United States Eventing Association

Dr. Katie Sisk, DVM, is no stranger to working for what she has got. All through undergrad, she would train and sell ponies for spending money. In her first year of vet school, her grandmother gave her a loan for $4,000 to help her purchase her first “big horse,” a Thoroughbred/Hanoverian mare named Demonet’s Darling.

“She was an amazing horse,” reflected Sisk, “but we had to retire her really early due to some suspensory issues, so I ended up breeding her. I had bred ponies and things for fun, but this was my first purpose-bred project. And that’s how I got Lenny.”

Long Legs Lenore (Rapture R x Demonet’s Darling), or "Lenny," was born in 2016, Sisk’s first year out of vet school, and the fiery filly instantly worked her way into Sisk’s heart— but it wasn’t always easy.

“She wasn't the easiest to ride,” Sisk noted. “She was really quirky to bring along, but like she had so much try, and her answer was always yes…. so she just progressed incredibly quickly. We found out very early on that she was just very much my horse. I got extremely lucky, with her being my very first homebred, that she turned out as cool as she was.”

Sisk, who opened her own equine veterinary clinic, Kaydence Sports Medicine & Rehab, in Carthage, Missouri, enlisted the help of friend and Kansas City-based eventer Julie Wolfert while bringing Lenny along.

“As a trainer, I see a lot of horses of all types of breeds, ages, and training levels,” said Wolfert. “While coaching lessons there will be horses that stand out and make you go, ‘Wow, I want that one.’ Lenny was always that horse for me.”

In Lenny’s 3-year-old year, Wolfert was also producing a young Thoroughbred, so the two had the pleasure of watching their horses experience many firsts together. Through the ups and downs, neither Sisk or Wolfert gave up on Lenny, even on the mare’s most challenging days. Her strong-willed determination and her unique whinny earned her the nickname of “the rhino” in Sisk’s barn.

“She was actually quite small; she was like, 15.3 on a good day, but nobody ever knew that she was small because she carried herself so big,” said Sisk. “She and her whole mare line has this horrendous neigh, and I would always call it the rhino call. You always knew where Lenny was—she always had to announce herself.”

Sisk and her lovable rhino had quite the career together, working their way up from the very beginnings to becoming a USEA American Eventing Championships champion at the Training level in 2021.

Lenny was there for Sisk in so many ways, both in and out of the saddle. When Sisk decided to expand her family, she had a difficult time getting pregnant and had to turn to IVF.

“We transferred one embryo, and it ended up dividing, so when we went in for our first ultrasound, we had twin identical boys,” she recalled.

Sisk’s twin boys shared a placenta, a condition called twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome, and she had to undergo surgery while pregnant.

“After that, it was just kind of complication after complication,” Sisk said. “Lenny was always the constant in that scenario, though. When the boys were in the NICU because they were born six weeks early, I didn’t leave Kansas City the whole time. My husband just wanted me to get out of the hospital, so finally he ended up bringing my living quarters horse trailer, Lenny, and my dog up to Kansas City, and they stayed at Julie's. He thought to himself, 'If I bring these things up there, she'll come out of the hospital.' And so two weeks after my C-section, when Lenny hadn't been sat on for like six or eight months, I got on her and, like, we did a little walk around Julie's arena, and she was as good as gold.”

Despite the challenges of operating her own practice and navigating motherhood, Sisk still wanted to pursue her eventing goals, and Lenny was always up for the challenge. They returned to the Preliminary debut earlier this year before gearing up for their first FEI event since 2022, the CCI2*-S at Carolina International (Raeford, North Carolina).

“She won the dressage there, and even though we ended up not having the best show jump round to stay in first, to go out there and ride against, like, Caroline [Pamukcu] and Boyd Martin and win the dressage was just such an accomplishment. And not just the fact that we did that, but when you factor in all these other things in our life, and we're still able to come back and do that on a Midwest homebred was just so cool.”

And then, after a freak riding accident, Lenny suffered a fractured carpus and Sisk a concussion, and she found herself faced with the hardest decision of her life.

“I only remember bits and pieces of it,” Sisk recalled. “I remember the vet coming into the ambulance and showing me her radiographs and telling me it wasn’t good. And I remember telling Julie’s mom, Susie, to have Julie go be with Lenny and tell her how much I loved her. I learned after the fact that Julie was very stern and made a lot of phone calls before the decision to euthanize Lenny was made. She knew what my goals were in different areas, and she also knew that Lenny got the best of everything— cost was never really an object when it came to her. So she was making sure that Lenny’s quality of life was going to be impacted, because if there was any way that she could live her life in a pasture, we would have done everything necessary for that to have happened. I am a very strong advocate for the thought that animals get to have one bad day, because they don’t understand mortality, but they understand pain, so I am never going to be selfish and make them stay alive just so I can have them.”

Not many eventers can say they have spent their horse’s entire life with them, but Sisk has that honor. The passing of her beloved partner left her broken, and that is when her community stepped in to fill the void and provide whatever comfort they could.

“When the tragic accident happened this summer, it left a hole in many people’s hearts,” said Wolfert. “Not a lot of Midwest riders make it to the FEI level—now narrow that group down to a mother of twins under two and full time veterinarian, and I bet that list has one name on it, so Katie and Lenny had quite the fan-following. She really was an inspiration to so many.”

Knowing that this time was going to be extremely challenging for Sisk, her "girl squad," which consisted of Wolfert, Becca Hunt, Lacey Messick, Kristina Whorton, and Brittany Carter, Katie’s older sister, all rallied together to help her through the grieving period.

"The day after my accident Lacey showed up at my house unannounced and climbed in bed with me and just held me while I cried. The day after that Julie, Becca, and Kristina showed up and took me for a trail ride, and then we had Mexican and did shots and toasts to Lenny and then ice cream at my favorite spot. Keep in mind all these ladies live at least two hours from me and dropped everything to be there. There are no better friends than horse friends, and even I know you can’t just find that around every corner."

Messick, a fellow eventer and longtime friend of Sisk’s, began brainstorming different ways that she and some of Sisk’s other friends could honor Lenny in a way that would bring peace to their friend.

“Our girl squad all got together and came up with this idea to put together this fundraiser to try and get a jump to commemorate Lenny that we could put out at the Heritage Horse Trials,” shared Messick.

So Wolfert began clueing in the eventing community, while Messick reached out to many of Sisk’s clients at the clinic. They started a private Facebook group, and the donations began rolling in.

“We raised about $6,000, and there were over 80 people and farm families that are Katie’s friends and clients in the Southwest Missouri area and Kansas City who donated all of that money,” she continued. “It was completely amazing and humbling to see how many people wanted to help Katie's heart heal from what happened.”

With the money raised, then the real brainstorming began—what kind of jump would best serve this purpose to honor Lenny?

“And Julie had this idea, ‘What about a rhino jump?’”

The girl squad reached out to Eric Bull in Virginia, and he took that design concept and ran with it.

“We wanted it at the Novice level so that it would be used a lot,” said Messick. “Eric came up with the idea of two rhinoceroses carved into the jump, and then kind of thought that could potentially represent Lenny as one and then Katie has Lenny’s foal that was born via surrogate, her name is Eleanor, as the smaller one.”

It took a great deal of effort to hide all of these details from Sisk, but when the time came for the Heritage Park Horse Trials, they warned her that they would be doing something special in Lenny’s memory so that she could be prepared. Unaware of what was coming, she brought Lenny’s ashes with her just in case.

“We have in the past, done memorials for horses and for people that have passed away at Heritage Park and and some notable members of the area for community have jumps,” shared Sisk. “So I figured, you know, we might end up doing a plaque on a jump, or things like that. But I did not anticipate a whole custom jump. And I certainly did not anticipate, like a sculpture, like an art piece. It was just so cool.”

“There was not a dry eye in the area when the big reveal happened,” Wolfert recalled. “Katie brought the ashes of Lenny with her and spread them around the jump. Heritage Park was Lenny’s first show, so how appropriate of a spot to spread her ashes and forever remember such a phenomenal athlete.”

Sisk still owns Lenny’s mom and then her foal, Eleanor, who was born just 12 days after Lenny’s passing, so she has little pieces of her on the farm as well. But she thought of one more creative way to keep her beloved partner’s memory alive—she established “The Lenny Fund” at her practice.

“There is this little local movie theater in our area that doesn’t take cards, and me and my husband went there one day to get our tickets and stuff, and we realized we didn’t bring cash. So we ran back to our car and dug up the money we needed to buy our tickets, and when we came up with enough, we went inside, and they asked if we wanted anything from the snack bar. So we said no thank you and explained how we forgot our cash, and they told us about this fund they had for their snack bar that they had for cases like this, and I was driving by that town one day, and I thought to myself, how cool would it be to do that for vet stuff? So I set up the Lenny Fund, and it’s not just for people who can’t afford something, it's also for people who maybe are just emotionally tapped out. I want people to be able to treat their horses like I would treat Lenny— like the gold standard. So if somebody's doing joint injections, but couldn't afford to do like, Hyvisc or something like that. Well, guess what? You're getting the Lenny treatment today. You're getting some Hyvisc.”

When Sisk proposed the idea of the Lenny Fund to her clients, she did so with a big promise–she would match anything donated within the first 24 hours. And she kept her promise and matched $5,000 that was donated. And it keeps growing. Even with her having utilized some of the funds, it currently has a balance of $15,000 that Sisk will use at her discretion to help out the clients in her practice.

“Every week I just get to say, 'Hey, you don't have to worry about this portion of your bill,' and it's so fun. I just feel like Oprah, right? You get this, and you get this. And people were just so amazingly generous to support this and the people that we have been able to bless with contributions from the fund, when you see their faces, they're just so incredibly grateful. It is just so special to do this for Lenny.”

The loss of a horse is hard for any eventer, and many might let a loss of a horse as special as Lenny be the end of a dream for them, but not Sisk. Thanks to the love and support of her fellow eventers, Area IV community, and her clientele, Sisk is just as determined as ever to keep on with her dreams, always with Lenny in mind.

“Julie and I kind of have embarked on this project where I really want to produce some upper-level, U.S.-bred event horses, so we are kind of partnering to do that,” she noted. That partnership, Kaydence Sport Horses, was the reason behind pulling an embryo from Lenny and foaling her via a surrogate.

“A lot of people have asked me if I would ever do the same cross again, as far as Lenny’s mom and the same sire, and I always say, no. There's only one Lenny, and I think you would never get Lenny again and then you would just be disappointed.”

If you are interested in donating to The Lenny Fund, contributions can be made via Venmo @kaydencesportsmed (reference The Lenny Fund in the memo line) or by contacting the Kaydence Sports Medicine & Rehab office at (417) 448-0131 or [email protected].

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