What makes international show jumper Markus Fuchs break out into a cold sweat? Is it an enormous oxer? Or a towering vertical?

Nope. It’s a bit of a slope.

Fuchs, who has represented Switzerland at five Olympic Games and won the FEI Show Jumping World Cup Final in 2001, enjoyed a day out hunting on Oct. 2, 2010, with the Hillsboro Hounds (Tenn.) Well, perhaps the term “enjoyed” is an exaggeration.

On Oct. 10, 2010, Sylvia McDonald rode to her 57th opening day meet with the Arapahoe Hunt in Colorado. Now 85, Sylvia (as she’s universally known) continues to ride at least three days a week, despite arthritic hands and a knee replacement.

Talk to any foxhunter, and he’ll have a story for you about the best mount in the field. Time after time, it’s not the boldest staff horse or the most sure-footed guest packer that he’ll describe, but a shorter and scrappier fellow: the ideal hunt pony.

Nearly every hunt has one of those special animals that becomes the envy of everyone in the field: game, athletic, smart, forgiving, with an instinctive understanding of the sport. Those extraordinary individuals become hand-me-downs, reserved and spoken for years ahead of time.

One of the newest additions to the MFHA roster has already gained national prominence through their conservation efforts.

When someone asks Nina Burke, MFH, and self-described “conservation nut” why she devotes so much of her time and energy to preserving open space, she responds with a question of her own.

“When you live in the country and you look out your back window,” she says, “what would you rather see: a bunch of houses, or a view of a marsh or a river, untouched and undeveloped forever and ever?”

The IHSA riders at the University of Montana Western get out of the classroom in more ways than one.

Emily Cornell can vividly recall one of her most memorable lessons in horsemanship. She was riding
a 4-year-old, out foxhunting.

“The hounds hit on a hare in a huge field of sage, and everyone was flying,” she said. “I was burying my face in my horse’s neck, galloping flat out. And all of a sudden, my rein snapped in half—at a dead run, on a green draft cross.