United States Eventing Association

From Ranch Horse to Eventer: How Blue Wallaby Became Zara Bewley’s Ultimate Amateur Partner

On a pack trip in Wyoming’s Big Horn Mountains in 2018 with her family, Australia-born Zara Bewley encountered many memorable creatures—moose, mountain lions, and bears. But it was Sam, a stoic 4-year-old blue roan gelding she rode during the journey, who made the biggest impact on her life.

The Amish-bred Friesian/Quarter Horse gelding was purchased by trainer Ken McNabb the year prior to work cattle and pull a hay wagon in the winter, but he quickly gained a reputation as a saintly trail horse. “On our first day out on the trails, we came across a moose,” Bewley recalled. “And me, being an Aussie, I’d never seen one before, but Sam was just so chill and laid back. Meanwhile, I was having a panic attack.”

During the week-long trip, Sam held his composure, nimbly crossing creeks and ditches, navigating treacherous terrain, and never batting an eye at would-be predators. “He had such a great brain,” said Bewley. “So I said to Ken, ‘I really like this horse…do you want to sell him?’ ” Bewley was looking for a new partner to get back into eventing, and figured if Sam didn’t like the sport, he would probably be a good foxhunter. “If he didn’t spook at mountain lions and bears, he probably wouldn’t spook at cross-country fences,” she said.

Growing up in Australia, Bewley competed in Pony Club and dabbled—rather unsuccessfully—in eventing. “I think I got eliminated at each horse trial I attempted,” she joked. After working in the racing industry, she moved to the United States when she was 23 and spent a year and a half at a Lexington, Kentucky, breeding farm. She missed riding, so she exercised local hunt horses, and eventually took a full-time job as a groom at an eventing and foxhunting barn. During her eight-year tenure at the facility, she got her first taste of eventing in the States with an old, been-there-done-that Intermediate horse. “I remember the first time I took him cross-country schooling,” Bewley said fondly. “It was the greatest day ever—I was on an adrenaline high for days afterwards.” She got the chance to compete in a few local Novice and Training events before he retired.

Afterwards, Bewley traveled around as a groom, and when she finally settled down, decided it was time to get her own horse. “I didn’t really care what level I’d do, I just wanted something to compete and have fun on,” she said.

She hoped that Sam would fit the bill, but the unflappable gelding had cemented his place with McNabb, and it seemed the trainer wasn’t ready to part with him yet. When Bewley and her husband, Vernon Bewley, returned home to their small farm in Stamping Ground, Kentucky, she couldn’t get him out of her mind. A few months later, she got a call from McNabb. “He asked me, ‘So, do you really want to buy this horse?’ Of course I said yes, and he mentioned he had a trailer headed towards Lexington, and if I still wanted him, he’d be mine.”

Sam arrived that fall, and his formal training began—he’d only ever pulled a wagon and worked cattle. “To try and canter a 20-meter circle with him was interesting,” Zara said with a laugh. “We spent the first month getting to know each other and hanging out. I’d never even cantered him until I got him there. So, we just took it nice and slow.”

Around Christmas that year, she took him for his first jump lesson. And just like he was in the Big Horn Mountains, he was game for anything. In fact, his prowess for jumping earned him the show name of “Blue Wallaby,” a nod to Zara’s Australian heritage and his ever-changing coat. “The first few times he sort of jumped a bit like a kangaroo, and we laughed about it,” she recalled “No one else will ever have the same name.”

Their first winter together, Zara, 42, took advantage of the plethora of schooling shows in the Lexington area, and competed Sam in a winter dressage series. The following spring, they began their foray into eventing, spending a season and a half at Beginner Novice. “We didn’t win any events, but he always came home with a ribbon,” said Zara. “Then we moved up to Novice, and again, he was so honest. He always tried hard and jumped everything. He’s not a fancy mover—we’re never going to win with those dressage scores, but he tries.”

The pair spent a season at Novice and were more confident with the idea of moving up a level, especially after making changes in their program with their new trainer, Julie Congleton. “When I started riding with Julie, the first thing she said was, ‘What are your goals? Let’s make a plan and make it happen,’ ” Bewley said. “We decided to move him up to Training level for combined tests and see how he went. I think we did five, and he won all of them. So, I was like, well…let’s go!”

A move up to Training level was still a goal, but there was one more thing Zara wanted to accomplish first. “I saw that the Midsouth Eventing Association was putting on a steeplechase clinic right before the Indiana Three-Day Event [IEA],” she said. “I took him to that and had a lot of fun. About a month later, the organizers of the Hagyard Three-Day Team Challenge asked if anyone would be interested in doing a Novice Three-Day at the event. I decided I wanted to do it. So, I went back to my coach, and I asked her thoughts on me being able to do it with Sam. She said, ‘Go for it. If you don’t enter, you’ll never know.’ ”

At the event, Zara was walking the courses with another of her coaches, Cathy Wieschhoff, who said, “This is where you’ll find out if your horse is a true event horse.” After they came off steeplechase, Zara said, “I felt like he had two more gears I didn’t even know he had! It was the best thing I could’ve done with him. And afterwards, we had the best cross-country of our life.”

They kicked off their 2024 season with two more Novice events and then competed in the Novice Three-Day at IEA. “After that event, I felt like I had another horse,” she said. “I decided, you know what, we’ve done our homework, let’s have a go at Training.”

At their first recognized Training event at One & Done Horse Trials in Lexington this past July, they took second place. Zara wanted to do the classic-format at Hagyard again that fall—either at Novice or Training level. Sam was going so well, and with her coach’s approval, she set her sights on the Training division. “We knew it would be a challenging course, and it was only his third time running at that level. So, Julie told me that if we’re going to go, we’ve got to do our homework.”

With her goal firmly in place, Zara buckled down and got to work. “I have a full-time job and I’m a mom, but I want to compete,” she said. “So I get up at 4 a.m. six mornings a week to make that happen. I take it seriously, and I want to be the best I can. I looked at past courses and studied how they rode and which jumps caused problems. We practiced those types of fences in our schooling sessions—we wanted to be sure we were 100% prepared.”

The course at Hagyard was the toughest, biggest course they’d ever done, but Sam cruised around like it was nothing. “We had a few time penalties, which I wasn’t worried about,” said Zara. “I just wanted to focus on jumping every jump. He went out there like he’d been doing it his whole life and jumped double-clear. It was like he was bred to it.”

For Zara, completing the Training Three-Day reaffirmed all the work she’d put in with Sam, guided by Congleton’s positive coaching. “[Before Julie,] we’d been told that he wouldn’t be good enough, that we weren’t Training level material, and he was just a ranch horse,” she said. “We’d battled that negativity for a long time. I didn’t want that to get to me, but I still felt it weighing on me.”

To finish the long-format course at Hagyard, with a horse that was barely puffing after a tough track, reminded her that all their training had paid off. “I have no ambitions to be an upper-level rider, but coming off that Training course felt, to me, what a five-star rider must feel like after Kentucky,” she said.

Congleton appreciates how much effort Zara puts in to develop her skills. “Zara works full time, she has a small child, and she’s a very busy adult amateur,” the trainer said. “But she’s so dedicated to her process with Sam. I told her when she first started riding with me: ‘You have to be all in. We have to make sure you stay on the program and not do quick-fix types of things.’ She was very supportive of that. She had just come from a program where they were not very encouraging of her moving up, so she wasn’t the most confident. But now, she’s just been improving leaps and bounds over the last year and a half.”

The new training regimen helped improve both their flatwork and jumping. Sam isn’t the biggest mover, so they planned to earn every possible point in their tests by being accurate, maintaining a good rhythm, and staying in the correct tempo. “We figured out how she could be competitive in those big divisions with flashier horses,” said Congleton. They also worked on shifting his naturally downhill balance upwards. “It’s really changed his entire way of going—and his body, too; he doesn’t even look like the same horse.”

Even though Zara has no plans to compete Sam beyond Training level, she’s found his niche: classic-format events. “Every time we do a long-format, I just get a whole different horse afterwards. He steps up his game and is ready for whatever’s next. He’s not a big-striding horse, but he’s just so honest. I think the only time we’ve ever had stops on cross-country were due to rider error. But otherwise he has the attitude of, ‘I’m going to try my hardest and do this for you.’ We’ve learned to do this together.”

Zara’s initial instincts about Sam paid off, and he’s turned into the best amateur partner she could hope for. Besides his eye-catching coat—ranging from dark bay with grey lowlights in the winter, to a steely blue in the summer—Sam’s alluring personality makes him popular around Area VIII events. “If he was a person, he’d be the guy that everyone loves,” said Zara. “He’s got a very laid-back attitude, and he loves to be in your pocket. His calming presence is noted in other horses, too. Whenever we go somewhere and other horses are acting up, they just fall in love with him and get super attached,” she added. “Mares especially love him. He has a really cool charm about him, a laid-back vibe, and nothing gets him fired-up. If a horse nearby is getting upset, he can actually stand next to them and help them relax.”

Over the years, Sam’s become like a member of the family. Zara's husband, a former reiner, has photographed the pair at countless shows. And her 10-year-old daughter, Destiny Bewley, enjoys the occasional trail ride on Sam, when she’s not riding her own Pony Club mount. “She’s not big into eventing, but she’s sort of my groom and right-hand person at shows,” said Zara. “So, when I’m not competing, I’m doing the Pony Club Mom role. Besides, Sam is a great trail horse for her. I trust him. He’s one of those horses that says, ‘Oh, you’re a kid? I’m just going to be really soft and really quiet and let you do whatever you want on me.’ He just has that caretaker brain.”

Even though Sam, now 11, hasn’t set foot in the Bighorn Mountains in years, he’s never forgotten his ranch-horse roots. “I’ll take him out and put him on cattle, and he goes right back to working them like it’s nothing,” said Zara. “He still loves to get out there—he gets really cow-y with them.”

And maybe one day his two careers will come full circle. One of the events on Zara’s “eventing bucket list” is the long-format at Rebecca Farm in Montana. “Part of me wants to take the ranch horse back to the West where he came from and let him compete there,” she said.