Sara Schmitt and High Country Doc’s victory in the U.S. Equestrian Federation National Single Pony Championship at the Laurels at Landhope, Sept. 9-11 outside West Grove, Pa., will be one of their last together.

“Doc was awesome,” said Schmitt. “He gave me everything he could. I never felt he wasn’t trying.”

Schmitt, of Glen Gardner, N.J., and the 14.2-hand Morgan stallion were part of the U.S. squad at the World Combined Pony Driving Championships (England), where they finished 10th this summer.

“We didn’t know it at the time, but Doc had Lyme disease,” said Schmitt. “He had tremendous heart to compete while he was in so much pain.”

At the World Championships, Schmitt promised to sell Doc to his new owners after she completed the fall competitions. “I knew it was the right time to sell him,” she said. “I am going to drive him one more time as a part of a pair in the preliminary class. He and his daughter [owned by Schmitt’s student, Alysson Nebus] will be together when we show at the fall Gladstone [N.J.] CDE.”

Schmitt found Doc through the Internet, where he was advertised by his breeder, Frank Queen, of North Carolina. He had been pleasure ridden on the trails and hooked to a pipe cart.

Now she is back in the hunt “for a very special horse or a pair I can show,” she said.

Boots Wright, of Southern Pines, N.C., had also competed this summer at the World Combined Pony Driving Championships, where she finished 15th.

At The Laurels, she took a win in the USEF National Multiple Pony Championship. “It took me [a year] to get their number and figure out who goes where,” she said of her Welsh Cobs. “Ponies being ponies, they are clever.”

Mission Accomplished

Former pair pony champion Tracey Morgan and her Dartmoors were the smallest ponies among a sea of warmbloods. They also attended the World Combined Pony Driving Championships in July where they placed eighth. Her dark bay munchkins tackled the cones with zest to win the USEF National Pair Pony Championship.

Morgan was the first competitor of the day to leave all the balls up and actually came in 9 seconds faster than the time allowed.

“I am thrilled it happened; that’s what we have been focusing on,” said Morgan, of Beallsville, Md. “We have the same speed as horses.”

Morgan, the national titleist in 2002 and 2003, found pacing herself on the long cones courses was tricky. The route “is very long and the terrain difficult, so it is more difficult to know if you are close to making the time or not,” she said.

In her last show of the year, she decided to make a bold move. “I felt like I had to push to make certain of [making the time],” she said. Her ponies responded, and it paid off.

Jimmy Fairclough used The Laurels to see how well a trio of Jane Clark-owned warmbloods worked in various positions in his team and won the advanced multiple horse division in the process.

“This is the year you have to bring some young blood in,” said Fairclough, of Newton, N.J. “I am hoping out of the three, one or two will go back into the old team.”

Fairclough, who drove at the first World Championships in the 1980s, opted to try all three at once in his foursome. “It gives them all experience at the same time instead of taking one at a time to each show,” he said.

It didn’t hurt that the show was an observation trial for next year’s World Four-In-Hand Championships.

Sister Act

The Cadwell sisters went home with two tricolors. Older sister Keady won the advanced horse pairs while the younger, Miranda “Randy,” was the reserve champion in the USEF National Pair Pony Championship.

Keady, 38, formerly competed ponies. “I like the horses better. They are sometimes a little easier. Ponies, though, like to think really fast,” said Keady, who lives with her sister at the family’s Tremont Farm in Southern Pines, N.C. “I enjoy the horses in the dressage and speed.”

Keady got her Cumberland Cobs, a Welsh-Hackney horse cross, in England last year. They had belonged to George Bowman and were driven by Australian Boyd Exell before being put up for sale.

“I like them because they are flashy,” Keady said of her 16.1-hand geldings.

Randy prefers her Section B, or Welsh Riding, ponies. “I like their personality. They seem a little off, not quite on the beaten path. So you never know what to expect from them,” she said with a laugh.

The British-bred ponies are palomino but that, too, fits into Randy’s personality. “I like the off colors. I drove a Paint pair before this.”

The sisters, full-time trainers, have also coached the U.S. Disabled Drivers team.

The defending advanced single horse driver, Sterling Graburn, returned to his boyhood Pennsylvania home to seize the national singles honors again. Graburn, now of Vernon, Fla., came into last year’s cones class with a big lead, but his horse, Quincey, upset six pairs of cones. Graburn took the blue ribbon then by the narrowest of margins and missed making the U.S. World Singles team.

“I think the selectors didn’t have the confidence I could pull it off in cones,” he said, so he began practicing cones at home on an almost daily basis. “I proved that [Quincey] could do it.”

This year, Graburn came into cones confident and dislodged only two balls.

Graburn found the 13-year-old horse for owner Alexander Hewett. The Belgian Warmblood’s previous owner, Jack Seabrook, had used the flea-bitten gray in his coaching team.

“Quincey had been imported to England when he was young, so he might have done some combined driving there when he was 4 or 5 years old,” Graburn said of the 16.2-hand gelding.

Graburn started the horse at last year’s Live Oak (Fla.) event. This year Graburn is working toward a spot on the U.S. World Singles team.