Team #731 Carleen McCornack and Applebee

Team #731: Carleen McCornack and Applebee
From: Eugene, Oregon
Ages: 70 & 30
Combined Age: 100
Test: Introductory Level Test B

I have been in love with horses since as far back as I can remember, and I have always had horses in my life one way or another.  

There were Shetland and Welsh ponies I rode as a child, a wonderful, a retired off the track Thoroughbred I was given when I was 20, and many wonderful horses throughout my life that I’ve had the privilege to ride and learn from over the years. 

In the Spring of 2019, I found myself at a crossroads with my riding. For the previous seven years, I’d been riding at a local hunter/jumper barn and enjoyed that very much. Then, within a span of four years, we lost two beloved school horses I’d been riding there. I’d been thinking about changing disciplines to dressage for quite some time and wondered then if it might be the time to explore that idea.  

I no longer owned my own horse, so I was looking for an opportunity to begin regular lessons with a dressage instructor and ideally, one who had a school master I could ride. It was then that I had the good fortune of meeting trainer, Sarah J. Lorenz and Applebee (Jamie). Through the generosity of Jamie’s owner, Janet Mitchell, I was able to lease and ride her wonderful, retired eventer, Jamie, in Sarah’s lesson program.  

Lessons went well and Jamie was steady and patient with me as we got to know each other. He was an older gentleman, and I was just entering retirement age and wondered if we might someday be able to join The Dressage Foundation’s Century Club. I started to do the math. Would Jamie and I still be riding together in five years when he turned thirty and I would be seventy? If so, would we be able to do our Century Club ride together? 

In July of 2022 we moved to the beautiful Silver Tail Farm in Creswell, Oregon, where Jamie and I began lessons with the gifted and ever so talented trainer, Emily Park. Emily has been a wonderful coach, and I will always be grateful to her for her help and guidance and enthusiastic support of us from the very beginning and beyond as we made our way to our Century Club ride on March 23, 2024. 

My special thanks will always go to Jamie. We made it sweet boy! Thank you for all you are in my life and for keeping this old, horse-crazy girl’s dreams alive. We made it to thirty and seventy, so every ride is a century ride for us now! Onward then, with hopes of good health and fortune to 102!