She’ll ask for a hand spreading out a tablecloth or setting up chairs and suddenly the teen’s phone is pocketed and the two are chatting together, readying the barn for the first camper’s arrival. 

The teens love her. 

“My favorite thing about working with Phyllis is that she always knows how to bring up my mood,” said Darrah Hudac, one of the teenage counselors at the barn. “She’s so joyful and fun to be around.”

“I love Phyllis so much,” said Morgan Stout, another teen rider at the barn. “She always makes everyone laugh and tells us the best stories and gives the best life advice. She’s like everyone’s barn grandma!”

When a pre-vet student from a nearby university asked about job opportunities at the barn to gain some experience with horses, I offered her a job helping with camps and promised some hands-on horse time, too. Phyllis took the student under her wing, staying with her after camp often to show her how to halter, lead and groom.

“Taking lessons and being around the horses has just made me love them so much,” Phyllis said. “And camp was so much more fun than I expected. I could share what I know about horses—which isn’t a lot—and I learned so much more myself. 

“And to see how much the kids learned, and how much they loved being at the barn and with the horses, too,” she continued, “that was just the best part.”

---

Sarah K. Susa is the owner of Black Dog Stables just north of Pittsburgh, where she resides with her husband and young son. She has a B.A. in English and Creative Writing from Allegheny College and an M.Ed. from The University of Pennsylvania. She teaches high school English full-time, teaches riding lessons and facilitates educational programs at Black Dog Stables, and has no idea what you mean by the concept of free time.