Sunday, September 05, 2010
Fascination is owned by Bill Conour, of Carmel, Indiana. His wife, Jennifer, does all the handling of "Ollie". They have been tremendously generous in allowing me to ride Ollie for the WEG qualifier in Canada, the United States Para Selection Trials in Wayne, Illinois and now training as an alternate for WEG. I cannot thank them enough for generously allowing Ollie to come into my life. This is truly a once in a lifetime experience.
Ollie has a wonderful personality. He has begun to nicker sometimes when he sees me. He twirls my hair in his tongue when he is bored or when he thinks I should move faster with things. He will stand with his his huge head hanging over my body and wheelchair and let me fall asleep on his shoulder - sometimes he falls asleep too. He is very careful when I ride him and feels it is his duty to NOT do anything more than a small trot..he realizes I am disabled and I have to convince him each time to step it up a notch, lol.
In his younger years, he won 3 riders their gold medal, qualified 6th one year at the Pan Am Games selection trials, showed in Wellington in both Grand Prix jumping and Grand Prix dressage - winning at them both. He now packs this Para rider around safely and is teaching me the ropes of re-learning to ride all over again. He is a 23 year old Dutch Warmblood and has come out of retirement 3 times, the final one to try and help us both make it to WEG. He is an awesome boy and I'm tremendously grateful to have learned from him and to have befriended him.
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horses
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