United States Eventing Association

Now on Course: From Junk Yard to the AEC, Jack Run is Teaching Nair All About Eventing

Nicole Nair remembers the first time she rode Jack Run, her 14-2 hands high Morgan-Appaloosa cross gelding. It was October 27, 2019, and Nair says it was a day that changed her life.

“I loved him from the first day I laid eyes on him,” said Nair, 11, a rising seventh grader at SunRidge Middle School in Winter Garden, Florida. “My trainer would put different kids on him, and he would buck them off. One day, she was, like, ‘How about you getting on him?’ He was perfect on the longe line, and then off the longe line, he was perfect. Yes, I was terrified, but then he started going really good, and I was just so happy.”

Her mother, Jessica Mejias-Nair, remembers watching as “Jackson” went calmly and quietly on the longe line with her daughter in the saddle. It was going so smoothly, in fact, that trainer Jennie Jarnstrom-Dennis unclipped the longe line and let the large pony and his little pilot venture around the arena at Class Act Farm, her training, sales, and competition barn in Apopka, Florida.

At that point, Jackson, who had been rescued from a junk yard, had mostly competed in the jumper ring. On that fateful day, four years ago, he was for sale, but he hadn’t found the right partner. Until he met Nicole.

“He was a little bit opinionated, and he used to buck pretty bad when you asked for the canter,” Jarnstrom-Dennis recalled. “But they became like best friends. It was really cute.”

Mejias-Nair, 40, said that knowing the pony with “an attitude” wasn’t always so gentle with his young riders made it all the more surprising as she watched the beginning of a beautiful partnership.

“He was really receptive to her and was really listening to her. He was listening to her leg, and he wasn’t going fast or out of control,” she said. “They started trotting around the whole entire arena, and then they started cantering. He was being amazing. At this point, I was just an equestrian mom. I’d never ridden, and I didn’t know what they were talking about. I just know when she saw him, she fell in love with him. And then Jennie said, ‘I think he may have just picked out his kid.’ ”

Nair dismounted after that fateful ride, cleaned Jackson up, and spent a little time cuddling and posing for pictures with the pony who had captured her heart. Now all she had to do was convince her father, Brendan Nair, that Jackson needed to become an official member of the Nair family, which includes Nicole’s brother, Noah, 15, a high-school football player.

Nicole got busy crafting a long missive about how she really needed her new best friend. It worked. But Brendan and his father, Donald Nair, managed to make Jackson’s purchase a surprise Nicole would never forget.

“I wrote a giant letter to my dad, asking if we could get him, but then my dad said he got sold, out of state,” said Nicole, who became upset at the thought of Jackson going to someone else. “But then my grandpa called us—he lives out of state—and he said, ‘Do you want an early Christmas present? Jack Run is yours.’ I didn’t believe it at first. I had to ask my mom. I found out it was true, and I just started bawling. I loved him so, so much and still do. That’ll never change.”

One thing that did change, however, was Jackson’s show name. His original moniker was “Gentleman Jack” but Nicole said, “He was not a gentleman at all.” Instead, she chose “Jack Run” as his new show name, in honor of the 200-acre farm of the same name that her grandfather, Donald, owns. It’s where her father grew up, in New Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and where Donald still lives.

Nicole and Jackson have been competing at Training level this spring, and they’ve qualified, along with Nicole and her other horse, Prinz S.W., who she's leasing, for the Training division at this year’s USEA American Eventing Championships presented by Nutrena Feeds (Lexington, Kentucky).

At the 2023 AEC, Nicole and Jack finished 12th in the Novice Junior, 15 and under division.

“I’m super, duper, duper excited,” said Nicole. “I thought last year that we wouldn’t be able to come back at another level with him, so it’s made my dreams come true.”

Nicole said she learned to event on Jackson, and while fun, it hasn’t necessarily always been smooth sailing.

“He was terrible in dressage. He bucked in front of the judges, threw me off, jumped out of the ring,” she recalled. “We’re still working with him. We were in the 50s, and now we’re in the low 30s.”

The jumping phases are another story, as she says Jackson loves them. He especially thrives on cross-country, coming alive when he hears the starter begin the countdown to leave the box.

“He knows what to do. He starts trotting in place in the box, and as soon as he hears ’10,’ his ears go forward,” she said. “He jumps so big over the jumps. Sometimes I get popped out of the tack because he jumps so big. He just loves it.

“Dressage was definitely the toughest to learn,” she added. “But cross-country and show jumping were pretty easy to learn on him because when he got to know me, he said ‘OK, I’ll teach you how to do this, and you teach me dressage.’”

The Nairs leased Prinz S.W., a 14-year-old German Sport Horse (PR. H. Principal Boy x Bienchien), as a partner for Nicole in her move up to the Training level and beyond. “Mopsi” and his owner, Madeline Hartsock, won the Junior Training division at the 2017 AEC. The Nairs knew when they bought Jackson that he has navicular and assumed he’d likely top out at the Novice level.

“We thought it was fine, because she’s a little peanut, and as long as we managed it properly, it shouldn’t be a problem,” Mejias-Nair recalled. “At that point, we realized that she was ready to move up, but we didn’t know if he’d be OK to move up. Our whole goal was to do right by him.”

It was important to the Nairs not to push Jackson beyond his comfort level, given his rough start in life. They wanted him happy and healthy, after purchasing him four years ago from the family who’d adopted him from a Florida horse rescue. In 2012, Jackson was 2 years old and one of four horses rescued from a Tampa-area junkyard as part of an animal-control case, said Shannon Feehan, who today runs Windermere Equestrian Center in Florida.

Feehan was volunteering at the now-disbanded rescue farm when Jackson and his junkyard mates arrived. Feehan, a lifelong equestrian who grew up riding with Jarnstrom-Dennis, would often get paired up with the “spunky” rescue horses, helping to restore them to health, bring them along under saddle, and then eventually, hopefully, adopt them out.

“He was still a stallion, and he had a little bit of a stallion attitude,” recalled Feehan. “I liked the spunky ones, and because he had his attitude, I got the pleasure of working with him. He was just a really cool horse and a very fast learner, and he ended up being really sweet.”

She still remembers him with knotted hair, covered in burrs, and suffering from bad white-line disease. He looked better than his junkyard mates, who were skinny and in poor shape. One even had a stick lodged in its eye. Jackson had been handled, she said, but not a lot.

“I created a bond with him and started working with him, and broke him,” she said, adding that she worked with him for two years, teaching him to jump and even introducing him to cross-country.

“We always took all of our babies out schooling, and he was, like, ‘Whatever.’ He went straight into the water and down over ditches,” she said. “He’s like a once-in-a-lifetime pony. He gives you unbelievable confidence because he’s just brave. Nothing really phases him. He’ll just give you his all, like “No, I can do this. You want to jump the moon? That’s fine.’ ”

Two years after his rescue, Jackson was flourishing, talented under saddle, and ready for adoption. Sophie Smith, a young Florida rider who trains with Feehan’s business partner, Morgan Taylor, adopted him and began showing him. When she outgrew him, the search was on for a new owner. However, Jackson hadn’t gelled with any of the young riders who got on him. Until the day he met Nicole.

Fast forward to two years ago, and the Nairs had leased Mopsi because they thought Jackson likely wouldn’t be able to go beyond Novice given his age and navicular. However, Jackson seemed to sense that he might get edged out of the top spot in Nicole’s heart and wasn’t having it. He kept improving on the flat and continued to look comfortable jumping bigger fences.

“Jennie said ‘He’s been moving so well. I’ve never seen him move so well. He looks really healthy and happy. Let’s see what happens,’ ” Mejias-Nair said. “He gets really jealous. We joke about that all the time. We say he had to have been a human in another life. He wants it all to be about himself. You can tell he’s thinking, ‘You might be the Prinz, but I’m the king.’ ”

He’s definitely the king of Nicole’s heart, which she said won’t ever change.

“We thought Jackson would not be able to take me to the level that I wanted to do, and Mopsi just came along. I never thought my heart would be big enough for another horse,” Nicole said, before dropping her voice to a whisper and making a shushing sound while adding, “I love Jackson just a little bit more. We have a really strong bond because I’ve known him since I was 7, and he’s been my home when I’ve needed to escape, and he just makes me smile.”

Added Mejias-Nair: “It’s incredibly emotional because we have this pony who we were told could only do so much, and he just keeps proving everybody wrong. They just have this connection. Just to watch their bond and communication and know he loves her so much and will 100 percent take care of her wherever they are is incredible.”

Prinz is helping Nicole learn more about dressage “the right way,” which in turn is helping with Jackson’s dressage.

“With [Mopsi], he’s very solid and better in dressage,” said Jarnstrom-Dennis. “He made her look at it differently, and now she can explain it to Jackson, and he’s like, ‘Yes, ma’am.’ It’s pretty incredible. He’s had his lowest [dressage] scores at Training. He’s not a good mover. Things just clicked in putting it together. It’s been beautiful to watch. They are a super, super team.”

Nicole has big riding goals, first formed in the saddle on Jackson and further fueled by both horses.

“My dream is to compete at the Kentucky Three-Day Event,” she said. “I really hope one day to be able to compete at a five-star, and the Olympics, too. I want to go to the Olympics so bad.”

Nicole’s dreams just might become reality, as Jarnstrom-Dennis says the 4’2” dynamo is a talented young equestrian.

“I wouldn’t put it past her,” she said. “Her timing to the jumps [is] uniquely amazing. She’s a pretty incredible little rider. She’s a kid to watch out for in the future."

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