Kitty Stalsburg
courtesy of Abigail Nemec
Abigail Nemec and Tara on the Maine 100-mile ride.
before she was born. What? Yes, that’s right. Abby was in the saddle in utero, as her mom rode while pregnant, and Abby caught the horse bug earlier than most. “I thought I liked geldings, but it’s mares for me,” she says. As a teenager, Abby got Tara, a three-year-old Arabian Standardbred. “She was the alpha mare and I managed to get her started before she killed anyone, although that wasn’t for lack of trying on her part,” Abby says, laughing. “But once we developed an understanding and we knew that sometimes I got to make the decisions, it was okay.” She was an excellent horse, Abby says. “She always got us out of the woods if we got lost, and she was a great distance horse, but she was definitely opinionated.” Their bond was so strong that Tara was even a part of Abby’s wedding. So was this Abby’s horse of a lifetime? Nope — that honor goes to Tara’s daughter Elba, a 14.3-hand, half Welsh Cob/three-eighths Arabian/one-eighth Saddlebred, or, as Abby calls her, “a breed-your-own Morgan.” Elba, named for the island to which Napoleon was exiled, was intended to be a Pony Club project that Abby could sell. 10
July/August 2015
Kitty Stalsburg and Sunny.
“Things didn’t go the way I’d planned and this horse never left me,” Abby says. “She was always meant to be mine. She knew every thought in my head.” Elba was intelligent and knew what she wanted, Abby says. “The day she turned three, she said she was done being lunged and wouldn’t let me do it anymore, so I figured I’d be safer on her back than on the ground, and I got on. As soon as I did, she looked up at me as if to say, ‘What the hell have you been waiting for?’’’ And that was that. “But you had to sit exactly right on her back or she wouldn’t do anything,” Abby says. “She was very particular and insisted that you be correct at all times.” As time passed, Abby started a family. She still had Elba, and then it was Abby’s daughter, Anna, who caught the riding bug. Eventually Anna “inherited” Elba, and the two went through Pony Club together. When Anna moved up to a more advanced event horse, Abby officially got her girl back. “In the end we loved each other,” Abby says. “She was suffering some health problems, and one morning I woke up, looked out my bedroom window, and saw she was down. I went to her; she put her head in my lap and fell
sleep — dreaming, with her lips twitching happily, whinnying, her legs paddling. She woke up when the vet arrived and looked up, right into my eyes, then she passed.” Abby pauses. “I’ve never had another horse have the same effect on me as Elba did,” she says quietly, “and I don’t think I will. Tara was something, and Elba even more. They both just showed up and wouldn’t leave. They were so much the same horse that I feel as if I’ve been riding the identical mare for thirty years.”
A Trio of Equines For Kitty Stalsburg, executive director of High Hopes Therapeutic Riding Center, in Old Lyme, the question was very difficult to answer, so she didn’t. Not exactly. Instead, she talked about three horses. “So many horses have made an impact,” she says, “all in different but tremendous ways. They all taught me something and left me with some wonderful memories. It’s just a challenge to pinpoint one.” But then she remembered there was Sunny, a Vermont-bred Morgan who saw Kitty through her teenage years, and for that she says she’ll be forever grateful.