April 2022 Issue

The Directory Horse & Pet Cremation Trailers Trailers Manure Removal Harness/Tack/Leather Repair Manure Removal kevin.bomgardner@aol.com Saddlery For more information about advertising in The Directory please call (717) 509-9800. Reach 38,000 Horse Owners! EAST COAST EQUESTRIAN April 2022 Page 29 (Continued from page 28) Rescued to Stardom: All Winners Here trainer. The only way to do it was through personal connection. She had to wholeheartedly believe in me and what I was asking.” For the riding portion, O’Neill’s student trees returned. At one point, she rode onto a tarp while students holding the corners whipped it up and down, turning a blue tarp into choppy waters. Riata was unphased. When asked about Riata, the mare who she had hoped to adopt, O’Neill was quiet. Then she spoke. “When she was rounded up, Riata had an umbilical hernia. If she had been bred in the wild, she would have died in labor. It would have ruptured, and no one would have ever known. She nev- er would have ridden bridle-less in front of all those people…” To her, the competition was about showing off the connection between horse and rider and the difference it can make. Second-place trainer Shelby Piovoso said Lottie was friendly and outgoing, but she was also pushy and had been spoiled in her younger life. “It took setting consistent boundaries and not letting her get away with anything,” she said. For the in-hand portion of the competition, Lottie wore a bikini and sunglasses. “Our theme was Beach Day. We had a kiddy pool she got in and a pedestal for her to stand on. We were throwing around beach balls, and she laid down for me in the ring,” Piovoso said. For their full routine on Saturday, Piovoso said the nerves melted away. “In our routine, three of my friends were dressed up as blow- up cows. We chased the cows and I roped one,” Piovoso said with a laugh. “I shot an arrow into a target from her back while going over a jump. I rode her bridle-less to stand on a pedestal and then I stood on her back.” Sharon Burrier is the founder and president of Rocky’s Horse Rescue and Rehabilitation, Inc. Their horse, Ava took third place. “Ava needed a kind gentle start,” Burrier said. “A conversa- tion Aaryanne and I had was that Ava was going to need a friend to trust first before she would allow anyone to train her.” Trainer, Aaryanne Cloutier agreed. She said Ava came from a seizure case, a very untrusting mare with a 2-week-old foal at her side. “She was nearly feral and didn’t want anything to do with people,” she said. “I spent days just sitting in her stall, getting to know her and earning her trust. I broke her bareback and with a bitless halter because she was afraid of the saddle. The saddle and bridle came just a few weeks before the compe- tition. It was about earning her trust and working from there.” Cloutier brought the students from her barn to participate in the in-hand competition, “All of my students had brown shirts that said POST on their back, because they were the fenceposts. They stood still for me to weave them, and they held up jumps for her to jump. For a 12-year-old mare who had never seen anything like this, she was so calm. During one of her maneuvers, the students held poles over their heads and she trotted underneath them. For the riding performance, Cloutier’s students dressed up as cows, with two dressing as wranglers. “My ranch hands forgot to close the gate and the cows got out,” Cloutier said. “We had to go get them back. Their maneuvers made us sidestep, chase cows at a canter, do a sliding stop, and back up. We all walked out at the end with everyone cow holding another cow’s tail and the last person holdingAva’s tail.” Cloutier said that many peo- ple applied to adopt Ava, but after a lot of consideration and a lot of crying she decided she needed to adopt the mare herself “I realized how much I truly wanted her,” she said. The adop- tion is pending. Riata was three when she was captured at an abandoned strip mine in West Virginia. ‘Problem horse trainer’ Erin O’Neill called her one of the rankest horses she had ever worked with. Photo credit: © Emily Ballenger of Twilight Photography