Ride the High Country

Horse-showIt’s 5:30 a.m. It’s dark; it’s muddy; you haven’t finished your coffee; you’re tired and most definitely not ready to wake up, but the babies are waiting. They’re stamping their feet impatiently, demanding their breakfast now. The trade-off is more than worth it, however, when those soft round noses come poking out of stall doors the minute you walk into the stable tent, complete with a chorus of welcome calls. And so another day dawns for Cindy Harrington, stable manager for one of the most repetitious hunter/jumper barns in the country.

Cindy is one of the cast of thousands of animals and humans—riders, vets, grooms, trainers, farriers, mane and tail braiders—who turn up in East Dorset every summer for the Vermont Summer Festival Horse Show. The show has become one of the preeminent stops upon the summer competition circuit, and this year, for the first em, will include five consecutive weeks of hunter and jumper competition for riders of all ages,and horses of all sizes and colors. Read more…

 

-Toby Raymond