Blog-Reader Bonus
Hey everybody! Happy August!
I was out running and I just remembered this story I wrote at the end of 2016 at the request of my friend who pretty much volunteers her life away for CANTER – a thoroughbred re-homing organization. She runs the CANTER Illinois branch and they have great listings, and a great website – to learn more, or support their work, visit https://canterusa.org/illinois/.
This particular cause is pretty dear to my heart because the horse I ride – and have been riding for years – is an OTTB himself. For those of you who haven’t seen it before, here’s Martin’s full-on, bad-ass racing photo:
Isn’t he cute?
These days he’s a much-loved former racehorse, who will live out a good life because he was given a chance to have life after racing. CANTER works on making sure that happens for as many horses as possible.
Anyway … the story I wrote ended up not being run by CANTER USA, so I thought I’d offer it here, for all of you. Here goes:
Leah Lang-Glusic rides former racehorses. Her favorite riding moments come on cross-country courses jumping at an average pace of 35 kilometers per hour (~20 mph). In just a few years she’s gone from working in the city as an investment banker, to owning and running a successful eventing facility and competing at the four-star, or Olympic equivalent, level.
And her philosophy for accomplishing all this? “You go the slow way.”
It’s something Lang-Glusic says many times, many different ways. “It’s not just the best way; it’s really the only way if you’re going to do it safely. That’s my big soapbox that I’m on all the time.”
She’s aware her progress might not look slow to others. “If you talked to my parents today, and asked, ‘Did you really think Leah was going to get to Rolex in five years after becoming a professional, and having only ridden prelim level?’ they’d say straight up, ‘Absolutely not.’”
And the fact that her four-star mount, AP Prime, was a $750 off-the-racetrack buy just five years ago makes the rise seem even faster.
Still, Lang-Glusic’s meticulous approach becomes apparent when she talks about her daily routine. “My mom and I do all the barn chores, and I do all the feeding … My favorite quote from George Morris is proper stable management is loving your horse. It’s not giving your horse kisses and treats, it’s making sure every detail of your horse’s program from their vetting to their nutrition, to having eyes on their legs every day, to spotting that colicky posture from ten acres across the field – it’s all those things that really constitute loving these animals.”
And, when Lang-Glusic lists off some of the specific steps along her and AP’s road to Rolex – the only four-star eventing competition regularly staged in North America – it does sound like a long, slow trip:
* “It’s four years ago, riding him through dressage tests where he was feral, and had his head in the air.”
* “It’s two years ago, getting in the truck to haul AP 22 hours to Bromont.”
* “Last year I literally spent six weeks doing nothing but walking him for 30 minutes a day under tack.”
Perhaps it’s not surprising Lang-Glusic is so committed to slow, careful development, considering her first love was dressage. Early in her riding career she spent two years doing nothing but dressage, and her horses still do dressage four or five times a week.
“I love the process of dressage; the ability to get on your horse and ride it, and actually make its body feel better from the work you’re doing. And I also like the idea that you can work, and work, and work and it’s never going to be perfect.”
At the boarding school she attended for high school (Ethel Walker in Simsbury, CT) Lang-Glusic says she “begrudgingly” chose the eventing stream over hunter-jumper with the reasoning that eventing would give her at least one dressage lesson a week.
“Then I did my first horse trials and that was that. I was hooked.”
Today, her assessment of cross-country is simple and straightforward. “Cross-country is why any eventer events. It’s why we do this.”
Trade-offs are something Lang-Glusic understands extremely well. You build a horse slowly to be able to go quickly. You give up many of the small luxuries in life to be able to do what you love.
“There are so many days when I’m just like, ‘Can I just sit on the couch and drink hot cocoa with my dogs and not do anything?’”
“There’s not much else to my life,” she adds. “For the last six weeks (before Rolex) I had people that wanted to visit me and I said, ‘No, you cannot come to Florida right now. I have no extra time. I have no extra energy to give you.’” She pauses, then adds. “When you take the week or two off after Rolex, you’d better treat those people in your life really well.”
Still, the long hours, the patience, the working on foundations, have a huge pay-off for Lang-Glusic. “The rewarding part is every time I’m in the start box with any of my horses, it’s because they really are prepared to be there … I’m sitting there because I 100 per cent believe in all the homework that they’ve done, their ability to do it, (and) their want to do it.”
Lang-Glusic strives to surround herself with like-minded people and organizations. Each of her sponsors provides a product or service she truly believes in, and one good example of a group she loves working with is CANTER – the volunteer-run organization working to provide retiring thoroughbred racehorses with opportunities for new careers. It was through CANTER that Lang-Glusic found AP Prime.
“CANTER is one of my favorite organizations,” Lang-Glusic says. “They have completely reinvented the way that people are becoming connected with thoroughbreds. They’re getting rehomed at such a greater rate, and they’re getting rehomed to good homes because people have the information to make good decisions.”
Not only did CANTER connect Lang-Glusic with, as she puts it, “the horse that’s made my career,” but she’s just acquired a new prospect through CANTER Illinois, The Duck of Reed (barn name “Ducky”) who has her “really excited.”
There’s quite a bit for Lang-Glusic to be “really excited” about. Promising youngsters in her barn, a planned return to Rolex on AP, and competing at the world-renowned horse trials at Burghley in England as a big – but achievable – dream.
But while part of her is always planning ahead – “I am always thinking,” Lang-Glusic says. “My brain is never quiet,” – she also makes sure to enjoy the moments, and the partnership, she’s worked so hard to reach.
AP Prime may not have been bred to event, and Leah Lang-Glusic may have launched her career in an office, but together they’re able to do the thing they love the most.
“My horse is never happier than those moments on cross-country. That’s the gift I get to give to him. For me, and the horse I do it on, there’s nothing else. That’s what I was put here to do.”
