I'm Nancy. I'm 29 years young. I currently live in Kansas City, MO, but I grew up in Hinsdale, IL. I went to Mizzou for 5 years and got my master's degree in occupational therapy. I work at an inpatient rehabilitation hospital, and absolutely love my job. I can almost nerd out as much about occupational therapy as I can about horses.
My favorite color is purple with the recent obsession with teal, which explains my cross country colors. Plus, teal and purple seems a bit more adult than straight purple. I am not 12, thank you very much.
I have always loved horses. When I was a kid, I would frequently ask my parents to go horseback riding during vacations, even to non-exotic places like the Wisconsin Dells. I started riding in the fall of 2003 after spending two weeks at a horseback riding camp. I loved every minute of it. I started volunteering at the Hanson Center Therapeutic Riding Center in Burr Ridge, IL when I started high school where I lead horses and side-walked with the students during therapeutic horseback riding lessons. I frequently volunteered with Patty (a pediatric occupational therapist) and Jean (a special education teacher) who became huge influences in my life. They recommended that I start riding at the Double J Riding Club, so I did. I rode with Nancy (primarily) and Kathy at Double J all through high school, working crazy hours as a lifeguard, desk attendant, swim team coach, & lesson instructor at the pool all summer so I could afford to take riding lessons. I rode some awesome horses who were great at teaching me the ropes... mostly Major, Elliot, and Sammy, among many others.
When I started college at the University of Missouri, I found the Columbia Equestian Center, where Kris Maloney (at the time) amazingly allowed me to work off some of the money it took to take lessons. My first lesson at CEC, I rode a horse named Risto. I fell off twice in the same lesson (he was an ex-racehorse and I didn't understand that more contact = more speed, which didn't go well around the tight corners of a Tennessee Walking aisle), and was convinced she'd never want me to come back. I kept showing up, though, and fell in love with several of her lesson horses, mainly Kentucky, who took me to my first off-property horse show at William Woods. I showed him under the show name of Gettin' Lucky in Kentucky.
But then I started riding Coco. We did really well together. Coco is a saddlebred who Kris saved from a bad situation. When he first started at CEC, he would lay down on his riders in the middle of the show ring. By the time I got to him, he was doing better, and we developed a relationship quickly. The summer before my 21st birthday, Kris asked me if I wanted to buy Coco. It had gotten to the point where he was pretty sour during lessons with anyone but me and it made no sense for her to keep supporting a horse for one rider in her program. I was so depressed. I called my parents and asked if they could help. They said they would think about it but that I had to write a pro/con list for owning a horse and read (& annotate) a book about personal finance (which ended up being mostly about investing in the stock market). I got about half way through the book before it bored me to tears and made a pro/con list that surprisingly had MUCH MORE cons than pros and called them to let them know that I no longer wanted a horse. My mom's response, "Well, it's a little late now." They had already bought him and decided to give him to me for my birthday (September 2009). BEST BIRTHDAY EVER!
Our first event was Queeny Park Horse Trials in June of 2011. In 2011, we also did Hunter Oaks, and Dunnabeck & Heritage Park with Amity Farms (Amanda Pezold). I started riding with Amanda after Hunter Oaks when I realized that I needed to get better at dressage. Her farm was going to Dunnabeck and Heritage and offered to take me with them, and since I was hooked to eventing by then, I couldn't resist. I had to take 2012 off, because I was doing fieldwork for my occupational therapy program. Coco was leased to an amazing family for 3 months while I was in Chicago.
Then I quickly moved to Kansas City where Coco would live at Hackberry Farms for about a year. I spent the rest of the summer of 2012 studying for my OT board exam, getting a job, and riding Coco, but we didn't have a trainer so we were on our own and just kind of playing around. In the summer of 2013, I wanted to get back to eventing. I talked to a horse friend at work who knew a trainer who was kind of near me (Chris Pope). She came out and gave me a few lessons before offering to take me to Catalpa Corners in Iowa in 2013. While we were there, I realized how unbelieveably skinny my horse looked in comparison to the other horses there. My Coco Bean was the skinniest of the horses. Something had to change. I quickly moved Coco to Chris's house in Belton, MO after we got back from Catalpa, because she promised that she would be able to put weight back on him.
I have been with Chris and the Morning Star Equestrian Center ever since. Coco and I qualified for the American Eventing Championships three times (attended twice- 2014 & 2015- in Texas), traveled the country to go to lots of events, and did very well in Area IV and nationally at the beginner novice level. But as the seasons progressed, Coco needed hock injections more & more often. At the end of the 2015 season, we were going to go to a Moray Nicholson clinic and Coco kept coming up lame. I wouldn't be able to get his hocks injected until after the clinic, and it seemed pointless to inject his hocks for a winter when we had nothing planned. Chris offered to let me try to ride Dieter. He is an American warmblood that has just been hanging out in Chris's field since I knew her, and he could be a good eventing prospect if I wanted to give Coco a break. I rode Dieter and quickly decided to buy him. Here's a link to our 2015 year end video.
Dieter and I did our first starter event at Mill Creek in May of 2016 (where we were eliminated with a rider fall before the first XC jump- no, I don't want to talk about it). We actually finished our second starter event at Queeny Park in June of 2016. Now it's time to try our hand at beginner novice. Follow along for all the fun adventures to come!
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