The monster-sized garbage truck was headed straight for the horse I was riding down busy Columbus Avenue, at the height of evening rush hour on New York City’s Upper West Side. Gears grinding loudly, the vehicle kept chugging toward us as I maneuvered my horse as close as possible to the parked cars along the curb in an attempt to avoid a truck-horse-human collision.
The perpetually rearing wooden horse still stares out the enormous picture window oblivious to the constant bustle of New York City, just as he’s done since 1912. All around him, the world has changed. The once plentiful shops offering equestrian accouterments to clients with names like Rockefeller and Kennedy have disappeared, leaving Manhattan Saddlery as the sole surviving tack shop in the borough.
It was 8:45 p.m. on a Thursday evening. It was dark, wet and cold outside. I had 24 hours until the chili cook-off fundraiser I’d been planning for the Area II Young Riders, and the anxiety was setting in, as it always does before any function I plan.
I was doing my best to balance my time between my full-time job at Sinead Halpin Eventing, my part-time job at Prestige Saddles, my commitment to Young Riders, my part-time job teaching at River Edge Farm, and my personal commitment to fitness.
Windswept is one of Lynda Burton Sappington’s portrayals of Baroque horses.
Sappington, an award-winning artist, grew up riding hunters in Great Falls and Vienna, Va. Her husband’s job took them to Ohio in 1973, and they currently reside in West Alexandria.
Sappington said Windswept is one of her favorite pieces, and she hopes one day to produce a full body piece with this pose. This bronze sculpture is 10" high, 103⁄4" long and 61⁄2" wide on a walnut base mounted on a turntable.
Skyline, an accomplished junior jumper, was euthanized July 13 after an accident at her farm in Stevenson, Md. She was 22.
A Thoroughbred-warmblood mare, Skyline was known affectionately as “Queenie” by her owner Miriam Schulman and all who loved her. Skyline was bred by Mary Ann Steiert at Skyline Farm in North Carolina, trained by Elizabeth Solter, and purchased by 14-year-old Tolley Ewing and her father, Michael, when she was 5.
E’Sop’s Fable, a popular sport horse stallion, died July 27 after colicking. He was 23.
The elegant stallion, known as a gentleman by all who handled him, was approved as a Dutch Warmblood, American Warmblood and Selle Français. He was by Le Mexico, a Selle Français stallion, and out of Wendy, an imported warmblood mare. Wendy was imported in foal, and E’Sop’s Fable was born in California. He was owned by McDonald Performance Horses and spent his last several years as the senior breeding stallion for Les Chevaux de Carlier in Waddell, Ariz.
Artist D. Haskell Chhuy, whose artwork has appeared numerous times on the Chronicle cover, lives in Free Union, Va. She employs the rolling Virginia countryside in many of her paintings.
Chhuy and her husband moved to Free Union from Bedminster, N.J., in 2000. They settled on a home in rural Albemarle County because “I love the foxes, the foxhunting, the horses, the mountains and the dirt roads.”
Chhuy rides with Farmington, although she often goes with the hunt on foot so as to take photos for her work.
Wallace W. Nall was a California native who was involved with horses most of his life. After service in the Army's First Cavalry during WWII, he studied at the College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, Calif. In addition to judging and showing, he founded the Los Altos Hunt in Woodside, Calif., and served as its first master.
In later years, he lived in New Jersey, riding to hounds there. In the early 1970s he moved to Middleburg, Va., where he painted commissioned portraits of dogs, horses, racing, foxhunting, steeplechase and other subects in the field sports.
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