It’s hard to believe the last time I wrote was 2018. Rather hard considering writing has always been such an outlet in my life; it ranks up there with my studio art and horses. However, after leaving Allison Springer I threw myself into working for Mrs. Markus. In that time I found a new family of people in Virginia, horses to ride, and in a twist of fate (thank you Ashley and Jocelyn) I also adopted a puppy. Two very good friends wisely decided independently that while I was living and breathing horses that I needed a creature that was truly my own. So in typical eventing friend fashion they strongly encouraged me to get a dog. So, meet Tonks.
Obviously I’m mostly writing in the past tense, so Tonks is no longer eight weeks old, and she definitely no longer fits into a small flex tubs with a pinata. Especially considering shes some sort of Lab/Mastiff/Great Dane mix and at two and a half years old weighs in at ninety pounds…
I was incredibly luckily to raise Tonks at Mountain Meadow Farm while I worked for Mrs. Markus and fell in love with Upperville and Middleburg Virginia, but ultimately I got the itch again and ended up spending part of a winter working for Colleen Rutledge and getting a bootcamp in horsemanship, wrapping, and overall in effciancy as a human. However, sometimes life has other plans and you only have one set of true parents; my family needed me. So I’m back in Vermont again.
I’m not back at Seventh Heaven, and frankly until recently I was enjoying only riding twice a week and taking a larger break from horses. I still visit Packy and Pi, and I still love Seventh Heaven with my whole heart, but my time there ended; and while you have to look in the past and your history to move forward with purpose, you can’t dwell there. Forward is a lesson horses teach us, and so forward I moved. When I came back home I had barely any time to ride despite still working part time at a farm. So instead of finding another lease I started dabbling as an exercise rider again at High Horses, and catch rode for friends while they vacationed or needed their horses hacked out.
Then my good friend Ashley asked if I would be her horse’s exercise rider at High Horses. You see most of the horses have designated people now with a program change, and Clancy needed a human, and deep down I needed a horse to dote on; luckily Ashley knows me well. So meet Snowford Bellman’s Clancy, a 17+ hand Irish Draught Sport Horse that is a giant unicorn/labrador mix.
Clancy campaigned around training level with Ashley before teaching a younger rider the ropes of low level eventing before retiring to High Horses three years ago. This year he decided he was done after giving so much of himself to the program and Ashley elected to bring him “home” so we could reassess where he was at and what he wanted to do at the age of nineteen. He’s now ten minutes from my house on another mutual friend’s estate (we seriously cannot say thank you enough to them for opening up their home to Clancy, Tonks and I) and my main squeeze to ride fulltime.
So here I am. Back in Vermont, still sort of eyeballing eventing, still doing horse stuff, and hopefully back to writing on a regular basis. This most likely won’t be based so much on just the riding and farm part of my life, which has somehow turned on again full force, and it definitely won’t be based on the competitive goal part (spoiler alert, there are none!), but I needed to use my voice again.
-K, T, C & still R for Ruby
The Vermont Eventer 