Rebecca Polan, the previous owner of Here’s To You, “Quincy”, wanted to thank Emily Beshear for the tremendous amount of dedication she has shown to Quincy. The talented Thoroughbred recently won the Jersey Fresh CCI** and has had great success this season. Be sure to keep your eye out for this gifted horse in the future. Quincy’s story in Rebecca’s own words is below.
I want to send out a huge congratulatory shout out to Emily and “Quincy” for their huge win at the Jersey CCI**. I am Quincy’s original owner, and it is so exciting to see them do so well.
Quincy was bred by my aunt and uncle so he’s a real family horse. My uncle, who was always the cow guy (my aunt took care of the horses, he took care of everything else) found Quincy born about a week early out in the field. He really bonded with this horse and was always really funny and protective about him. The “surprise” of his early birth and a minor mispronunciation on the part of the guy who did not speak English as a first language and was with my uncle when he found the new foal led to his original name “Supplize”. Quincy (as my mother and I dubbed him a few days after he came to live with us) was sent off to the track for training as a two year old and subsequently had a freak accident during his gate training that required about a year at home in the stall. By the time he was completely healed my uncle had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and nobody had time to send him back to the track (the horse, not my uncle!). He was chucked out into a field where he lived a humiliating life as the only gelding in a herd full of broodmares who bossed him around and ate his tail.
It was a total fluke that I got him. I had one horse living at home with me and he was lonely so my aunt offered Quincy up as a companion horse. He was very pitiful and unassuming looking when I brought him (sun bleached, long mane, no tail, a little too skinny) home but when I turned him out and saw him trot around I immediately called my aunt up and asked if there was any reason I couldn’t/shouldn’t ride him. She said to go for it and have fun . . .
I was a little nervous the first time I got on him. He was a basically untrained race horse who hadn’t been ridden in quite some time. I donned my helmet and safety vest and carefully sat down on his back. And . . . he just stood there. Except for some exuberant bucking when I asked for a canter he was always extremely easy to train. He was really fun to ride as he floated across the ground and if I didn’t hold on tight enough he’d launch me to the moon when we jumped. For all his good qualities though he was very different from my past horses and I struggled to bring him along. He definitely had his quirks and it took a long time to convince him that just because jumping a jump extra big from a bad distance was really fun you didn’t necessarily have to buck upon landing every single time. We had a pretty spotty record as we moved our way up and down and back up through the levels but our hard work culminated in a clear round around the Millbrook Preliminary course! When we did this I thought all our problems were behind us. It had taken me a long time to trust him to the jumps but this weekend he really stepped up for me and we had a blast. He is the only horse I’ve ever ridden that I could do really well on in dressage (barring rain storms that forced other people to withdraw!) and after working out some kinks he turned into a super brave cross country horse. Show jumping was another story though. He liked to be kicked up to the jumps, and I liked to be dragged there. This wasn’t his issue, it was mine and after getting dumped into three different oxers at three different events I called Emily up and told her it just wasn’t going to work out and could she please help me sell him. Emily had been an instrumental force in helping me train him up to that point, and I knew she’d be the perfect person to help me move him along.
She took him to several horse trials to help improve his record and let people see him. I hoped all along that she would buy him because she got along with him so well, and I knew it would be a really good home, but how often does something like that happen? So imagine my surprise when her husband, my vet, came home from one of their horse trials and told me in a really strict serious voice that Emily had won her division and he was really mad at me . . . Ha ha! She had won and now wanted him to buy her my horse! Dreams do come true! I thought: you can yell at me all you want but you’re never going to win this one! A few weeks later they did buy him and he has just gotten better and better . . .
I would just like to say here that Emily was/is my friend, her husband is my vet, and I was really worried that if Quincy turned out to be a dud they would hate me! But after he did really well a few weeks ago at the Fair Hill CIC**, I decided that I was officially off the hook, and now I know I am!
My last conversation with my uncle before he passed away was about Quincy. I had decided that I wanted to keep him so I called him up and he agreed to take $500 for him to make it official. When I told him how much I liked riding him he said that he had always thought he was too nice for the track and had been secretly glad when he had to come home prematurely. At the time he was doing everything he could while he was still well enough to simplify the farm for my aunt and he told me it was a huge relief to him to know that Quincy was going to have a job and a home. So I think I kept at our show jumping problems for a lot longer than I would have otherwise because of the horse’s history. I felt guilty giving up on him and letting this last gift go but when I decided I just couldn’t keep at it (I was starting to get scared to show jump, not good for a long term riding career), my mom and I had a long talk about it and we decided that my uncle had always been a shrewd businessman and a very practical, down to earth old timey hands in the dirt kind of guy and he would have approved. And since I sold him for quite a bit more than $500 I know he would have given me a big pat on the back. ‘Ole Ken, as he was affectionately known, was famous throughout Kentucky for his tall tales but this is one story even he couldn’t have made up.
His memory guided every choice I made for this horse. I named him in his honor “Here’s to You” is supposed to be a little toast to his memory every time it is said. Emily was nice enough to keep it. Hearing about their success at Jersey put a huge smile on my face, and I know that my uncle would have been jumping up and down giving himself a huge pat on the back about what a great horse breeder he was.
I don’t believe that Jersey was the culmination of anything but rather the beginning of a really exciting partnership that everyone should look forward to seeing more of in the future.
So again, congratulations to everyone who has been a part of this pair’s success. When everything comes together like this you realize why we all keep forging ahead despite all of the things that can set us back along the way . . .
