United States Eventing Association

New Years Eve 2015. I was laying in bed, waiting for the ball to drop in Times Square, thinking about the previous year, and listening to my husband snore. A few months before, I had lost my heart horse to ring bone. He’d had to permanently retire before he was even 10 and went back to his breeders to be a pasture puff for the rest of his life.

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.

Before his fifth birthday, Devon MHF has already passed through a number of different programs. As a 3-year-old, he was started in part of a lesson program where he learned a special trick of bucking people off before they ever got on. This was a trait he held onto.

Kelly O’Brien has her eye on a prize. “Pretty much the rest of this season will be targeted towards getting fired up for the AEC,” says O’Brien, 54. She and B E Never Say Never, a 19-year-old Dutch Warmblood, have qualified for the 2024 USEA American Eventing Championships (AEC) presented by Nutrena Feeds already, thanks to decisively winning all three of their 2024 outings thus far.

Some kids are just born loving horses. Eleven-year-old Priscilla Pignatelli is the perfect example. “Her dad and I used to joke around that she has loved horses since she learned they said neigh,” recalled mother Grace Pignatelli. “We were non-horsey parents, so it took us a while to realize it wasn’t just a phase!”

Growing up in the pony hunters, my parents never wanted to buy a horse. They reasoned: "You'll grow out of them," or "They're too expensive." They made good points, not that I understood that at the time...

John Lennon famously said that life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. Rebecca Barber Tyler probably would agree.

Dear Benji, this is one of those notes I wish I wasn't writing. But if I didn't get my thoughts to you in some (albeit cheesy) way, I might go crazier than the situation is already making me.

Ava Chase wasn’t quite sure what to think as she was handed the lead rope of Kingston, a 21-year-old New Zealand Thoroughbred, in 2021. The gelding’s owner had heard of Chase, who runs a boarding barn in San Marcos, California, and knew she provided good care.

Macyn Wolpert and her pony 18-year-old Sport Pony Hallelujah were set to attend the Pine Top Intermediate Horse Trials (Thomson, Georgia) on Feb. 11 with cross-county day happily occurring on Wolpert’s 12^th birthday.