United States Eventing Association

USEA Member Story #27

This is the 27th 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 Olivia Raine, and I am a junior at Crossroads School in Santa Monica, California. I started riding when I was about three-years-old. My parents would take me to Griffith Park where they have pony rides, and they would lie about my age so that I could ride the ponies that trotted instead of just walking in. My first pony was named Beau and I got him when I was eight. We had a running joke that he would stay up all night trying to think of ways to be naughty. Never the less, he carried me through my first event at The Meadows of Moorpark and dumped me right before I got into the start box for cross-country. Luckily it was before I started so I got right back on and went and did my course.

After Beau I had Siena. Although she was a hunter when I first found her, she turned into an Eventing machine, we won two out of the three training events that we competed in. Sadly, she was a little on the small and older side so we felt that it was unfair to try and compete at Preliminary. She was passed down to one of my very close friends and still competes at the lower levels sometimes with various people.

Next was Elvis who was the love of my life. He came into my life when I was 14. Although he was a crazy six-year-old who was somewhat sketchy to ride when I first got him, he became my dream horse. He was big, grey, and could jump the moon, he was also the sweetest horse I had ever met. He was like a 1100 pound lap dog. We started at Novice and quickly moved up to Training. After spending some time at Training, we moved up to Preliminary. I have never had so much fun in my life as those cross-country runs. He loved cross-country more than just about anything and we had complete trust in each other. We began to start training to compete at Intermediate.

In August of 2010 Elvis started to have seizures. At first we thought that maybe he was having an allergic reaction to something, but as the seizures became more frequent we knew something was wrong. He went up to Alamo Pintado Equine Hospital and had an MRI. He had an ear infection in his right ear that had been causing the seizures. After starting on antibiotics, Elvis began to get better and I was able to start riding him again about two months after the first seizure. But the infection didn't go away and he started to have seizures again. After another round of antibiotics, he began to show improvement and I started to have hope that I would be able to ride him again. But the day before I was supposed to ride again, he had a seizure. Two weeks later he had several seizures in the same morning and fell down. In the middle of class I got a call and rushed out to the barn. When the vet got there, she thought that he had fractured his pelvis and that the only humane thing to do was to put him to sleep. On February 4, 2011 I had to say good bye to my best friend. That moment was the worst moment of my entire life, and I still have a hard time grasping that he is gone. The love and trust I had in Elvis could not have been greater. However,I will not quit riding though and I will return to Eventing sometime in the future because I know that riding is a part of me and has always been there.