It couldn’t exactly be classified as maternity leave, but the two months that Santina H recently took off for an embryo-transfer procedure evidently served her well.

The mare’s first trip back to the show ring since last April netted a win in the $25,000 Blue Ribbon Grand Prix at the Blue Ribbon Summer I Horse Show, June 20-24 in Waco, Texas, with Whitney Owens aboard.

Santina H, a 12-year-old Oldenburg by Accord II, bested 18 challengers at the event, in which just four horses earned trips to the jump-off. This was the first major victory for “Santina,” whose prior best finishes included three seventh-placed spots in 2006.

Diana Stumberg of San Antonio, Texas, owns the mare, imported in 2005 from Marcus Ehning of Germany. San Antonio is also where the Owens family—Whitney, 25, Frankie, 23, and their parents, Candie and Frank—owns and operates Oakwell Farms, a boarding/training/showing facility.

Whitney said she was particularly delighted to beat her younger brother, since he’d won the $10,000 grand prix at the Blue Ribbon Preview Show on Diane Stumberg’s Foreign Legion the previous weekend.

“We have a little rivalry with each other,” said Whitney, who’s a North American Young Rider Championships veteran. “It’s your typical brother-sister thing. But it’s all in fun!”

Frankie and Foreign Legion didn’t make it to the jump-off in the Blue Ribbon Grand Prix, but Frankie was happy enough for his sister to give her a post-win bear hug back at the barn. Then, lacking celebratory champagne, he sprayed her with a shaken-up stream of bottled beer.

In the grand prix, Round 1 got the best of most competitors, with numerous rails coming down at the second fence, a wide oxer, and at 5B, the center element of a tight triple. Several horses also refused at fence 4, a narrow vertical.

Rising above those challenges were Megan Haag on Nabucco, Meagan Nusz on Pikeur’s Xtatic, Stephanie Tropia on her own CR Palermo, and Owens. In the jump-off, Haag had a refusal and fall at the first fence, and Nusz had a rail elsewhere on course. But Tropia and CR Palermo laid down another clean, speedy trip in 35.30 seconds. Then it was Owens’ turn.

“I was thinking Meagan Nusz would be the one to beat,” Whitney said. “She’s always as fast as can be. Then, it came down to only Stephanie who’d gone clean. But my mare is faster, so I knew I just had to be tidy and clean. I felt that if I kept it all held together, I had a very good chance to win.”

Chance became reality, with Santina stopping the clock at 32.20 seconds. The win at Waco was a satisfying reward for Whitney, who got the ride on Santina when the horse came to the United States in late 2005.  Their partnership did not evolve without some adjustments.

“It took some time to get the feel of her,” Whitney recalled. “She’s a super-careful mare, coming from Marcus’ ride, in which everything is just perfect. So I had to really work on keeping her steady and slow and not let her get away from me. Because once she gets on her big canter, she just stays on it. And of course, that can often get you in trouble on your first round.

“For me, the combinations are always the hardest—because Santina has such a big step, and she gets quick,” Whitney continued. “A lot of times I don’t hold her back enough in the combinations, so we end up having a rail on either the second or third element. In this particular grand prix, the No. 10 green vertical gave me and a lot of other people trouble, because it called for jumping at an angle, yet you really needed to get at it straight. We rubbed that one a little, but I got lucky.”

Santina’s affiliates hope that luck will shine on the breeding side, as well. “We bred her to Forever R.D.,” said Whitney. “He’s another horse that Marcus used to ride in Germany. It would be great if this mare’s baby turns out to be as good as its mother.”

Worth The Trip
One particularly happy out-of-state exhibitor at the Waco show was Sarah Milliren of Tulsa, Okla., who earned the junior hunter tricolor on her 7-year-old gelding CR Moet, a.k.a. “Mo.”

The 13-year-old Milliren, who will enter eighth grade in the fall, trains with Libby Barrow of Farewell Farms in Tulsa. “She’s very nice, and she makes me feel comfortable,” Milliren said of Barrow. “She’s like a second mom.”

Milliren has owned Mo—a 171⁄2-hand German warmblood who used to compete as a jumper—for only eight months. Yet the accomplished equitation rider also won the ASPCA Maclay class and the Washington International Equitation Classic hunter phase at Waco.

“Mo was really quiet going around,” said Milliren. “He was almost lazy, which actually makes it easier.”

She admitted that Mo wasn’t always easy, though. “He’s really sensitive to a rider’s legs and hands,” Milliren explained. “I learned that you have to sit really quiet and not overreact, or he’ll kind of freak out.”

That didn’t happen at the Blue Ribbon Preview show the week before, but there was indeed a scary episode. Mo slipped in the schooling ring, and his legs went out from under him, causing both horse and rider to fall.

Milliren, though shaken, figured she was fine. It wasn’t until after riding in a flat class a few hours later that she started showing symptoms of a minor head injury. A quick trip to the hospital confirmed that Milliren had suffered a mild concussion, and she was treated and released. The incident made the pair’s success the following weekend all the sweeter, she said.

Big Accomplishments
When Barbara Harger bought Aragorn, a 12-year-old Oldenburg, three years ago, there was an essential line missing from his resume. A dressage horse, “Desi” wasn’t too sure about jumping.

“When we started jumping, I used to have to tell him where to leave the ground,” Harger said. “But now, he knows his job so well that he gets annoyed if I try to tell him what to do! I trust him completely—we’re a good team.”

Their partnership netted them the championship in the adult amateur hunter, 36-49, division.

Like her horse, Harger, 37, switched disciplines at one point in time. While growing up in Indiana, she rode saddle seat. Later, as an undergrad at Purdue University (Ind.), she started riding hunt seat and was chosen to be a member of the school’s club-level equestrian team.

These days, Harger, of Plano, Texas, juggles her time for horse shows and riding with her full-time job as a financial advisor for investment firm Charles Schwab.

Harger rides with Katja Kallenberger. “Katja uses positive reinforcement as a big part of her training style, and that gives me confidence. And she’s very committed to her customers. There are very few horse show days when she’s not out here schooling someone at 6:00 a.m.,” Harger said.

Amanda Roche is familiar with those early mornings, too, as the busy owner of three show ponies. The 9-year-old’s hard work paid off at the Waco show with In The Black, on whom Roche was champion in children’s pony hunters.

Roche, who lives in Austin, Texas, and will enter fourth grade in the fall, has owned “Charlie,” a Welsh cross gelding, for five years. But she’s been riding ever since she could walk, entering her first leadline class at age 1.

What the diminutive Roche likes best about Charlie, she said, is that “he’s comfortable to ride, he’s very calm and he doesn’t spook.”

When she first got the pony, “I had a little trouble slowing him down,” she said, “and I had to get used to him dropping his head over the jumps.”

At the Waco show, Roche was especially proud of getting the correct number of strides down the lines, instead of occasionally “adding up.” Her trainer, Donna Cheney of Step Aside Farm, is equally pleased with this accomplishment.

Cheney has a special place in her heart for Charlie, whom she bought years ago from a local day-camp program. Under Cheney’s training, Charlie was successfully campaigned in the green ponies and then the medium ponies before finding just the right fit with Roche.

“Amanda is a great student,” Cheney declared. “She listens well, and she always tries very hard to do what I’m asking. And she’s a darn good sport. Even if she falls off, she’s usually laughing as she picks herself up.