From the President

Dear FOSH Friends and Supporters,

I hope you are enjoying your spring and early summer riding weather. Several of us in the Midwest had a recent teleconference and lamented that this was one of the chilliest and windiest springs we could ever remember. As one individual remarked, “We had a real spring!” I agree—it was a real spring with wild breezes and volatile ups and downs (mainly downs as I sadly looked over dozens of my tulips bent under a cover of snow in mid-April).

I’m sure most of you are finished with the shedding process by now. Every year I marvel how Shiloh (a MFT) sheds such vast amounts and Dusty (TWH) has only about 1/4 of the coat of Shiloh. I was told by Shiloh’s previous owner that it was because he was born in Indiana, and Indiana has colder winters than Missouri; however, I have no idea if that is scientifically accurate. In addition to hours of brushing, there is also that first spring ride. Mind you, it has usually been six months since our last ride unless November or March are unusually warm. I confess the first ride is never my favorite as I feel like I am steering a tank—a tank that is suspicious of everything in his home pasture because now I’m on his back. Each ride is substantially better, and I am soon back to using light as a feather aids and Shiloh becoming a brave, trusty steed for the upcoming year.

Onto our beautiful issue with many interesting articles. I was especially pleased to see Working Equitation featured. I held a Working Equitation clinic in St. Louis two years ago with Erica and Howard Peet. It was fun and interesting to hear the Peets discuss their experience with Working Equitation and why they enjoyed the discipline so much. Interestingly, the Peets train Andalusians, which is a far cry from our gaited horses; however, they were eager to learn more about gaited horses and were very supportive of all the gaited horses with which they were competing.

There were two aspects that I remember in particular from our conversations: (1) No horse is perfect in every phase of the competition, which means the placings change in meaningful ways throughout the competition and (2) As a fairly new discipline with so many newbies, the comradery and mutual support is a refreshing change from the hard core, highly competitive show rings with which many exhibitors experienced previously. The latter aspect is one that I likened to the FOSH shows