Quinn Himself
The stories of generosity, strength, kinship, and recovery continue to pour out of True Prospect. This afternoon, I’m very happy to tell several of those stories to Eventing Nation.
A few weeks ago, Boyd looked at a 4 year old for sale at Phyllis Dawson’s Windchase farm. He loved the horse and when he left he told Phyllis that he would work on putting together a syndicate. A few days later at a clinic in New York Boyd mentioned to Bonnie Stedt that he had found a really nice horse in VA. Then the fire happened.
Just a few days after Bonnie lost the beautiful Cagney Herself in the fire, she rembered what Boyd had said. Bonnie contacted Phyllis and arranged to buy the horse for Boyd to ride. But, she kept the purchase a secret from Boyd. Then on Sunday at Waredaca Boyd saw the horse on Phyllis’ trailer and walked over to pat it, still completely in the dark. Phyllis walked the horse off and handed him the lead and said “this is a present from Bonnie.” Boyd’s groom and working students had been in on it, but it was a total surprise to Boyd.
An EN tipster told us about the story but I spoke to Boyd about it this afternoon. He told me that the horse is 25% Irish, 75% TB and will be named Quinn Himself. The moment he received Quinn was a big turning point for Boyd: “I thought to myself ‘OK, it’s time to get on with it.'”
The good news also continues to come out of New Bolton, where all three of the remaining horses are recovering. Boyd said that the vets are optimistic that they will be releasing both Min and Neville soon.
It also seems as though Boyd has a new owner–Katie Prudent, show jumping legend and the US eventing team’s show jumping coach. Katie called Boyd up a few days ago and, as he put it “gave a good tough motivational speech.” Then Katie told Boyd that she wanted to help with the recovery and that he needed to be riding as much as possible. She said that her contribution would be to send him one of her horses to ride and train at full rate for two months. As Boyd said “talk about a tough owner!” The horse arrived at Boyd’s farm yesterday.
Lastly, the healing continued at True Prospect this morning when everyone from the disaster met in a group session with a counselor. Everyone spoke about the fire and the counselor’s biggest point was that the tragedy doesn’t define anyone–it’s a terrible thing that happened, but it can’t dictate the rest of anyone’s life. Update: The counselor, Dr. Dick Johnson, is a parent at Mary and Olivia Dutton’s school and he cleared his morning and donated his time to help everyone out. One of the many generous acts of kindness.
It’s going to take years for the wounds from the fire to be fully healed and some wounds will probably never heal completely. But with the help and resolve of those in the eventing commnuity, the sun is shining a lot brighter in Pennsylvania today. Go Quinn Himself.
