————————————
Moments of glory with horses usually are fleeting, but the disappointments too often seem to come like clockwork.
Kim Herslow actually enjoyed more than few of those splendid special moments with Rosmarin, a Hanoverian she bought in Germany as a three-year-old and developed to the FEI level.
In Toronto, her score of 77.15 percent in the Intermediare I was just 0.02 percent behind the total earned by her teammate, Laura Graves, on Verdades in the Grand Prix Special, clinching gold for the U.S. squad and a spot on the podium for Kim.
After that, she was pointing Reno to Grand Prix and all kinds of possibilities. But in January 2016, he underwent surgery for a cyst that was inside his stifle joint above the cruciate ligament. After he recovered and was being brought back to fitness, he had a suspensory issue, so she decided to semi-retire him.
“If you own horses, it is pretty much guaranteed that you will deal with an injury at some point that will sideline them in their training,” she knows.
“What a heartbreaker, but he’s happy; he owes me nothing.”
Kim enjoys hacking Reno around her Upper Creek Farm in Stockton, where he is the first horse she rides every day.
“I’m letting him enjoy what he wants to do and not what he has to do,” she said of Reno, now 15.
“He was a great partner and we had a lot of harmony together, so the bar is high.”
But his problems put her upper level career on hold. She had some rides that kept her in practice, at least, but nothing that she could develop the way she had done with Reno.
Then she met Elvis.
No, not that Elvis. This one is Elvis HI, a Lusitano. She owns him in partnership with Ailene Cascio of Mountain Lakes, who trained with Anne Gribbons. A median score of 70.881 has Elvis ranked first in the U.S. Dressage Federation standings for Prix St. Georges horses registered with the International Andalusian and Lusitano Horse Association.
“That’s pretty darn good for his first time out showing PSG,” said Kim, noting she had just moved him up to that division in June.
Elvis, by Travesso SC out of Quizumba HI, was purchased as a three-year-old coming four from Jorge Gabriel, a Brazilian based in Florida and Massachusetts who trains Elmo Santana, another nice Lusitano.
Kim, 49, has been riding Elvis for four years. She notes people can’t figure out what breed he is while watching him go, because he doesn’t have what many consider the typical Lusitano look.
“I took my time bringing him through the levels,” said Kim, who is schooling Grand Prix with the 12-year-old.
To read the original article in it’s entirety, please go to http://nancyjaffer.com/kim-herslow-is-singing-a-new-song-with-elvis/
