This summer Liz Perry won first place in the individual novice equitation over fences competition at the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association (ISHA) nationals.
Needless to say, she really likes horses.
Argus: Were you more excited being on the horse, or getting off the horse after you won the jumping competition?
Liz: Well the way it works is that everyone goes on individually for their jumping rounds so you get on the horse but you can’t warm it up or anything, you’ve never sat on this horse before, it’s just a random draw, and you draw the name of your horse.
A: What was yours?
L: It was Burt. It was a really nice horse.
And so in the morning, before you ride, you get to walk the horse on foot, so you walk with your coach so you can tell the distance between jumps and things like that and you can plan your course and your approach to each obstacle, and you can watch the warm-up riders that will kind of school the horses around, but you don’t know yet which one you’re going to ride, so you make notes about which ones you don’t want to get and little notes about how to ride each one. So then you draw your order and your horse and you go. So afterwards you get your score, and I didn’t even know that my score was the highest so far, because you have to kind of be paying attention, and I’m not too competitive by nature.
A: So you got along with the horse?
L: Yeah, I had a really smooth ride. I got a really high score and I was in disbelief the whole time. See, I was really out of it. I’m the team captain and so I had to plan the whole trip, get the funding, get the tickets, get the hotel. We got money from the WSA, and then I wrote President Bennet and got more money. I had gotten so little sleep the few days before planning it all and arranging to take all of my final exams when I got back. I didn’t even check to see if I was winning, and then someone came and told me how good I ranked.
A: Did your parents come?
L: No, in the end I didn’t want to make a huge deal out of it. Four people flying to Tennessee to see me for four minutes in the ring. But if I had known I would win, I would have had them come. I had no idea, I wasn’t even expecting to qualify. We’ve had a team for 16 years and nobody has ever gone to nationals before.
A: How did you get into horseback riding?
L: My best friend from kindergarten had a pony and I would go with her and groom and take care of it and stuff, and then I started taking lessons. So I’ve been doing it since I was really young. But I never competed before I came to college. It’s expensive and in the private horse show world you show your own horse, and you have to have a race horse to be able to be competitive, and then there are a lot more expenses, you need to trail your horse to the show, you need to pay for braiding and training.
A: Is there any counting involved? Because you said you’re trying to figure out the distance between jumps.
L: Yeah that’s kind of the skill, people don’t really realize that there’s anything to riding, they think that the horse does most of the work, but when I try to explain it to people, it’s kind of like if you were running hurdles or something, you want to get the horse to the jump at the right distance.
A: Have you ever had a bad relationship with a horse?
L: No, not really. There are definitely horse personalities that certain people tend to get along with. Like some are really lazy, and some people ride those ones well, and some people do better if you kind of have to finesse them, the high stress ones. I don’t know, everyone says I’m kind of an under-rider, I just try to stay quiet, and so I can ride some of the ones that might be wild for someone that’s a more aggressive rider.
A: Do they have amusement jumps? Any funny objects they have to jump over?
L: They try to make them scary at horse shows, they’ll do bright colors and they’ll put flowers and they’ll decorate them. Maybe you’ll have to jump the Budweiser jump. You want a really brave horse because if your horse hesitates, that’s a big penalty.
A: What do you think is the future of horse jumping?
L: I’m always brainstorming ways to make money in this industry because it takes a lot to keep horses. So I was trying to think of ways to combine my interest in medicine and horses, so the plastic surgery for horses idea arose. I’m not sure where it would go, but some of the owners are into plastic surgery. Competitions are judged on horses’ appearance as well.
A: What kinds of things are ugly?
L: Well most of it is actually for function. Things that we think of as ugly, there’s a reason for it. A lot of things with their legs, if they’re bow-legged or pigeon toed, they’re less likely to be fit and sound for a long time. But plastic surgery, a lot of them have funny ears, or the Roman nose, I don’t think that’s very attractive. Also if your horse has a thin tail, now you can buy hair extensions and they braid them in, and they’re real horse hair that matches your horses color and so they can have a nice flowing, thick tail for the horse shows.
A: Do you own a horse?
L: I actually have two that I brought to college with me. One of them is a thoroughbred and he’s a little bit older and he has arthritis and so he can’t do a whole lot anymore. I ride him a little bit. He’s a good horse, I love him.
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