Final 2018 july wheelhorse

THE

NEWSLETTER OF THE AMERICAN DRIVING SOCIETY, INC.

NL249

Representing Carriage Driving in the United States and Canada

July 2018

NOTES

IN THIS ISSUE: NOTES Endless Summer.........................................1 ADS News • Upcoming Deadlines................................. 2 • ADS selects new host for 2018 North American Preliminary Championships ....... 2 • Dates and location of the 2019 ADS Licensed Officials Super Clinic.................. 2 Letter • This is the ADS..........................................3 OPINIONS • From Between My Blinders....................... 4

Upcoming in the August issue of

Tara Crowley and Kendalwood’s Kowboy Boots at Orleton. Photo by Abbie Trexler

:

A Drive On The Wild Side, Eighteen days with the John Wayne Pioneer Wagons and Riders. Written by Dorothy Edwards, photos by Donnal Nichols and Dorothy Edwards.

Articles that appear in The Wheelhorse do not necessarily reflect the opinions or position of The American Driving Society, Inc. (ADS), its Board of Directors or staff, nor does publication of said articles constitute an endorsement of the view they may express. Accuracy of all material is the sole responsibility of the authors. Appearance of an advertisement in The Wheelhorse does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by the ADS of the goods and services therein.

Endless Summer

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reetings, ADS Members! I hope you are having a summer full of fun driving. Here at ADS we are proceeding with plans for the 2018 Annual Meeting to be held at The Grand Oaks Resort in Wiersdale, Florida November 30-December 2, 2018. The ADS Licensed Officials Committee also set a date and is planning licensed officials’ education for the Super Clinic, to be held July 26-28, 2019 in scenic Parker, Colorado.

You’ve may have read a lot about the new safety vest rule that goes into effect on January 1, 2019. The board of directors recognized the need to create a retail partnership to assist ADS members in the purchasing of a vest through discounting and great customer service.

I am thrilled to announce a partnership between ADS and Carriage Imports (www.marathon-carriage.com). ADS members are eligible to receive 10% off all safety vests and helmets, along with 10% any other new items in the same order, and that order will be shipped free of charge (unless a carriage is ordered, that’s not free!). Karin Sclater, owner of Carriage Imports, is experienced in vest and helmet fitting, and can assist ADS members with fitting standard sizes or ordering custom vests made to their exact measurements. ADS members can use the promo code ADS10 at checkout to realize their discount. Thank you to Karin at Carriage Imports for her support of our membership!

Further in this newsletter, you’ll find a letter from ADS Treasurer Dan Rosenthal that lauds the grassroots movement in ADS to educate new and beginning drivers. Dan notes the importance of education and mentorship, and reminds us all that it’s been the ADS cornerstone for nearly 45 years. In Opinions, Hardy Zantke shares his take on two international rules that are not reciprocated by ADS. I wanted to notify you of a slight alteration to our 2018 press schedule for the August issue of The Whip. We’ll be mailing it closer to September 1 in order to accommodate the slate of nominated officers and directors up for election at the ADS Annual Meeting.

Please see our Facebook page for mailing date specifics as we approach the end of August.

It’s been wonderful to meet many ADS members in my travels to pleasure shows and CDEs this year. Please stop and introduce yourself if you recognize me at a show!

Have fun with those horses and ponies,

Abbie

ADS Executive Director abbie@americandrivingsociety.org

ADS – Wheelhorse July 2018

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ADs News

Upcoming Deadlines: • 2019 ADS NA Championships - Bids due August 15, 2018 • ADS Volunteer Award - Nominations due September 1, 2018

• Hours to Drive - Logs due November 1, 2018 • Youth Championships - Applications due November 1, 2018

ADS selects new host for 2018 North American Preliminary Championships

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he ADS has selected a new venue and date for the 2018 North American Preliminary Championships (NAPC).

The Green Mountain Horse Association (GMHA) will host the championships on August 24-26, 2018 at their facility in South Woodstock, Vermont.

The 2018 NAPC had previously been planned for the Hickory Knoll CDE, but due to a death in the Hickory Knoll family and relentless flooding at the event location, this year’s NAPC had to be relocated.

Currently, GMHA holds the only Combined Driving Event in New England, drawing competitors in the preliminary division

Check us out on Facebook!

The ADS Facebook page:

www.facebook.com/AmericanDrivingSociety/

Regional pages:

Link to Central’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1637923492957102/ Link to Mid Atlantic’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ADSMidAtlanticRegion/ Link to Northeast’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/110143985665196/ Link to Southeast’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/913415615384849/ Link to Southwest’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/269481413487443/ Link to Northwest’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1827658567446778/ Link to Midwest’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1843486765918136/ Link to Pacific’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1753213278328173/ 2

ADS – Wheelhorse July 2018

from Pennsylvania to Canada. GMHA staff report they eagerly await the positive attention the NAPC will bring to carriage driving in the New England area.

Event co-organizer Simon Rosenman was the Technical Delegate and Scorer at the 2017 NAPC at Grand Oaks.

International Course Designer Richard Nicoll will be returning for a second year, as will TD Ellen Ettenger. The ground jury includes President of the Jury Francois Bergeron, Mickie Bowen and Sem Groenewoud.

Walter Bradeen, GMHA Board President, is a driver himself and is enthusiastic about the addition of this seasons highlight to the GMHA calendar. Preserving the art of driving is a personal mission and he is a major advocate in the growth and sustainability of the driving discipline.

GMHA is a 501c3 non-profit organization in scenic South Woodstock, VT that holds equestrian events in five disciplines.

The organization is dedicated to educating equestrians of all ages and preserving trails and open space. Tracy Ostler, GMHA Executive Director said, “GMHA and its surrounding community has so much to offer as a destination. We hope that the competitors will bring their friends and families to not only spectate, but also enjoy everything that this great area has to offer. We look forward to seeing the drivers in August!”

Dates and location of the 2019 ADS Licensed Officials Super Clinic.

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he Super Clinic will be held July 26-28, 2019 in Parker, Colorado, at the Holiday Inn Parker, a full-service hotel just a 25-minute drive from the Denver International Airport.

“We are thrilled to be working with the local driving club to have in-person demonstrations with equines, along with digital learning options and live seminars in a classroom setting for our officials,” said ADS Licensed Officials Committee Chairperson Ruth Graves.

Visit americandrivingsociety.org for more information as it becomes available.

Letter

This is the ADS Editor’s Note: This letter was sent to the ADS Board of Directors on June 21, 2018 by ADS Treasurer and Chair of the Finance and Governance & Bylaws Committees, Dan Rosenthal.

Good morning, Perhaps some of you, unlike me, never lose sight of what the ADS is really all about.

Sometimes I feel as if the ADS is all board meetings and worrying about where the money will come from, why isn’t the website working the way we want it to, long talks about minute wording changes in the rules and should we comply with the latest seemingly random madness from the FEI, or our unfortunate on and off squabbles with our siblings at the USEF, or any one of the endless things that we as a Board of Directors deal with day in and day out.

Over the past two months I have received over 100 letters from former members of the ADS (60+- have rejoined us!!) and they, too, often lose sight of what the ADS is all about. Though many of their stories are about years and years of loving the sport and their beloved equine companions and the hard choices that age sometimes brings with it, some of it has to do with painful experiences with a judge or a hard time using the website.

There will always be a rule we don’t like, a judge who thinks our circle is too small or someone who rubs us the wrong way. But that stuff is just one moment out of many years of camaraderie and learning and fun and in the end it is those things that matter and not the day-to-day frustrations.

But here’s the thing I wanted to write about: Yesterday ADS Executive Director Abbie Trexler took me to an event that helped me remember what we are really all about and I just can’t help myself - I have to share it with all of you who work so hard to keep things like this happening all over the country.

What I saw yesterday was just a small part of the vast fabric that is our ADS and that is our sport of driving. Nevertheless, to me it captured so many of the really important things.

The Brandywine Valley Driving Club, (BVDC) held their third annual Beginning Driver Camp at Ann Carlino’s Yellow Pony Farm in Coatesville, Pennsylvania. I in no way intend to take anything away from BVDC who put on a great event - that’s not my point at all - my point is that this event is the ADS, the essence of what we are all about.

Four junior drivers and four adults. All of them riders and horse lovers. None of them with any real driving experience (a couple told me they had held the reins once or twice before). A bunch of happy hard working volunteers who were sharing ponies, sharing harness and carts and most of all their love and enthusiasm for driving. Over the course of five days they learned to harness, drive and, above all, to be safe. I won’t risk leaving someone out, but there were at least six licensed officials or senior drivers of the ADS donating their time and skill. Some of our best and most experienced teachers all there to share their skill and love of driving - and all so eight people could learn driving! National and international champions who were not being “elite” athletes

or worrying about being paid. I have participated in equine sports for 50 years and I am continually amazed and delighted by how our best drivers are willing to share with our beginners - often just to be a mentor. ADS members. ADS officials. ADS materials. ADS in action at the most important level - helping new drivers see and feel and understand our passion and our fun.

Events like this take place virtually every weekend. ADS Regional Directors organize or support them. Our clubs fund them and volunteer for them and run them. Our licensed officials teach or judge at them. Our office helps in any way that they can, and people learn and some stick around to become the drivers who will carry the sport into the future.

The ADS is a grassroots volunteer organization. Yes, we need to have centralized programs, rule making, education, oversight of competitions, and so on, but at the heart of it we are drivers who love equines of all sizes and all shapes and who drive because we love it and who share that love with others because it feels good. We need to remember this and we need to find a way to capture it. Our emerging driver program will inevitably have some formal ADS branded components to it, but for 40 years we have been training and sharing and nurturing beginning drivers and we should proudly showcase the great work that our members do each and every day to make this happen.

I consider myself an emerging/developing driver still after 12 years of driving (I never expect to have learned all there is to learn about driving). During that time, I have had a chance to work with more than a dozen people who have been on our world championship teams or who have won medals for other countries.

Sure, I have paid some of them for their lessons but just as often they have given me their time, skill and knowledge because they want to help. I have had a 10-time US champion show up at a competition for other reasons and spend hours each day coaching me with my four-in-hand - without my asking or even knowing it was going to happen - just to help a new team get their start. That, too, is the ADS and that, too, is our emerging driver program. In the heat of the moment we tend to lose sight of it.

I close with a photo from yesterday: A young woman (wearing a USDF shirt!), taking the reins of a Dartmoor pony for the third or fourth time, joined in the carriage by a volunteer she may not have ever met before she came to the program. This is the ADS. – Dan Rosenthal

ADS – Wheelhorse July 2018

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Opinions

From Between My Blinders Talking Grooms

By Hardy Zantke

O

ur sport is international.

Combined Driving is one of the eight disciplines of the FEI and even though we are not part of the Olympics, we do have world championships - and many of us have their eyes now on the next World Equestrian Games to be held in September in Tryon, North Carolina.

Although not part of the FEI, and not as standardized by international rules, nevertheless our sport of Pleasure Driving is also practiced in many countries (known as Private Driving in England and Traditional Driving on the Continent).

I think it always helps to have an open mind and eye to see what is happening beyond our borders and how other countries practice our sports. I think one can only benefit by that rather than being narrow minded and concentrating just on our own sandbox and our own game.

That is one of the reasons why I have tried over many years to help keep our Combined Driving Rules as closely aligned with the international rules as possible. So we stay as part of the world, and so that nobody comes home from having watched an overseas event and gets all confused by different rules at home.

Of course, not always was that possible and within our own best interest, the ADS has made exceptions where it was felt necessary.

Two of those exceptions are what then foreign officials find most disturbing when they come and officiate in our country: First: That our Singles are not required to carry a groom in Dressage and Cones.

Under international FEI rules, as well as national rules in most other countries, that is not allowed. Some people (including many foreigners) have safety concerns when they see single turnouts without grooms. I have always defended the ADS position in this regard, as I think both in Dressage as well as in Cones we are dealing with driving in an arena where not only knowledgeable officials but usually also enough knowledgeable other people are around ringside to come to the aid of any turnout should such aid be needed. I really don’t think a groom could aid much more, at least not from the back of a Dressage carriage. It might be different in a two-wheeler with the groom next to the driver, where a knowledgeable groom might be able to assist with an inexperienced driver with hands in the reins. Likewise, a groom from the back of 4

ADS – Wheelhorse July 2018

a marathon carriage might be down quicker to help from the ground. But that is not the case for a groom moving from a Dressage carriage to the ground. Anybody from ringside can come as quickly to the horse’s head if needed.

It is really similar also in pleasure driving. There, too, no groom is required on the carriage of single drivers. I have not heard anybody finding fault with that practice there.

Further in all my almost 40 years in the sport as competitor as well as official I have not seen any situation where there was an accident in either Dressage or Cones where a groom would have been needed on the carriage. The groom is needed during hitching and unhitching, that’s where the accidents occur! And that’s where people do need a knowledgeable helping hand, but not in the ring on the carriage.

Second: That we do not require standard axle width in Cones, which makes measuring each carriage and re-setting the cones for each drive necessary, requiring more time as well as more volunteers. Many other countries have done away with that and are requiring standard axle width as they are required on our advanced level, too.

The ADS Combined Driving Committee has created some rules for standard settings already, but I think there are some ideas, how we can further improve on that.

Stay tuned and read my upcoming column in the August Whip where I will share more on what I have in mind.

Until then, Safe and happy driving,

Hardy Don’t forget to participate in the ADS Rule Change Process! Log onto our blog, accessible from americandrivingsociety.org, between August 1 and August 31 to view and comment on proposed rule changes.