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CARRY ME BACK: Hold Your Horses, It’s All Mush for the Dogs
Carry Me BACK: Hold Your Horses, It’s All Mush for the Dogs
By Jimmy Hatcher
think we were talking about the early 1970s.
Chip and Cary Embury were in the horse business at Kentfield Farm, then owned by Glenn and Dixie Nofsinger and later by Caro and Jordan Bentley when I used to board my horses there.
Embury decided he wanted to try the sport of sled dog racing, but found the roads around Kentfield far too busy to train his Alaskan Huskies on them. Instead, he proceeded to take them to Crenshaw Road, also known as The Polo Field Road. It runs from Route 50 to Rectortown. His training sled had wheels, since snow was mostly scarce in Virginia. But the brakes only stopped the sled’s wheels, and not the dogs.
Chip Embury running his team at the Ely, Minnesota “Race of Champions” in January 1981, where they set the course record in the 7dog Class. In 1981, Embury won the “ISDRA” [International Sled Dog Racing Association] Gold Medal for the 7-dog Class.
Chip Embury running his team at the Ely, Minnesota “Race of Champions” in January 1981, where they set the course record in the 7dog Class. In 1981, Embury won the “ISDRA” [International Sled Dog Racing Association] Gold Medal for the 7-dog Class.
Embury chose Sunday afternoons on Crenshaw for his training program. One day, his dogs were all hooked up and ready to roll by 2 p.m. Unfortunately, that very same Sunday, Paul Mellon, ex-MFHA of Piedmont Hunt, had invited Billy Wilbur, past master of the Warrenton Hunt and now acting field master of the Piedmont Hunt, and Charles Whitehouse, Master of the Orange County Hunt, to come over for lunch. That would be followed by a pleasure ride, also set to start at 2 p.m., but because the surrounding fields were wet, they set off down Crenshaw Road.
At that time, Mellon owned farms on both sides of Crenshaw. On this particular day, he and his riding pals would go south down Crenshaw. At the same hour, right after lunch, Embury and his sled dogs took off from the opposite direction and headed north.
Wilber once said their outing became a small disaster when they trotted around one corner, only to see sled dogs coming toward them at full run. There were no collisions, and no one on horseback was unseated, but the frightened horses reversed themselves and were suddenly off to the races in full panic mode, and also at full gallop.
Years later, Wilber recalled that he was thinking at the time that Mellon was going to inflict pure holy hell on Embury. But Wilber, who had almost pulled his horse up, said Mellon galloped by with a smile on his face and shouted, “Faster Billy, they’re catching us.”
As for Chip Embury, that Crenshaw Road training surely paid off. The wheels eventually came off his sled, replaced by blade runners, and he and his dogs found their way to Alaska in 1984 and also competed in many major races there and around the country. No horses ever got in their way.
