Team #263 Leanna Mae Bellinger and Fleeting Chance
My love for horses started when I was able to walk. I would crawl on my hands and knees pretending I was a horse. I loved my grandfather’s work horses and my aunt’s black horse named Traveller. I grew up in Maine and around animals; however, I could not have my own horse until much later in life.
I moved to Virginia and my husband bought me a horse named “Trace a Tee,” as his face had a white ‘T’ on it. I loved him so much, and he lived to what we thought was his late twenties. We did not know his real age because he had been bought at an auction from someone else. I boarded him at the same farm where I found my Century Horse, Fleeting Chance.
Fleeting Chance had been abandoned by her owner, but my barn manager continued to care for her. I fell in love with her at first sight. She is a registered full Arabian, and was nine years old when the barn manager gave her to me.
We moved her to our little farmette in Gloucester, VA, and we have grown together for the last fifteen years. She gives me her very best, and I give her mine. I love my Fleeting Chance and I call her my “last chance!”
I heard about the Century Club and put it on my bucket list, as Fleeting Chance and I turned 100 together this year. What a wonderful way to recognize older riders and horses. Thank you, TDF and Century Club, and an even bigger thanks to my wonderful Arabian horse, Fleeting Chance. We rode a Western Dressage Intro class on September 10th at the Airfield Western Dressage Show in Wakefield, VA and scored a 69.375%!
