Spring is finally on its way

We’ve entered into March and spring is finally on its way, or at least that is what it is supposed to be like as I sit here now and look out of my window at the biggest snowfall we have had so far this winter.

Lovely though it is to look at the virgin snow covering the landscape in a blanket of white, especially against a backdrop of brilliant blue skies and bright sunshine, it does put a slight damper on previously made plans.

The ‘equine calendar’ is coming into view with many an event at which to participate, to help administer, or to simply spectate. With such a full calendar of events and competitions to choose from, running from the end of February through November (not including the fox hunts themselves, which carry on throughout the winter), it gets difficult at times not to be ‘overbooked.’

Bad weather can lead to postponements of set events, which in turn results in congestion later in the year. It is bad enough having to decide what to go for and what to miss out on anyway, without having to cancel something you had been looking forward to for months, because it now clashes with another event.

Anita and I have an interest in several different equine pursuits besides trail riding — which we love, especially when exploring new and previously unseen places. We enjoy the local hunter pace competitions with the Rappahannock and the Bull Run hunts, the point-to-point racing that most hunts provide as fundraisers and the slightly more serious racing, such as the Virginia and International Gold Cups and the marvelous Montpelier Race Meet in November, here in Orange. On top of all that, we have various polo events to attend during the summer months, as well as our own riding just to keep the horses fit.

In addition, Anita is looking to do a little more cross-country riding this year where she takes her horse around a long course of solid jumps and they hopefully return intact. If you have ever watched three-day eventing, cross-country is the bit they usually do on the second day — after the dressage and before the show jumping.

Of course, she still maintains an interest in the sport of TREC (a kind of mounted orienteering with a separate obstacle course) at which she became English reserve champion before we came to America. Over here though the sport is really in it’s infancy and as far as we know, only Mary Harcourt in North Carolina is ‘flying the flag’ for TREC (see trec-usa.org for more information).

As for me, I have developed a very recent interest in the sport of endurance riding, not to the extent that I have actually participated in a competition as yet, but I am seriously looking into it.  Of course, the one thing you need for endurance riding with distances of 25, 50 and even 100 miles to cover is a very fit horse, which in turn means lots of riding and practice.  This neatly brings me back to the weather — bad weather restricts our riding opportunities that only go to fill up the calendar even further and means yet more choices to make.

On the other hand, how great it is to have the opportunity to make those choices in the first place and that is something that anyone with an interest in equine pursuits will find they always have here in Virginia.

David Hasbury’s column runs every other Wednesday. Carl Stafford returns next week.