With Patricia and George Hatch’s eleven year old KWPN gelding Orion, Leslie Reid was the top ranked finalist for the Pan Am dressage team when the list was announced on May 23rd. Just a week before the first and only scheduled trial was due to begin at CornerStone Farms in Palgrave, Dressage Canada announced that another trial would take place at Saddlewood Equestrian Centre in Bethany. Four of the five judges for that trial were the same as those at the CornerStone show. The Saddlewood trials were scheduled to take place before Palgrave, on May 30th and 31st. The horses were required not only to compete on the 31st, but also travel the two hours to Palgrave for the horse inspection. They would then compete for the next three days at what was now the second trial.
While the stress of these back-to-back trials was hardly ideal, it was the proposed transport to quarantine in Miami that was the deal breaker for Reid. Dressage Canada’s decision to truck the horses nonstop the nearly 2000 kilometers was deemed by Reid to be too stressful on a horse that had already done considerable traveling and competing in the previous two weeks. “Orion’s owners and I decided that the trip would be just too difficult,†said Reid after they made what Patricia Hatch said was “not an easy decision to makeâ€. ~ Karen Robinson
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