BY MEGHAN MACKEY, SPECIAL CONTRIBUTOR
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| Shifty Lynx and Sandy Slocum will compete in four events this week at the Bayer Select World. When they're not showing, Lynx works as a therapeutic riding horse. |
Sandy Slocum describes her horse, Shifty Lynx, as a cross between Mother Theresa and Dennis the Menace.
But the Mother Theresa in Lynx’s personality may be winning over. The 11-year-old gelding stays busy working as a therapeutic riding horse and Special Olympics mount, in addition to helping Slocum qualify in four events for her first Bayer Select World Championship Show.
“Lynx just happens to be one of the horses the kids really like,” Slocum said. She said the children in the Heart’s Desire Therapeutic Riding Center’s program like Lynx’s slicked-off, shiny show horse appearance. “He’s the pretty one.”
Slocum has been hauling Lynx to weekly therapeutic riding sessions in a three-county area around their home in Coldwater, Mississippi, for about three years.
Slocum said Lynx has a sixth sense when it comes to helping the physically challenged and remembers his first outing in a Special Olympics competition in 2002.
“The little girl that rode him had Down syndrome and rode English, so I was pretty nervous with her being in an English saddle, and he’d never done (Special Olympics) before, but you couldn’t have asked for more,” Slocum said.
Special Olympics riders compete at the regional level and then acquire points to progress to state competition. Most of the horses are loaned by therapeutic riding centers, and riders perform the same pattern at each event, so they have the opportunity to practice over and over. Lynx has carried riders to several wins and is a favorite mount for the trail classes.
Lynx now adds special needs classes to his list of events at AQHA shows.
“I show him, then they’ll do the special needs classes, and then I’ll get back on and show him,” she said. “He’s pretty cool.”
Slocum and Lynx won the AQHA Amateur Rookie of the Year title in 2003. They went on to compete in showmanship, horsemanship, trail and equitation at the 2004 and 2005 AQHA World Championship Shows in Oklahoma City. This is their first year of eligibility for the Bayer Select World.
“My daughter laughs at me because, for the past three or four years, I couldn’t wait to turn 50. She’d say, ‘Mom, you’re the only one I know who wants to get older,’” Slocum said.
Preparing for November’s World Show has caused Lynx to miss some of his therapeutic riding sessions the past two years; they run September through May. With the early fall dates of the Bayer Select World, Lynx will be able to go back to work and not miss a beat.
“I get as much pleasure out of that as I do out of showing,” Slocum said.
