Horse Crazy by Kiernan Susan

Author:Kiernan, Susan [Kiernan, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Horses, riding, New Zealand, instruction
Publisher: San Marco Press
Published: 2011-07-29T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

Formal Riding Lessons

The Yellow Pages are a fine way of finding riding academies near you, as are bulletin boards at tack shops and boarding facilities.

If you know people who have horses, they can probably clue you in to good riding instructors, but, in many cases, you'll have to bring your own horse to the lesson.

Although group lessons were probably not what I needed at the particular time I sought them out, the academy I found was, nonetheless, clean and convenient and, as it turned out, a fascinating study in horses and people.

The Verig Riding Academy in Atlanta has been teaching students how to ride for three decades. They've produced hundreds of trophies and championships for their students in national competitions of dressage, cross country and stadium jumping.

In the old days, the Verig's techniques of riding and instruction were called "foreign". Now they're accepted all over the country as the norm.

Dr. Verig and his wife came to the United States in 1952 from Austria. They'd once trained German equestrians for the Olympic games and perhaps because of this and their involvement in the war effort of World War II, there remained a gentle mantle of mystery and romantic adventure about the place.

Old Mrs. Verig would toddle out to the barn every evening in her bathrobe and slippers from the family's nearby house to mutter to any of the students who'd listen about how the academy wasn't like it used to be and how her daughter--the current instructor--had it all wrong.

Her daughter, Valerie, seemed to have a lot of patience with the old woman, who could be very noisy and very insistent about her point, especially when she was observing a lesson in progress.

Mrs. Verig had been a top-level dressage rider in her day, had trained in her native Austria and fled the old country with her husband and their horses during the second World War.

Every night, the old woman would pad out to the stall of her Lippizan stallion, Mestoza, and say goodnight to him by offering him a carrot between her teeth, which he always took very gently from her to the amazement of whatever new audience was in the barn that evening.

She said that her husband had ridden Mestoza out of Austria, across the border, narrowly escaping the Nazis, and they had then brought him to America.

Mestoza was 24 years old and it was thought that it was probably Mestoza's sire that she was talking about. Nevertheless, it was a magnificent story of a young girl during the war, her beloved Lippizan, and her dashing, daring husband.

Another version of the story, although a little less thrilling, says that the Doctor simply made a buying trip to Austria in 1964 for the Lippizan nucleus of breeding stallions and mares. But Verig was a commander in the Germany calvary in World War II, and his wife did help prepare the horses for combat--and both worked for the Allies at one point--so maybe there was a horse-lift or two at some

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