"A Horse of a Different Color" features horses and ponies that have been successful in the sport of eventing while representing a unique breed. Do you have a horse that you think would be a great feature subject? If so, email [email protected].
Britt Sabbah and Saint Louie. Photo via Britt on Facebook.
Britt Sabbah grew up riding hunter/jumpers before taking an extended break from riding while she finished college and moved out to California. Once she settled in, she began riding again and soon enough was ready to start looking for her next horse.
“I was looking for something a bit on the smaller side and that was kind and easy going enough that I could have fun with,” Britt said of her horse search. “I wasn’t even really thinking about going out and competing right away. I knew I wanted to event since it had always been my dream, but I just figured I could find something to have fun at the lower levels with.”
Relatively early on in her horse search, Britt found Saint Louie, a 2008 Welsh/Paint cross stabled at Galway Downs. After a few trial rides, Britt fell in love. The first thing Britt learned about her new horse was that he needed a confident ride. “He’s very, very careful, and because of that he needed some confidence when we first started working together. We could barely go over trot poles in the beginning!”
Photo via Britt on Facebook.
Britt credits a lot of their partnership a year later to coach Jen Wooten. “She’s just been amazing, and I think she really helped us build trust and confidence,” she said. “After a couple of months, we really started to improve.”
After just a few short months together, Britt took Louie to Galway Downs for her first event. The pair ventured out at Beginner Novice and finishing seventh with a handful of rails and time in the show jumping. “Show jumping has always been our biggest challenge, and we’ve had to really work on it to get those clean rounds out of him,” Britt said.
The pair continued to work hard through the year, moving up to Novice because it seemed that the bigger jumps garnered more respect from Louie. After several top-10 finishes at the Novice level, Britt and Louie headed to Texas for the American Eventing Championships at Novice level, where they brought home a fifth place ribbon for their efforts.
After returning from Texas, Britt and Louie entered their first Training level event at Galway Downs at the end of October. “We had discussed moving up to Training before Texas, and we decided that if he thought cross country (in Texas) was no big deal, we’d go ahead and do it,” Britt explained. “We’ve been schooling Training level or higher at home, so the cross country was the big question.”
Photo via Britt on Facebook.
The pair finished in 16th place in their Training division at Galway with one bobble and some time on cross country, but it’s their show jumping round that really caught our eye! Everything appeared to be going to plan when Britt suddenly lost her left rein coming out of the triple combination.
The pair had a few moments of miscommunication in which Louie locked onto the first jump on course, which was an oxer that would have had to be jumped backwards, but Britt was able to grab her rein back and regain control.
“I’m not really sure how it happened,” Britt recalled. “I know I was trying to fix it going into the line because it had flipped over, and then I had it fine and lost it out of nowhere on the way out!”
Ride On Video captured Britt and Louie’s great save in their stadium round:
Despite the slight detour, Britt and Louie still came home clear inside the time, no worse for the wear. Britt was pleased with her move up to Training and is looking forward to gaining more mileage at the level next year.
“I never expected to be out competing this much, but he’s just surpassed all of my expectations,” Britt said. “I don’t know if eventually doing Preliminary is in his future, but I’m just going to let him tell me and have fun with him. I think he’s got the scope for it, but we’ll spend some time at Training and go from there.
“My ultimate goal is to do the Training Three-Day at Rebecca Farm next year, if not that then the Three-Day at Galway at the end of the year. So we’ll work to qualify for that this season and then see where he wants to go from there.”
