The Doctor of Confidence By John Muncie Woody Wade, a bright chestnut Thoroughbred, was unflappable, cool, the hep-cat in a jazz band. He made every rider better.
Jody came running from our front pasture toward the house shouting something. I was up in my office with the sliding door closed and could barely hear her. What ever it was, it wasn’t good. It was a bright sharp morning in early winter and Jody was layered up. As she ran, her top jacket streamed out behind her. A scene from a nearly silent movie. I tore downstairs in my bathrobe and met her at the porch. “Woody’s dead!” she said in anguish, a voice full of tears. “He’s lying out in the field. I can’t look. You go see.” Fortunately, this part of the story has a happy ending. But before I get to it, I want to tell you something about Woody. Woody was not our horse; he was on loan from Diane Wade, a horsewoman in the D.C. area who rode Woody to success at the biggest horse shows all over the East Coast. When Woody got to a less-competitive age, she semi-retired him at trainer Peter Foley’s place outside Middleburg. Several years ago, Jody had a hard fall that badly shook both her cranium and her confidence. She needed a calm, respectful, easy horse to sooth her nerves and bring her back. That was Woody to a T. Peter offered him up and it worked out for everybody. Jody got what she called “The Doctor of Confidence,” Woody got a job and a big pasture, and Diane got the satisfaction of knowing that 30
SAS Equine Photography
Woody had a Jewish grandmother type attending to his every need. The Doctor of Confidence was unflappable; he was cool; he was the hepcat wearing shades, playing bass with the jazz combo. Once, while Woody was curing Jody of the horse-riding yips, they were at a show in the big indoor arena at Lexington’s Virginia Horse Center. It was a large field, maybe 20 horses. Waiting to go into the ring, 19 of them were heads up, prancing, pacing, eyes wide, ears flicking. Not Woody. He looked like a guy on a Barcalounger. His nose drooped to the floor; I swear his eyes were closed. I’m no rider so it’s hard for me to judge, but every horse person says that, on a course over jumps, Woody was a metronome. He didn’t speed up, didn’t slow down. At the Horse Center’s Thoroughbred Celebration Show, the judge once announced him as “Steady Eddie” as he cantered Jody around. Woody’s attitude seemed to be: “Just hang on kid; I’ll get you where you want to go.” Jody wasn’t The Doctor’s first patient. Diane had lent him out to other riders needing a confidence boost. One woman swears Woody reached out his neck to catch her when she got unseated. Gordon Reistrup, who runs Washington & Lee University’s horsemanship program and 31
