August 2020 FRC Member Newsletter

Member Memories
With Jillian Woolridge
ride. Their daughter was born with one arm,
and was lukewarm to the idea of riding in
her younger years. Once she started training
her POA to trick ride though, she started
touring the east coast with her trainer and
being a side act in his expo shows. I got to
be a fly on the wall for those trips, and going
everywhere behind the scenes to watch
and groom and be entertained will always
be part of my life growing up. I was a barn
rat that got a lot of amazing opportunities to be a part of, that kept the joy of being around
horses alive in so many ways.
Eventually the trainer came to our barn for a clinic,
and poor uncoordinated and ugly Elmer suddenly
became the golden child of trick riding. He
wasn’t very fast on the uptake at first, but soon
he could bow, lay down, stand on a pedestal, and
go bareback with a rope anywhere. We worked
on liberty training, marching, and we even tried a
sit (he never really understood that one…).
Elmer became the farm’s go-to mount to test a
new rider. He could handle any type of rider, and from there my trainer would decide what
horses a new working student could work with. He didn’t really show much, he didn’t get
off the farm, and I eventually got Cappy, my second horse and another TB, to do the hunters
and later jumpers with. Elmer stuck around as a buddy, boyfriend mount, and relaxing ride
after my crazy mare.
Elmer passed away very suddenly from colic in 2010, a week before I started grad school at
Penn State. It left me devastated for a very long time, because every girl’s childhood pony is
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