United States Eventing Association

This is the 20th entry in the USEA’s Member Story Series. Help us reach our goal of over 300 stories – email your story to Leslie.

My name is Nicole Kowalski Burgio and I am originally from Milford Michigan. I remember the first time I saw horses running cross-country like it was yesterday. It was 1995 and I was a horse-crazy 13-year-old. My family had just moved to a more rural town where we could have some acreage so that I might have a horse. I had been taking lessons for the previous three years and begging my mother for a horse every birthday/Christmas. Our move required us to seek out a new barn to take lessons at and, as it happened, the sunny summer Saturday we chose to visit a near-by farm was the day they were having a horse trial. I vividly remember standing on the top of the hill on the cross-country course watching each horse gallop through the fields leaping over the jumps. Then and there I knew; this was the sport I wanted to do!

That farm that changed my life was Windshire. I took lessons on school ponies for the next year until my destiny would be realized. That destiny came in the form of a little red, four-year-old, green-broke Quarter Horse gelding. Barely 15 hands, with a very downhill stature, he was very unimpressive and I thought he was the most amazing creature ever. Now most horse people would cringe if you told them you had just bought an untrained, barely-out-of-his-colt-years horse for your 13-year-old daughter who had only been riding camp and school ponies. But alas, we were not horse people yet. Indeed, ten days later (the day before my 14^th birthday) my noble steed dumped me on my head and sent me to the ER mildly concussed. Children are nothing if not resilient, and I quickly learned how to stick to my saddle. It took me another year to work up the courage to take lessons from the owner and resident trainer of Windshire, Joy Percival. I found her very intimidating, which perhaps is the reason she improved my riding so drastically – I was too afraid not to do exactly as I was told! Joy taught me everything she knew about Eventing and it is the foundation she laid which still guides me to this day.

The little Quarter Horse was soon named “Toby Skyjumper” for the unlikely diminutive gelding turned out to be an amazing cross-country horse. Bold, fast, strong, and fearless, he would jump anything he was presented to. We made the transition from Beginner Novice to Novice quickly, earning our fair share of blue ribbons. After two years of dominating Novice, people told me, “You should sell that horse to a child, he would make an excellent Novice eventer to teach kids and then you can get yourself a ‘real’ horse to go Training on.” But we had already been schooling Training, and I felt I owed it to him to at least try. Soon we were raking in the ribbons at Training level. Toby never finding a course he didn’t like. We ended the season with winning Richland Park and a third place team win at the Midsouth Team Challenge in KY. Then people told me, “He’s a great Training horse, but you want to move up. You should sell him to a nice Pony Clubber and get yourself a real horse that can do Preliminary.” Again, I had been schooling Preliminary, and my trainer felt that if we chose a few of the easier shows, that we should be able to successfully run, even if we would never be competitive at the level. So we chose the “easiest” Preliminary course in Michigan as his first. Toby never took a second look at anything and came in a respectable sixth place. We continued our campaign, choosing our shows carefully, but my little Quarter Horse could not be over-faced. We ended our first season at Preliminary with an individual fifth place at the Midsouth Team Challenge and a third place team win. This was our first time ever placing in Kentucky and, more importantly, it was our first time making optimum time on cross-country at Preliminary! Toby was dubbed, “The Little Horse that Could.” The next year we ran a full season at Preliminary with incredible success culminating in a first place win at Richland and a trip to the inaugural American Eventing Championships.

I decided to retire the Little Horse that Could after that season. He had so far surpassed everyone’s expectations that he had nothing left to prove. After turning down some very attractive offers to buy him, I decided that he would live out the rest of his life with me. I owed him that much.

I bought my first off-the-track Thoroughbred that fall and began learning how to ride all over again. Seven years later finds me living in Georgetown Kentucky (I was in Kentucky five times a year for shows I figured I’d save money by moving!). I have bought and sold a few horses over the years, but one remains the same. At the ripe age of 19, Toby has taken on the job of packing my mother around starter courses. To see the shine in his eye and perk of his ears as she steers him into the start box gives me great joy. I know that he remembers his heyday and enjoyed it as much as I did. As I am poised to return to Preliminary this season for the first time in seven years, I look back at all the pictures of myself flying with Toby over fences as big as him to gain courage that if I once did this with a tiny, unsuitable mount, I surely can do it with my spectacularly talented and huge Thoroughbred!

My life has revolved around horses and Eventing for almost two decades now. I have so many stories and details I have left out of this “summary!” Non horse people often ask me how long I plan to continue to compete and I tell them, “As long as I can still ride.” It’s in my blood and will be until the day I die.