BY CHRISTINE HAMILTON, FIELD EDITOR
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| Ruth Willis and CJS Last Scotch of Brewerton, New York, took home the Select reserve world championship in hunter hack. The team trains at Pople Ridge Farm. |
For 25 years Pople Ridge Farm in Mexico, New York, has been introducing folks young and old to the American Quarter Horse world. After years of coaching people through youth and amateur, the farm has now added the Select experience.
“I think it’s one of the best things AQHA has done,” said the farm’s owner and operator, Debbie Furlong-Byrne, of the Bayer Select World Championship Show.
Debbie came to her first Bayer Select World last year to watch client Kayleen Holliday show in halter. Kayleen shows English with Pople Ridge, and she likes to share halter competition with her husband.
“I thought, my gosh, this (show) is pretty exciting,” Debbie said. The experience convinced her to encourage more of her clients to qualify.
This year, Kayleen is back again showing CRL Shesa Cool Coosa; they placed third in 2-year-old mares. And Debbie brought two more riders: Kathleen Marsh and Super Capri, showing in working hunter, and Ruth Willis and CJS Last Scotch, showing in working hunter and hunter hack.
“It allows so many more people to participate and be successful,” Debbie said. “It gives them that goal of competing and going all the way to (a championship show).
“We can’t believe the weather!” she added. “It’s like New York! I’ve never been to Texas when it’s cold.” This year’s Bayer Select World has been a little cooler than usual for Labor Day weekend.
Pople Ridge Farm is a family-run operation. Debbie’s brother, AQHA Pro Horseman Tyson Furlong, is the farm’s trainer. Her brother Scott manages the farm. And her sister-in-law, Marsha, runs the farm’s beginning rider lesson program and summer camps.
“My grandfather had a riding stable, and my mother was always into it,” Debbie said. “We just had backyard horses.
“My brother Ty was just a natural the first time he ever sat on a horse and dedicated his life to it,” she continued. “My brother Scott wasn’t into the horses but liked the tractors and the hay, and that was his niche.”
Debbie enjoyed Thoroughbreds when she was younger, until she bought an appendix Quarter Horse and fell in love with it. When she started Pople Ridge Farm, AQHA’s youth programs appealed to her.
“I started hearing about AQHA and how great they were with the youth,” she said. “I had so many youth kids in our program doing local programs, and I really liked the Quarter Horse, so I decided that was the way we would go.
“Everybody that we put into horses now is into Quarter Horses.”
The farm has a weekly lesson program to start beginner novice riders; many of their lesson horses are ex-show horses. They provide opportunities for novices to move into owning their own horses and show in youth and amateur competition.
They recently started the Central New York Hunter Series, a series of English event shows throughout the year run as AQHA special events.
“It was a new experience for us and very successful,” Debbie said. “We really enjoyed putting shows on at the farm.”
The farm has produced several amateur and youth world championship earners. They hauled six youths to this year’s Ford AQHYA World Championship Show and will take more than 20 horses to the All American Quarter Horse Congress.
One of the things Debbie is most proud of is that they now have multi-generational riders in the barn.
“(Many of these riders) have been with me more than 20 years,” she said. “Once they get into it, they don’t want to get out."
With the youth, amateur and Select divisions, she has grandmothers, daughters and granddaughters all showing out of the same barn.
