Team #755 Lynda Cooper and Nashua

Team #755: Lynda Cooper and Nashua
From: East Otto, New York 
Ages: 71 & 29
Combined Age: 100
Test: Introductory Level Test B

I became infatuated with horses at a very young age: cutting pictures of them out of magazines for my scrapbook, watching them on television, and reading every horse book I could find at the public library. 

Fate stepped in when I was 14 years old. My next-door neighbor bought a horse at choir practice, brought him home, tied him to the garage door, and planned to have him live off the grass on his suburban front lawn. Twenty-four hours later, with a broken garage door and a ruined lawn, he came to ask if I could help. That was when my dream was realized, and Chico walked into my life (I bought him two years later). 

For the next 24 years, we hacked, evented, did hunter, jumper, parades, fox-hunted, and dressage. We were inseparable until he died at age 28. 

Then came Ralph, another Thoroughbred, followed by Minnie, a Trakehner mare. In both cases, they just arrived in my life, to my good fortune. I kept them until their last day, well up into their 20s. 

Riding has been more than an obsession. It is a salvation. It was the driving force to my recovery in 1995 from a lumbar spinal fusion. It took three years to get back up on Ralph and eventually Minnie. I had to learn to ride all over again and in a completely new way. It wasn’t easy. 

Fate stepped in again in 2007 when a badly injured friend offered me her advanced-level mare, Magnolia, to ride and show while she recuperated. This phenomenal mare trained me and opened the door for the next horse to come in and change my life: Nashua. 

Nashua is a Dutch Warmblood by Iroko and had many successes in his past. He was 3rd in the Pavo Cup and won a team gold medal for his previous owner, Tara Dougans, at NAYRJC in 2006. I was able to buy Nash in 2009 and trained at Bennville Equine with Diane Creech. We worked very hard and became the 2010 Ontario Advanced Amateur Champion and the 2014 Advanced Amateur Reserve Champion. We both received our Equestrian Canada Gold Medal in 2014. 

Nashua was always making “poor life choices” and constantly injuring himself. So after 2014, we retired from competition. We needed a new goal, and suddenly there was a light at the end of the tunnel: The Century Club ride! We just had to live ten years. That’s not too much to ask, is it? 

Nash did his best to injure himself, and I stayed busy rehabilitating him. 

Then suddenly things changed. I was diagnosed with lymphoma and was in the hospital for much of 2018 with chemotherapy and a stem-cell transplant. On medical advice, I couldn’t go to the barn to see Nash as I had no immune system. He had to hang on for me, and I had to hang on for him. A few times my husband bundled me up in a home-made hazmat suit so I could see Nash for a little bit. He knew it was me in there behind all the masks, goggles, and gloves. 

Once I was allowed to return to Bennville, things were returning to normal when Nash colicked badly. We rushed him to Guelph Veterinary Hospital, where he underwent surgery. I told him as they took him into the suite: “I lived for you, now you live for me!” Lipomas were the culprit, and it cost him ten feet of bowel. But he lived, and also defeated an impaction last summer which didn’t need surgery. 

As we narrowed the time-gap for the ride, a new challenge arose as I was blinded in my right eye as a result of complications from cataract surgery and a subsequent cornea transplant. It has left me with bad balance and poor depth perception. Nashua has been a life-saver in that he had become a “seeing-eye horse” and takes very special care around me. He is very patient with my fumbling. 

When I’m at my barn with Nash and hacking on the beautiful trails, my pains evaporate, and I am unaware of my handicaps. I think our rides help Nash as much as they help me. 

I want to thank Ferdi and Greta Haupt of Bennville Equine for giving us a home for the last 15 years. I’d also like to thank The Dressage Foundation for acknowledging us aging equestrians who have become invisible to the rest of the riding world. No one else celebrates us or gives us opportunities to still have meaningful goals. 

My Century Club Ride was on May 19, 2024, with Glanbrook Cadora. At age 29, Nashua was happy and excited to go down the center line again. And for me, it was a very powerful and emotional day. I was overwhelmed by the love and support that I received from all my friends from my earliest riding days to the present. The Century Club enabled me to experience a profound sense of celebration of my life with horses and the long road that brought me to this moment. 

I would like to express my sincere thanks to The Dressage Foundation. I am honored to be included in this distinguished group.