Archives by date

You are browsing the site archives by date.

Calm after the ‘Storm’

Stat Box Sire: February Storm Dam: Cooldrink Foal date: March 22, 2006 Ashley Hardin had a bit of a rocky start with Thoroughbreds. Nothing horrible. But after years of smooth sailing on her Quarter Horse the first venture with an off-track Thoroughbred was a bit of a jolt. “I picked him up in 2001 and he turned out to be very mean. He loved me to death, but he wouldn’t let anybody else get near him. When people tried, he’d spook and buck,” Hardin says. In 2007, she sold that first horse to a new owner who still has him, […]

Willie is such an agreeable TB, and winning!

Cantering past shedrows into new life

The trainer insisted the racehorse was level headed and calm. To prove it, he leapt onto Willie Cruise’s bare back and cantered him slowly around the Suffolk Downs shedrows as Monica Southwick watched. That was all the convincing the 24-year-old equestrian needed. “I knew instantly that I would buy him,” Southwick says. “I wasn’t looking to buy a horse when I went to see him, but he was so gorgeous — I found him on the CANTER New England website—and after I saw him canter, I knew I’d take him.” The demonstration and decision took place in November 2006, as […]

Out from behind the desk

From desk job to horse biz

For 18 years David Wilson worked in a cubicle as a medical-equipment software engineer. It was a pretty good life until he decided the grass was greener on a horse farm. That realization dawned shortly after he and his daughter Victoria, who was five going on six at the time, took a riding lesson together in 2001. “I had just finished reading the Little House on the Prairie series to her, and horses were featured pretty heavily in it, so I asked if she wanted to take a riding lesson,” he says. Before that day, he’d only ridden a handful […]