Kilcarna French Fancy: “Arnie”
By Pam Gleason
If you were asked to imagine a horse in a therapeutic riding program, you probably wouldn’t immediately think of a horse like Arnie. To start with, he is huge: a 17 hand imported Irish Sport Horse gelding. Then, he is also athletic, beautiful, well-trained and in the prime of his life at 16. What’s more, his resume includes being ridden and shown by not one but two Olympic athletes in two different disciplines.
But Arnie has something beyond his background, his training and his handsome looks that makes him special: he is kind, patient and attentive, forming deep bonds with his riders and handlers. These are the qualities that have endeared him to everyone at the Great Oak Equine Assisted Programs facility where he lives. Great Oak Equine Assisted Programs, located a few miles from downtown Aiken, offers a range of horse-centered activities, including therapeutic riding for people with special needs, ground work with horses, and programs to provide equestrian information and experience to people in the community who might not otherwise be able to interact with horses.
“The best thing about Arnie is his empathy,” said Deborah McWhirter, who runs the stable at Great Oak. “He has a great connection with one of our wounded veterans who does ground work with him. To see it is pretty incredible. I really believe he understands what she is feeling. He is so empathetic and compassionate, and seems to know what she needs from each of her sessions.”
In addition to groundwork, Arnie also participates in therapeutic riding lessons, and is particularly valuable for taller riders who need a horse with more substance. Great Oak has a range of programs, including Silver Saddles, which is an activity for older people who may have always wanted to ride, or who used to be riders but have lost their confidence in the saddle. Arnie is a favorite with this group, especially with people who have prior riding experience. He generally has the same riders each week so that he and his students develop a bond. One of his riders is a special needs student who has learned to ride from the ground up on Arnie, and can now walk, trot, canter and jump cross rails.
When Arnie does not have a therapy lesson, sometimes Deborah or one of the other volunteers rides him to make sure he stays schooled and obedient.
“When we school him, we walk, trot and canter. He does serpentines and leg yields and all the things he doesn’t get to do in his sessions,” said Deborah, who is an eventing rider. “He’s a little like riding a dinosaur. He’s a big mover, and I feel like a speck up there on him, but he’s beautiful to ride; he goes into a frame and moves really well. When people see him, they always remark on what a gorgeous horse he is.”
Arnie’s size does intimidate some of the students, but once they get to know him, their fear fades away. “He connects with people,” said Deborah. “And he’s such a quality horse, a high class horse. You can really feel that.”
Arnie has been living and working at Great Oak for two years now, and he has proven himself to be an exceptional therapy horse. But, oddly enough, his early career did not suggest that therapeutic riding lessons would ever be in his future. He started out life in Ireland as an event horse and, when he was 5, he was imported to the United States by Augie Vettorino, an amateur rider who had a home in Aiken. Tall and attractive, he was not as rideable as Augie had hoped he would be – in fact, he tended to buck his owner off. Arnie was still young, and Augie thought he needed more schooling, so he gave him to the Olympic gold medal eventing rider Phillip Dutton to ride, train and show. In the spring of 2015, Dutton, who at the time had a winter base in Aiken, piloted him around several local events at the Novice level, then moved him up to Training when he returned north to True Prospect Farm in Pennsylvania that spring.
Phillip Dutton campaigned Arnie for about six months with modest success, until the horse sustained a minor injury and needed a little time off. When fall came around, Dutton suggested that Matthew Ulmer, a young professional in Aiken who had been a working student at True Prospect, take him to continue his training. Matthew showed him a few times, but he became convinced that eventing was not really Arnie’s sport: he was not the best dressage horse, and he preferred the stadium to the cross country course where he was a little spooky. Before long, Arnie had been transitioned to the jumper ring, and was shown by a number of riders in Aiken, including Christina Kelly, Sharer Dale and Doug Payne, another Olympic and Pan Am Games team member.
Finally, Augie sent Arnie to Emily Smith, a young professional show jumping rider, and she had him and loved him for a year and a half, even competing him in the Grand Prix. When Augie passed away, Emily became Arnie’s owner.
“He was just an awesome sweet horse,” she said. “He was a really kind horse, a really fun horse. But he was getting a little older, and he had some wear and tear, and it seemed he didn’t want to continue his jumping career.”
Emily was friends with someone who worked at Great Oak at the time, and she had already helped the organization obtain another horse. She thought Arnie might be a good fit.
“I was really hopeful that it would work out,” she said. “He was always so affectionate with everybody, and I wanted to be sure he went somewhere he would be loved.”
After trying him out and doing some ground work with him, Great Oak accepted Arnie into their stable, and he has been there ever since.
“We’re so lucky we got him,” said Deborah McWhirter. “Most of the horses we get because they can’t do their jobs anymore, and I say we’re lucky, but he’s lucky too. He’s lucky to end up here, because his career was not over, and he didn’t end up standing in a field somewhere. He still has more to give, and he loves to be with people. He’s such a sociable horse. I feel like, with the therapeutic riding, he finally found his calling.”
Great Oak Equine Assisted Programs is a registered 501c3 charitable organization. Donations and volunteers are always welcome. To learn more, visit https://greatoakeap.org/ . To sponsor Arnie, click here: https://tinyurl.com/3fu6jzvk
