October 5, 2006 Issue                                       

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©2006 The Chestnut Hill Local

Northwest facility connects kids and horses in Chestnut Hill
by Ed Mahon

Erica Heinz and her horse Usher are regular users of Chestnut Hill’s Northwestern Equestrian Facility (Photo by Ed Mahon)

Erica Heniz, 11, and her horse Usher seem to get along fine, even though she says he’s naughty with experienced riders and once threw her off. To picture how much of a fall that is, know that after her horseback riding lesson, when Erica cleans him, she has to stand on her tiptoes to brush Usher’s back.

For Lauren Flemming, 16, the black horse she rides won’t keep his head straight. Mack, a former racehorse, doesn’t always act so uppity, but Lauren says that today the flies are probably bothering him.

Throughout the hour-long lesson, during which four young girls ride, canter, and jump on horses at the Northwestern Equestrian Facility, the occasionally sleep-deprived instructor Kathy Kerneckel yells a variety of short instructions, such as “let go,” “big release,” and most often, “whoa.”

“Whoa” means let go of the reigns, slow down or stop — which is important.

Just ask Lauren’s father, Tom, dressed in jeans and a blue T-shirt who watched from outside the ring during Tuesday’s lesson.

“It still kind of frightens me when she goes over the jumps,” Flemming said, adding that becoming a true horse rider means you’ve done three things: been thrown, been stepped on and been bitten.

The 70 or so riders — most of them girls — who come to the horse training facility on Northwestern Avenue between Forbidden Drive and Germantown Avenue, perform a variety of acts with their horses. They ride them, of course, take them to shows, brush them, wash them, scrape the dirt off their toes, learn discipline and dedication by working with them, grow attached, sometimes cry when they die, and get back on when they fall.

A horse threw Erica off when she was 7.

“I was jumping, and this little poodle came by and started yapping, yapping,” Heinz said. “And so he threw me. I didn’t want to ride again.”

Three years later, she decided she wanted to give it another try, and now the part that scared her away from riding is her favorite.

“Jumping — It’s really fun,” Heinz said. “You’re not doing the work. They are. But you’re still going way up in the air.”

She was thrown off again, but it didn’t slow her down this time. She said Usher could tell she was mad at him, and that the large brown horse gave her an “I did something wrong” look.

Even though she owns him, Erica’s not the only one who rides Usher. She and her mother, Sarah Foster of East Falls and a lifelong rider herself, lease Usher to the program, which benefits the owners because it defrays some of the cost of keeping the horse at the barn, and gives horses enough exercise since younger owners don’t have as much time to ride. Still, Erica says the two are closer than most riders.

“He seems to know that I’m his owner and I’m the one who gives him all the good treats,” Heinz said.

Lauren doesn’t own the horse she rides, but it hasn’t stopped her and Mack from growing close.

“He might look bad, but it’s really fun though,” she added, “once you, like, get over being horrified of being thrown across the ring. He scares a lot of kids. That’s his big thing. It’s like Mack, the big, scary horse, ‘cause he does all that, but it’s really just a bluff.”

The 16-year-old Roxborough High School student has been riding for six years. She also works with animals—beef, pigs, and sheep—through Roxborough’s Manatawna-Saul 4-H Livestock Club. But she prefers horses.

“You can get a relationship with them, and get to know them,” Lauren said. “And they have a little more personality than a lot of animals.”

Getting to know the horses, and establishing a relationship with them, is what Kerneckel’s program is all about. She’s had an extensive career having grown up in a family of horse riders, remembering when women were first allowed on the track, working with the city’s mounted police force, and riding at the prestigious Devon Horse Show.

Kerneckel, 55, who lives on site as the Northwestern facility’s manager, described her typical day as “very hectic,” and is awakened by the horses walking around at night.

“I can hear everything,” she said.

When she’s not teaching lessons, she is moving around the site and has her cell phone on in case any problems come up.

Around 3:30 p.m., riders arrive about 30 minutes before their lessons to groom and tack up their horses. After the lessons, they do the less glamorous work of untacking, cooling down and grooming the horses for at least 30 minutes before putting them back in the stalls.

“If they don’t ride the same horse, they don’t get attached,” Kerneckel said.

The lessons go all through the winter, and Anne-Marie Corner, a board member and parent of a rider, said visitors to the indoor facility will see the trainers wrapped head to toe in down and the girls with hand and feet warmers.

Some experienced riders like Lauren work at the facility during the week, ride other horses along Forbidden Drive to give them some exercise, and work at the summer camps.

“They give her as much responsibility as possible,” Flemming said. “So that she’s learning. Each time she’s here she’s learning more about the horses.”

The kind of dedication that Corner sees in her daughter surprised her at first, but she said it seems to makes sense. As for the why, well Flemming provided that while watching his daughter ride.

“I never see her smile as much as when she’s on the horse,” he said. “That’s when she’s happiest.”

Lessons run every weekday in hourly slots from 4 to 8 p.m., and on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. A session of six lessons (one a week for six weeks) costs $250.

Registration for the Fall II Group Lessons, which begin Oct. 23 and run until Dec. 6, start on Sept. 25 for current students and Oct. 14 for new students.