Bucking mare with bad rep is now show horse
Some of the rumors were true. Chic Slavique could buck on the lunge line so violently she appeared to be doing headstands. She’d had a tough life, and she could be fierce. Especially when bucking for all the world like a bronco, and not the broodmare she actually was. But underneath the tough exterior beat the heart of a true friend, a good horse looking only for someone to unlock her potential. “The first time I rode her, I put a western saddle on to give myself a fighting chance,” recalls Nora Tarpley, a horse trainer with 30 years experience […]
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Texas the T’bred turns city folk ‘country’
Following the rumored existence of the proverbial “good horse” like a trail of breadcrumbs, Gayle and Bill Pruitt arrived at the stable door of ragtag racehorse Texas Honor. Looking not too well after a hard-knocking season, Texas, who reportedly spent time before and after races standing in ice, was nursing an abscessed hoof. “He looked pathetic,” Pruitt says. “But I thought he was the most beautiful horse I’d ever seen.” So on a November day 18 years ago, a couple of city folk who had eagerly abandoned urban life to put down roots on a patch of country outside Fort […]
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Chicago teacher learns at the foot of a mare
To speak the language of her horse. To listen, really listen; this was the higher-minded goal of Stefanie Rittner who entered into horse ownership five years ago. “When I got her, I was finishing up my master’s in writing, and was studying a Kenyan writer, Ngugi, who didn’t like to translate his work into English … and the symbolism, for me, was that I had to learn her language,” says the 8th grade writing teacher from Chicago. “I had to respect her sense of identity.” Last spring, in what you might call her mare’s classroom, Rittner received one of her […]
