Of Ponies, Pigeons and Perseverance A
By Pat Payne
lyson Furey, at 20 years old, has been faced with a situation that has derailed her life plans and forced her to reassess her personal goals. To her
credit, she’s done so with grace and humility—and lots of determination. A student at West Virginia University, she is currently
working to graduate this December, a semester early, with a degree in advertising. That drive is typical. She is, she says, a fierce competitor in all she does. She’s also a dedicated rider who first sat on a pony at age three and started competing at age seven. Horses have been a major part of her life ever since. Two years ago, devastated, she found herself unable to ride. In many ways, she lost her focus when she was out of the saddle and had to find it all over again.
Born to Ride Alyson’s mother loved horses and wanted her daughter to have the competitive opportunities she had missed out on in her own childhood. That’s why she took her daughter for her first lessons when Alyson was just three years old. Alyson was an eager student and, at age seven, her trainer, Joyce Heinz of Cumberland, Maryland, introduced her to Welsh Pony breeder C. Douglas Schmidt. “I was a teeny tiny girl and he had
some ‘smalls’ that needed to be shown,” Alyson recounts.
“It was a wonderful
opportunity. I won my first national title on that circuit, the Welsh Pony and Cob Society of America.” As she grew older, she remained
petite and other opportunities to show pony hunters came her way. She next rode for Cheryl Maye’s Maye Show Ponies, based in Fairfield, Virginia, near
36 March/April 2012
Lexington. Since the breeders and trainers she was riding for
focused on hunters, so did she, Alyson says. It was a natural fit and the hunter ring always felt like the “right” place to her. “It was what I loved and what fit for the trainers, and so it was what fell right into place,” she says. Cheryl, says Alyson, was instrumental in taking her
riding to a new level. “She asked for more finesse and more skill,” she says. And because Alyson continued to ride for trainers as well as compete her own pony, she always focused on her mount’s needs. “Whatever needed to be shown, that’s what I would hop on for a class,” she remembers. That both tempered and enhanced her own acknowledged competitiveness, because many times the goal for her ride was to give the pony experience and to show him to advantage. Still, she says, her desire to win never stopped. “I always want to win. That’s just my mindset and that’s what I’m going to go do.” By the time she was 16, she began riding for
Cynthia Doll’s Doll House Farm and finished her junior career showing ponies on the Virginia Horse Show Association circuit. Through Cynthia’s daughter, a former trainer for Redfield Farms in New Jersey, she was offered a horse to work with. “Ringo was six years old and 16.2 hands
of pure handsome. He was a gorgeous Dutch Warmblood. He was still green, so I showed him over the summer. I gave him exposure to the big scary jumps he thought could eat him!” she recounts with a laugh. Ringo was especially fun since he was so different from the smaller horses and ponies she was used to riding.
Alyson and her pony Arlen All The Rage. Photo © Casual Creation Photography
For young hunter rider Alyson Furey, the past two years
have brought heartbreak after learning about a physical condition she was born with that could end her riding career permanently.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132