After a two-year hiatus from showing, I finally pulled out my hunt coat, shined up the tall boots and headed to Lake St. Louis to show in the adult amateurs. I hadn’t shown since I was a junior, and my horse Happy Go Lucky (Lucky for short) was coming off of a seven-month vacation while I was gallivanting around interning for Phelps Media Group, working for James Parker and The Book LLC, and interning at the Chronicle.
Needless to say, I was a little nervous for our return to the show ring.
For the past two months, I’ve been dipping my toe into an assortment of equestrian sport ponds—I took a polo lesson, jumped around a cross-country course, breezed a race horse, drove
After last week’s blog about the fast and furious experience of breezing a race horse, things took a turn for the adorable and tiny this week. I visited Heather Briggs and Rachael Blanchard at Belle Grey Farm in Upperville, Va., and learned all about combined driving!
The next horse sport I tried in my series of new equine adventures has a special place in my heart as an off-the-track Thoroughbred owner. I got to go to Diana and Michael Cooney’s Carousel Stables in Berryville, Va., and breeze a race horse!
For my third blog in the series of a show hunter’s misadventures trying various other horsie sports, I suited up in a crash vest and headed out to four-star eventer Sharon White’s Last Frontier Farm in Summit Point, W.Va., to see what going cross-country was all about!
You may be thinking that this doesn’t seem all that different of an experience for a hunter/jumper rider. I mean, jumping is jumping right? WRONG. So wrong.
After stepping out of my show hunter-comfort bubble by covering a dressage competition for the Chronicle, I realized there were all kinds of different equine sports I had never seen or tried. I very much enjoyed watching the dressage horses show, so why not continue broadening my equine education, explore some new sports, and share what I learn with some fellow niche riders?
There were a few things I expected when I signed on to intern at The Chronicle of the Horse. I figured I would be covering and writing about a whole lot of shows, and since I had experience both competing in and covering hunter/jumper shows, I assumed those would be the shows I wrote about.
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