48 SIDELINES SEPTEMBER 2012
FOR HORSE PEOPLE • ABOUT HORSE PEOPLE
By Elizabeth Boylan
In October 2007, Maggie’s father convinced us to take a trip
to Europe to try to fnd her a horse. I give him full credit for that,
because I wasn’t sure I was experienced enough buying horses to
pick a horse for Maggie on my own, especially in Europe. I didn’t
know anybody there and had heard lots of stories of Americans
being “had” while shopping there. There is no opportunity,
obviously, to take a horse home and try it and you will jump it over
perhaps a couple of different types of obstacles but most likely just
rails and then have to make up your mind. And there is always the
question of whether or not the seller is trying to sell you a horse
with some hidden problem that you will discover once you get him
home. “Just go,” Maggie’s father said. “Trust yourself. You know a
good horse when you see it.”
Maggie was 15 and had just fnished a lease on a children’s/
junior hunter that had introduced her to the 3’6” hunters; but she
needed to start doing the equitation to up her game. She had
gotten a late start in her showing career and had a lot of ground
to make up. A friend of ours in the horse business recommended
someone to us who lived in Belgium and could help us fnd some
potential horses to consider. He was said to be a good horseman,
honest and knowledgeable and spoke perfect English. We booked
our fights.
The Search for the Right Horse
Our fight landed in Amsterdam about 5 hours behind schedule
due to mechanical problems so the day of horse shopping was
already in trouble. We rented a car and drove about an hour and a
half to meet Paul, the professional who was to help us. He told us
we were to look at a couple of equitation type horses before going
to the next stop. The horses there were fne. Maggie was clearly
a little nervous getting on horses she had never ridden before and
jumping them around courses with lots of Europeans watching
her; but she managed. I did the video taping and then we got in
our car and went to the next stable.
By the fourth stop it was past dinner time, almost 7:30 and
starting to get dark. We had one more horse to look at and it was
just across the Dutch border in Belgium. Paul hadn’t seen the
horse before but a friend of his had seen it show a few weeks
earlier and said it was a nice horse. He warned us though that the
horse was more expensive than what we had told him we wanted
to spend and that it was a very tall horse - over 17 hands and he
might be too big for Maggie. We had seen a couple of nice horses
so far but nothing we had fallen in love with so we decided to look
at this last horse, just in case.
We arrived at a very old, large barn and were informed the
horse we were to look at had lost a hind shoe that day and they
had not been able to get it put back on. We were going to have to
try him with three shoes or not try him at all. They led him to an
indoor which was quite large but had only one small light hanging
from the ceiling and one lone oxer in the middle of the ring with a
couple of rails on it. This should be interesting, I thought.
A girl who worked at the stable got on him frst. As soon as
she picked up the trot, my eyes got big - it was the classic hunter
e
My Story
A Poetic Journey
Elizabeth (left) and Maggie with Poetic, fondly referred to as
“Three Shoes”
Photo by Melanie Garnett
Poetic shows off his classic hunter low sweeping trot
Photo by Shawn McMillen Photography
What are the odds that an amateur rider mom and
her junior rider daughter who were looking to
purchase their frst horse would fnd a future Junior
Hunter USEF Horse of the Year on their frst ever
horse buying trip to Europe? Pretty darn high.
But that is precisely what happened.