(“She was a moose!”)
If you’ve read the recent pronouncements from George Morris (reborn version), you know he decries the modern trends in the world of show hunters and equitation which drag the sport further and further from its roots. There’s a certain irony here because through the 1960s and ‘70s, no single person powered the industrialization of American hunter buying, training, and showing more than George himself.
But he is so right that much of what happens in the hunter ring—dead broke mechanical rounds, regimented stride counting, and the dumbing-down of courses and fences—isn’t much like “the old days.”
Our world growing up wasn’t as glitzy, but I can recall when hunters were, well, hunters. Showing was what you did during the spring and summer. Cubbing season hadn’t begun and crops were in the fields, so galloping there was off limits. In western PA, there were five recognized packs, and each would hold a horse show in the summertime, principally to raise money to feed the hounds for another year.
Most everyone who showed also hunted their horses through the fall. The horse shows were just a diversion. These were recognized shows. All hunters—jumpers were for the Fair crowd or the city. Each division had a fences class in the ring, another one over an outside course made of natural and permanent obstacles, and a flat class. George and his cronies hadn’t yet invented “pre-green,” and limit, and all the modern ways to separate owners from their wallets without requiring them to really learn to ride first. As a relative beginner in my late teens, the easiest, least demanding division I could enter was Second Year Green. We jumped 3’9.
When the weather wasn’t too hot, the shows offered Corinthian classes. They were ridden in formal hunting attire, “appointments to count,” which meant you had to line up after your round for the judge to inspect the contents of your sandwich case and check for the veracity of the liquid in your saddle’s bayonet flask.
The shows also featured a “family class” which often brought out two or three generations of the notable area families to ride off against each other, four or five per clan riding abreast, walk-trot-canter in the big ring. What we think of as “professionals” were few and far between. Most of the riders and trainers were amateurs. The “professional” was usually some grizzled old gentleman who ran a rich lady’s barn, knew how to pull a tail and make a wisp from straw, and occasionally dabbled in selling a horse or two.
Each hunt in attendance would also cobble together a hunt team or two—three riders spaced in file, jumping the outside course. I still remember: First horse sets the pace, second horse establishes the spacing, third horse keeps it equal among all three. And always the last fence, usually a post and rail, was taken side-by-side-by-side as they came back toward the spectators.
The majority of the shows were “mown-pasture” affairs. The exception was that of the Rolling Rock Hounds, held on part of the Mellon estate out in Ligonier. This was our brush with champagne society. No Iron City six packs out there!
Rolling Rock’s show bill included a handy hunter class which, among other things, included a lead-over. Part way around the course, the rider was obliged to pull up before a specified jump, dismount, lower it, lead his horse over the rails, replace it at height, remount, and canter on to complete the rest of the jumps. Only the really “good” riders would dare to enter it. I was ringside watching the proceedings when a buzz went through the crowd. A matronly teacher of equitation from another part of the state was next to go. And she was a moose! “Hefty” did not do her justice, so how in the world was she going to be able to climb back up on her equally massive field hunter after the lead-over? Our doubts were resolved when, upon replacing the rail, she put fingers to
lips and as though she were hailing a Manhattan taxi, blew one shrill and penetrating note. Immediately, four grooms hustled into the ring—like highly caffeinated pall bearers—hauling an ornately carved, four-step wooden mounting block between them.
Placing it delicately at the horse’s left stirrup, they stood at attention as “the queen” stepped aboard and rode off to finish her round. The “new” George would have approved.