We have a good news post this morning and this week’s story is very good news indeed. If you’ll remember that back in February, John ran a story about 52 thoroughbred horses in Ohio finding homes via the social network of Facebook. As the story goes, when Daniel Sterns DVM died, his son began disassembling his father’s assets, including the farm housing his 52 horses. Lynn Boggs, a friend of the deceased Sterns and fellow rider, was basically given an ultimatum by the son to find homes for all the horses in one week.

Boggs’ posted a plea for help on her Facebook profile, but she never could have expected the 4,000 some responses from people that ensued as a result of her post. In less than four days, all 52 horses were safely in the comfort of their newly adopted homes. Jackie Smith, the owner of Stonegate Farm in Ohio, adopted two of those horses, and has been chronicling their experiences in a blog titled ‘The Adventures of Jack and Jill.’ The blog is ‘written’ by Jack and Jill themselves, and although its witty, entertaining, and at some moments touching, Jackie was kind enough to share with me her perspective of the entire experience.

According to Jackie, the decision to adopt these horses in the first place wasn’t tough, as Dr. Stearns had been her veterinarian in the nearly thirty years prior. “I felt like I owed it to him.” Although Jackie hadn’t adopted horses before in all her years of breeding, showing, and training, the situation of this adoption was quite ideal, as she points out that they were quality and well cared for horses. Since they arrived at the farm, both horses have been getting accustomed to the farm’s routine and have started both ground and under-saddle work. Jackie says, “They each have their own personality: Jill has a bolder more confident personality where as Jack is a little more cautious but with a strong desire to please.  It has been awhile since we have had youngsters around here and it’s such a pleasure to work with them and mold them into the best horses they can be.”

When asked about the long term plans for Jack and Jill, Jackie replied, “Obviously if you are at Stone Gate Farm you are destined to be an event horse!  However, we will listen to them and let them be our guide.  I think any horse certainly can event at the lower levels, but we’ll see what they can do from there.” She went on to state, “We’re aiming to show them in the FEH horse classes at our Winona Horse Trials in May, just to give them the experience and us a tangible goal to work towards. Oh, and besides that, we’re thinking about having ‘them’ write a children’s book based on the blog that’s gotten such a positive response.”

I think this story illustrates a lot of things; the startling chain of support that can emerge from the use of modern technology, the generosity of people within the community to reach out and help horses in need, but probably above all, it shows that horses, no matter what breed, background, or size, have a gift for drawing people in and enriching their lives, while the people are trying to do the same by them.

If you’d like to learn more about Jackie and Stonegate Farm, click here. 

Wiki Commons

Good Morning Eventing Nation! As most of you know, Poplar Place Horse Trials and Southern Pines Horse Trials are both running this weekend, in Georgia and North Carolina respectively. It’s an interesting weekend as they are both pretty high-profile events and will both be dueling for media coverage. John wrote a great recap post last night of the two events, I’ll be back later today with a report from Poplar, and I believe Coren will be along later with a report from Southern Pines. 

Clark Montgomery and Loughan Glen from Friday with their Advanced-B winning test:

This week’s ears photo was submitted by one of our readers, Karen, of her horse and companion of twenty one years, Wesley. She sent me this photo and recently sent a note saying Wesley passed away last week in his pasture. Thanks to Karen for submitting and our deepest condolences for her loss. 

From Karen:

This is the view from atop my horse Wesley (reg. name Western Adversary) a couple summers ago.  No particular story attached, but I thought the shadow was kind of cool, since it wasn’t photographed intentionally.  Wes has been with me since he was 4 years old, unable to return to racing following knee surgery to remove a bone chip.  We dabbled at a lot of things: dressage, English pleasure, trail riding, camping.  The one thing we didn’t do much of is jump, because I was afraid of re-injuring his knee.  When Wes turned 21, I tried to retire him; but he became so listless–seemed so unhappy and bored–that (talk about a complete change of strategy) we made a brief foray into the world of eventing instead, competing in mini-trials at the Intro and Very Green levels.  It perked him right up again, and for me it was the realization of a longstanding dream. 

I’m sure for the last ten hours the text messages have been flying, the tweets tweeting, and the Internet brigade typing comments at full capacity with the news of who is, and who is not on the short list for the next team coach. There are many of us in the community disappointed by the fact that Jimmy didn’t make the short list, as he is and has become such a popular figure in eventing, especially with the news of his appeal for team leadership. I have a huge amount of respect for Jimmy, I’ve read all his books, listened to all his interviews, and if you set up a game of Jeopardy to contain all the quotes he’s famous for saying, I’d probably win unless my opponent was Jimmy himself. 

Throughout this coaching search that has become largely popularized and debated by the public, I realized Jimmy possessed a powerful strength that was eluding most of his competition to one degree or another. You see, Jimmy has the strength of the people behind him. Take a look at the Chronicle threads or the EN poll today; he’s the popular vote by a large margin. So going in to all of this, I knew Jimmy’s application probably wasn’t going to hold as much weight to the actual selectors, but I couldn’t help wondering about the ways our sport as a whole could improve by having him as coach. Right now, we are constantly moving, changing, and evolving, but sometimes it seems the direction is clouded. I think Jimmy would have been a great source of unity in the entirety of our sport as he already has the captivation of much of the public. But the reality of this business, and all the others if you really think about it, is that winning medals is first priority and influencing people comes second.

If you had asked me to predict the name of the eventual team coach a few weeks ago and my life depended on the result, I’m not sure I would have said Jimmy. I think the timing of it all was a little bit against him; his opponents all had more recent resumes, more results of producing top riders in recent years, generally speaking just a little bit more ‘with the time’.

This whole selection has been quite bizarre, really, because as much as we, the public, speculate, debate, and muse about who the next coach should be, it’s really a moot point because we have absolutely no say in the decision. But, if there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that everyone, the riders, the committees, the public, and the candidates really all have the same objective. Even if our individual preferences for getting there may vary amongst us, reassurance comes in knowing the goal for success is universal.