This week the Ibis returned to Havensafe!  While they make occasional appearances all year round, “Season” is the best time for the Ibis to stalk its favorite prey – the delicate and high-strung Dressage horse.  

In most ways Florida is an ideal place to train your horse in the Winter.  There is no snow to crash off of the roof, no frigid temperatures to turn your mild mannered gelding into a fire breathing dragon, no deer to bolt through your outdoor arena, and no Canadian geese to strike terror into your heart with their low altitude vociferous migrations.  However, what you do have here is a wide range of totally different flora and fauna to help desensitize and or traumatize your horse.  Oh yes, we have more to offer here than just the white birds! 

Tough not everyone agrees with me, I adore the lizards.  Like me, they are dysfunctional in temperatures below 75, becoming lethargic and even paralyzed by the cold.  Their cold-blooded bodies must be defrosted on hot rocks or in warm patches of grass.  I love finding them calmly sharing a pasture with my horse on a hot afternoon, both horse and Iguanas content to graze in the noon-day sun.   I am, however, less enamored of them when they suddenly make a run for it while I am out trail riding, their legs describing irregular circles on the sides of their bodies in a shockingly inefficient running style.  The horses are alway a little concerned when these generally slow moving creatures suddenly take flight dragging their incongruously long tails up a tree. 

Lest you think that the animals have all the fun, the plants get in on the action as well.  Palm fronds waving around in a brisk breeze sound like an approaching army rattling their death sabers, and when they unexpectedly fall to the ground from their second story heights they create quite a racket.  After storms, they lie around in great menacing heaps the dry leaves rattling in the breeze, frightening the most intrepid trail horse.

But perhaps the most alarming menace to equine tranquility comes not from a lizard or a tree, but from the unassuming Ibis.  These medium sized, nondescript white birds are the true terrors.  Many a quiet morning turnout is ruined as a flock of these birds quietly settles in the grass next to the pasture.  Your horse takes notice but is not immediately alarmed as the birds mill around pecking at invisible insects in the grass.  It is what comes next that is the problem.  In a seemingly pre-meditated move, the Ibis flock suddenly takes flight, swooping low over your previously calm horse their movements clearly conveying panic – the predator is coming, run for your life!   Run until you loose at least two of your shoes, find yourself in a lather – actively trampling the person who comes to rescue you in your haste to get back to the safety of your stall.  And the Ibis laugh. I am sure of it.  

These cunning fowl know when they have a new victim and they make the most of it.  A couple of years ago I was coming back from a hack when I saw the little avian devils at work.  My friend Ashley had just arrived in Florida with her mare Somer.  Ashley had planned to get on Somer for an easy stretchy ride, nothing too strenuous.  However the Ibis had a different plan in mind.  As Ashley stood atop the mounting block the Ibis industriously pecked the grass all around.  They waited until Ashely had mounted and then one of them clearly gave the “go” signal.  They took off in panicked flight swooping low around poor Somer who knew immediately that coming to Florida for the Winter had been a bad and dangerous idea.  Somer lurched sideways trying to avoid the Ibis and still run from the predator from

which they were obviously fleeing, but the birds had more in store for her.  One of them spotted a snake and thought that this was the right time to pick up a snack for later.  The bird descended upon the snake and picked up the writhing body.  Now much to Somer’s dismay, there was a predatory bird flying right at her with what was probably a dangerous and possibly venomous snake.  The poor mare thought that the only reasonable course of action during such trying times was to rear and leap in the air. 

My horse meanwhile, was quite accustomed to the shenanigans of the these crazy birds and kept making his placid progress along the path towards the arena. I was not sure if I should attempt to approach Ashley and her leaping panicked steed to see if my calmer horse could offer soothing vibes, or stay put to avoid adding fuel to the fire.  Eventually, the scene concluded with the Ibis dropping the distressed snake and the flock swooping off to terrorize another horse at another barn, their work initiating a new horse to the Florida scene now complete.

As pre-meditated as their behavior seemed that day, it was hardly their first act of seemingly deliberate mischief.  Several years ago, there was a horse at our barn who truly hated those birds.  The mere sight of them would cause him to baulk and bolt, but they would never leave it at that.  No matter what time he was ridden they appeared ring-side to persecute him.  They bided their time, and as soon as he was focused on his work they would strike.  Not satisfied to merely take off, they would fly under the cover and straight through the arena, fluttering right past this miserable horse.  

While it is of course extremely unlikely that the Ibis plot against horses, the coincidence of their vexatious presence sometimes stretches the imagination.  The flocking, fluttering, and sudden low altitude flight is definitely alarming, but I wonder if our horses have also heard the theory that birds are descended from dinosaurs.  Perhaps deep down our large majestic equines still see themselves as small burrowing mammals, struggling for survival as they hide from the giant carnivorous jaws of T-Rex and the other forefathers of the Ibis.

Recently, my good friend Suzy lost her lovely mare and soul mate Bree.  This was a terrible and untimely loss of a mare still competing and in her prime. Bree was never an easy horse to ride, but Suzy and her trainer Lauren (also Suzy’s sister in law and my dear friend) worked hard and moved Suzy and Bree up the levels.  Bree eventually became a competitive PSG horse and helped Suzy earn her Silver Medal.  But when I heard that Bree died, after feeling heartbreak for Suzy, I immediately started remembering all of the wonderful things about Bree that had very little to do with her show career.  In essence Bree was a good horse and we are all so lucky when we have a good horse cross our paths.

Even when Bree was young and a little difficult to get on the bit, she was safe and kind.  She might have made her riders sweat, but she never worried them or made them think that they would be safer on the ground.  I owe Bree a debt of gratitude for, on more occasions than I can count, safely escorting me on a trail ride or around a new show grounds while I rode some young and explosive animal. Lauren and Bree stoically accompanied me on my first Florida trail ride when my horse Camillo was young and “snorty”.  When one of my training horses was merrily leaping around a warmup ring at his first show, it was Suzy and Bree who calmly stayed to babysit while others fled. Bree was often in demand as a companion or an escort at shows all over our region.  I hope that I remembered to thank Bree enough for all the many times that she saved me by simply being her sane and rational self, and not letting the insanity of another horse provoke her to foolishness.

Most of our horses are good and kind.  They are remarkably gentle with our children and make friends with our dogs and cats.  They allow us to ride them and to convince them to do things that they would never think to do themselves.  They allow us to put them in trailers and take them on trail rides.  But there are some very special horses out there who not only allow all of this, but actually help us to train other younger or more explosive horses to become civilized, and cope with training and showing environments.  Sometimes these horses are not the fanciest horses and don’t always make it into CDIs or show up on the cover of magazines, but they are just as special as their more famous peers.

A couple of weeks ago I was chatting with a friend about how she gets all of her horses to trail ride so well.  She told me that she often takes the very young horses at her farm out for trails by ponying them off an older, quieter horse – often a laid back gelding who doesn’t mind being bumped into a few times.  Her story reminded me of how may horses I taught to trail ride by taking them out with my gentle giant Hesse.  Hesse had rules about trail riding that included – only walking, never bolting, and not rudely passing the horse in front of you.  When we had a “bolter” in our midst, Hesse would walk calmly next to and just a hair in front of him.  All would seem fine and then all of a sudden the “bolter” would telegraph his intention to make a run for it.  Hesse would pin his ears and wheel on the horse, making him step back.  Then Hesse would carry on with his trail ride as if nothing had happened.  Hesse’s training method was much more effective than anything I could have thought of. 

The first horse I ever leased was a holy terror of a large pony named Bones.  Sometimes (ok often) Bones would become so annoyed with me that we would have to stop a lesson, take off all of his tack, and allow him to run around like a wild man to vent his frustration.  But Bones had a secret talent as a therapeutic horse.  Both before I competed him, and later on in retirement, Bones was used as a therapeutic horse.  He had unlimited patients for his riders who faced huge physical or mental challenges.  However, if an able-bodied person should happen to get on, Bones would feel free to leap and buck – how did he know?

My student Nita has a fancy German Riding Pony, named Cashew, who babysits all of the other horses in Florida turnout.  Without him everyone runs when the palm trees blow. But when Cashew keeps eating and says that he isn’t worried about the silly trees, there is peace once again in the kingdom.  What would we do without the Brees, Hesses, Bones, and Cashews of this world?

So now as I remember Bree, I will also remember all of the good horses who have made my life as a rider and trainer just a little bit safer and more bearable.  I will remember to give extra carrots to all of the good horses who are still here.

Please share your stories or photos of Bree or of a Good Horse in your life.

P

Every year at the beginning of “Season” I remember why I love Wellington so much.  Years ago, when I first came here for a short visit, I thought that I had fallen down the rabbit hole and emerged in an equestrian Disneyworld – and in many ways I had.  The sunshine, palm trees, horses, tack stores, horses shows, riders, and coaches are really just the tip of a very big iceberg in this little village.  

Here are a few of my favorite Wellington things:

-The Beautiful Weather!  Most Winters the temperatures stay in the 70s and 80s.  If the mercury drops into the 50s or 60s we all dress up like Eskimos in down parkas, and trendy moms at the park wear their Uggs.  There are blue skies with cotton candy clouds with a pleasant breeze blowing through the palm trees. I find the sound of wind in the palm trees relaxing though many of the horses find the noise terrifying.

-The Horses – If you love horses and particularly if you love Hunters, Jumpers, Polo, or Dressage horses this is the place for you.  In the Winter months, many of the top horses in the world are here to train and compete in the Florida sunshine.

-The Riding and Coaching – Watching all of the top horses, riders, and coaches in the same environment is inspiring.  You really can see the best of the best in this charming little town.  The first year that I came I was overwhelmed by how accessible the world-class trainers and riders were.  I had been in Wellington for less than a week when I had the opportunity to watch Klaus Balkenhol working with some of the best US riders.  Sitting ring-side at the show I listened to Robert Dover, Kathy Connelly, and Ashley Holzer warming up their students.  It felt like everyday was a symposium, and I still feel that way. The quality of the riding and training here raises the bar for everyone.  Wellington is like the Harvard or MIT of the equestrian world.

-The Barns – The barns here are beautiful.  Though there are many different styles, Mediterranean is predominate with stucco walls and mission tile roofs.  Most of the properties are actually quite small and pack a lot of utility onto just a few acres.  However, I have been lucky enough to stay at Havensafe Farm South where the park-like grounds offer plenty of space for hacking.  Formerly Centaur Farms and owned by Jeanette Sassoon, Havensafe was purchased by Betsy Juliano in 2007.  Betsy took a lovely farm and made it more picturesque, adding a gorgeous covered arena (which makes riding on even the hottest day comfortable), and creating a hacking area which we affectionately call the Serengeti. The perfect footing and entire short side of mirrors make it hard to have an unproductive ride at Havensafe. 

-The Horse Shows -The grounds of the Winter Equestrian Festival (WEF) which is the home of the immense Hunter/Jumper show dominates the horse show landscape.  It is a town unto itself, with stores and restaurants sharing space with horses, riders, blacksmiths, and vets.  If you want designer clothes, a silver platter, a million dollar horse, or a diamond necklace, you can find it at WEF.   Dressage, formerly the unloved stepchild of the show grounds – wedged into corners and unoccupied arenas at WEF, now has its own grounds across the street at Global.  We are also fortunate enough to have an alternative show grounds, White Fences, just 20 minutes away in Loxahatchee.  White Fences offers a quieter and more horse friendly environment that is super for young horses, or riders who need a little less pressure.

-The International Vibe-  As I said previously, riders, coaches, horses, vets, and blacksmiths come from all over the world to train, show, and work here.  But they don’t come alone.  They bring their families, making the Village of Wellington much more international in flavor than you would expect from a small town in South Florida. Having dinner in a local restaurant you are likely to hear several different languages.  In my daughter’s school there are families from Italy, Venezuela, Germany, and Argentina. 

-A Place To Fit In-  If you are a rider who typically gets strange looks at your local grocery when you show up in your riding clothes driving a big dually, know that in Wellington you can be at ease.  The grocery store, post office, bank and dry cleaner are filled with people just like you.  Many of them are in riding clothes, some of them are still wearing their helmets (this is a hunter thing that I don’t completely understand – why not take it off when you are done riding? – I digress).  You can proudly haul your groceries back out to your big pickup truck which will be wedged in with a bunch of other unwieldy pickups.  Other moms at my daughter’s gymnastics class show up in breeches.

-The People Watching-  Horses are expensive so Wellington is also a winter destination for the rich and famous.  Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Bruce Springsteen, and so many others might drop in to watch their family members ride.  British royalty might pop over to watch a polo match.  In addition to horses they bring fabulous cars.   Next to your pickup truck at the grocery store you might find a Bentley or Maserati (covered in dust from a day at the show).  There might also be just a tad of plastic surgery here and there.

-Beyond Horses –  For most of the years that I have spent time in Wellington I have been here for the horses only.  But now that I have a daughter and am more a part of the broader community, I have found so much more here to love.  Wellington is a great place for kids.  Their are parks and a great community center with a huge pool.  Most Thursday nights there are food trucks and live music in the town center.  If you take a break from the horse show you can go to art festivals and farmers markets  on the weekends.  There are movies shown in the public amphitheater most Friday nights – with a kids movie at least twice a week.  The beach is only 20 minutes away and their are museums and zoos and beautiful gardens open to the public.  Lion Country Safari is just down the road and in addition to a drive through safari there is a small amusement park (and you can feed giraffes!).

Quirky Details – At one point there was a woman dressed in a wizarding costume who roamed, at the slowest possible pace, around the streets of Wellington.  She floated ethereally about dressed in what must have been a swelteringly hot velvet outfit.  Everyone knew her as the Witch of Wellington and she even had a cameo in a novel by Tami Hoag.   There is a bizarre old mall which is trapped in a 1970’s time warp where everything is pink and bright green.  As strange as this mall is, we all go there to have our boots repaired at the iconic Woody’s leather repair.  While waiting for your boots, you might very well run into George Morris getting a sandwich at Aroma’s the breakfast and lunch cafe.  Just imagine what he is saying about how fat you look in your breeches or how poor your posture is!

The world According to Garp and anything written by John Irving

Shortly after college I binge-read almost all of John Irving’s books.  It seemed that everyone I knew was reading A Prayer for Owen Meany and Cider House Rules was made into a movie.  All of Irving’s novels were cleverly written and populated with the quirkiest characters imaginable.  I laughed a lot while I read, but I also shuddered because all of the books are really kind of Creepy.  Filled with ether-addicted abortion doctors, midgets, and dancing bears they were excellent fodder for nightmares.  Years after reading The World According to Garp, I still get an icky feeling every time I look at a gear shift – I will leave that one up to your imagination.  In fact, it was after finishing The World According to Garp, I read them all out of order, that I realized that I needed a break!  I have not read Irving’s most recent works because I am still recovering from the earlier ones.  I will continue on one day because Irving is a masterful storyteller and every now and then a creepy book is just what you want.  If anyone has thoughts about the more recent Irving offerings, I would love to hear.

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

A couple of years ago, when this book became The Book, I got an audio version and listened to it on my trip home from Florida.  It was a pretty good choice for a long road trip.  The story held my attention, and I did not figure out the twist until the end.  As I believe the author intended, I both sympathized with and was repulsed by the alcoholic narrator, Rachel.  Likewise, I couldn’t quite get a bead on whether or not her husband/ex-husband, Tom, was a creep or a decent man brought to the end of his tether by Rachel’s behavior.  That sense of not knowing whose camp you are in, and of course the feeling that you too have been on a drunken bender, is the thing that makes this book the shuddersome work that it is.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

For some reason I had skipped, or perhaps avoided, this book for years.  Not until a good friend gave me a copy of Reading Lolita in Tehran and told me that I needed to re-read The Great Gatsby (fortunately the work of an afternoon, and yes a little weird in its own right), and read Lolita before I started, did I take the plunge.  Obviously, this book is supposed to be creepy, pedophilia is about the creepiest topic out there.  Of course the thing that makes Lolita truly disturbing is that is is written from the perspective of the pedophile, and in a way that makes him almost….sympathetic?  In the end you feel very concerned that you are not somehow more disturbed by him.  I am glad that I read it, upsetting though it was, because it is such a cultural reference point .

Skeletons at the Feast and others by Chris Bojalian

Skeletons at the Feast is primarily disturbing because it takes an intimate look at the lives of people trapped inside the Third Reich at the end of WWII.  This book is historical fiction, romance, and at moments tragic comedy all blended together. There are really three separate stories entwining in epic upheaval at the end of the war.  A young Prussian woman, Anna, and her family become refugees as they flee the violence, a Jewish man poses as a Nazi officer after escaping a transport to a concentration camp, and a French Jewish woman tries to survive inside a camp.  Though the scenes and subject matter are nothing short of nightmarish, I actually loved this novel.  There is so much great literature written about WWII that it is sometimes hard to find a stand out, but for me this is one.  Inspired by my love of this book I tried to read others by this Bojalian, and while the subject matters and characters were nothing short of triumphs of imagination, the books were simply too bizarre for me. Before you know Kindness and Double Blind both left me perplexed and with an overwhelming feeling of ickiness.  Has anyone read any of the others?  What were they like?

Never let me Go by Kazou Ishiguro

After reading Ishiguro beautiful novel  The Remains of the Day, for which he recently won the Nobel Prize, I immediately checked the library for anything else he wrote and found Never Let Me Go.  I was expecting something very similar to the earlier work that I loved so much, but I got a bit of a surprise.  The tone and tempo of Never Let Me Go are similar to that of The Remains of the Day, but certinaly not the almost sinister subject matter.  Half the unpleasantness is not knowing about it, so if you are of a mind to read Never Let Me Go I suggest you stop here, but what seems initially like a sad love story quickly devolves into a dystopian nightmare.  The main characters actually turn out to be clones of living people.  They were “created” for the purpose of having spare organs on hand for their “real selves”.  I found this novel almost crushingly sad and am always upset when I think of it.