Five days before Christmas, Sara Mittleider and her father, Gary, packed up three horses and headed out from Idaho on their semi-annual trek east. They had no idea what perils their journey would bring.

Just 20 years old, Sara is used to traveling. Her home base is her family’s Rocky Hollow Farm in Kuna, Idaho, which isn’t exactly eventing central. The closest advanced event is 10 hours away, and the next-closest is 20 hours.

In the fall of 2004, Sara, Gary and mother Brenda headed east for the inaugural American Eventing Championships (N.C.) and the Fair Hill CCI*** (Md.). And last spring Sara hit the road again to accomplish her goal of becoming the youngest rider to ever finish the Rolex Kentucky CCI since it became a four-star.

But returning to Kentucky this time involved a longer road trip than usual.

To begin with, her Rolex partner, El Primero, an 11-year-old Thoroughbred, pinched a nerve in the pasture following their first four-star.

“He paralyzed his right front leg completely,” explained Sara. “It atrophied, and it took him 3 1/2 weeks to use it again, and then another 4 1/2 months to recover completely. So it had been nine months since I’d competed last.”

The veterinarians never determined what caused the pinched nerve, but Sara said that now you’d never know “Tony” was injured. Still, she wanted to get a head start on her preparation for Rolex Kentucky this spring, thus the December departure.

“We’re surrounded by mountains, so when we saw a clear day, we took it,” said Sara. “If you wait too much longer, you don’t travel. It was snowing and snowing, so when it quit for a while, we left.”

The first 2,000 miles of their trip went according to plan. With Tony, his younger sister Merry, and Here’s Awesome, a 9-year-old Thoroughbred gelding Sara hoped to qualify for a one-star, they stopped at Jim Graham’s Meadow Run farm in Florence, Ala.

But when they headed out to Rocking Horse Farm in Altoona, Fla., on Jan. 5 for the next leg of their journey, disaster struck.


Trapped In The Trailer
They were traveling along Interstate-75 in Georgia when they saw a line of trucks stopped in front of them. The weigh station had backed the tractor-trailers out onto the road.

“I was driving,” said Gary. “I was in the right-hand lane, and it was three lanes wide. I was probably going 60 and was looking to move into the center lane. A truck came on by me, pulled right in front of me, and stopped. I stopped to keep from hitting him, and then the guy behind couldn’t get stopped in time because it was so abrupt. He ran into me and pushed me into the truck ahead of me.”

Crunched from the front and back, Sara’s first thought was for her horse.

But Gary wouldn’t let her out of the truck immediately. “I made her stay in the truck waiting to see if we got hit again,” he explained. “Then 10 seconds went by, and we didn’t get hit again, so she jumped out to see if her horse was still alive.”

Tony had been traveling in the rearmost stall of their four-horse slant-load Featherlite trailer.

“I’ve never run so fast to see if my horse was OK,” recalled Sara.

Amazingly enough, Tony wasn’t killed or even badly injured by the impact. “He’s not very big,” explained Gary. (Tony stands 15.2 hands.)

“The trucker hit us on the right side of the trailer. He collapsed Tony’s stall up to the second divider and bent that. If Tony had been a big horse, he would have been crushed. But he’s a little horse, so he was pressed up all the way against the chest pad and had enough room to get out of the way. The other two horses are larger, and if they’d have been back there, I think it would’ve killed them.”

The trailer was crumpled in around Tony, and it took a backhoe to pull the end of the trailer off. The horses waited on the trailer for four hours until they could be removed.

Here’s Awesome ended up in the worst shape of the three horses. He was in the middle stall, and the impact knocked him out of his halter and onto the floor of the trailer. He came up in the next stall, squished in with Merry.

“They looked like they were Siamese twins,” said Gary. “His head was over her withers. His head was on the right side of her head.”

They were hit so hard that the gooseneck hitch was torn off the front of their trailer. The hitch in the back of their International 4700 was bent, and although the bulkhead of the trailer hit the truck, the safety chains prevented it from crawling into the bed.

The Mittleider’s truck was pushed up underneath the back end of the truck in front of them. The front end was smashed up to the engine block, which prevented their truck from continuing forward.

Getting Back On The Road
After assuring himself that the horses were as OK as they could be, Gary Mittleider called Brenda back in Idaho.

“It was quite a feeling of helplessness,” she recalled. “There was little I could do from 2,000 miles away.”

But she did as much as she could. She got on the phone and on The Chronicle of the Horse internet Bulletin Boards, where she’s a regular poster, to send out a call for help.

And Rob Law of Forsyth, Ga., came to their rescue. The Mittleiders had met Law and his wife, Robin Bass, the Area III adult rider coordinator, in Florida the year before. Law dropped everything and headed straight to the scene with a truck and trailer.

He brought their horses to his farm, while the truck and trailer were towed off to see if they could be repaired. Four months worth of horse and human equipment had to be unpacked from the ruined trailer and moved, a monumental task that would be endlessly repeated.

“We were at Rob’s place for the next three days, until we figured out what we were going to do,” said Sara. “Rob really saved us. He loaned us a truck and trailer to get down to Florida.”

They were able to continue to Rocking Horse as planned, but they arrived without a place to live or a way to transport their horses.

“The people at Rocking Horse really took care of us,” said Sara. “If they hadn’t, we would’ve been living in a tack stall. Alice Andrews, who runs Rocking Horse, gave us a place to stay and loaned us her truck and trailer when we needed to get my horse to the vet. There were a couple of people who loaned us trailers to stay in. Then Ashley Johnson let me use her rig to get my horse to the developing riders clinic. Everything we didn’t have, people gave to us.”

While Gary and Sara recovered and tended to their horses, Brenda started trying to take care of the finances. “We went with a budget, and then our budget was out the window,” she said. “We thought both the truck and trailer were totaled.”

It turned out that the truck wasn’t totaled, although it would require a month and a half of mechanical work. But the trailer was a complete loss. The Mittleiders had to depend on the kindness of strangers for horse transportation until a generous client bought a replacement trailer for them.

Because the Mittleiders clearly weren’t at fault for the accident, they expected it to be only a matter of time before the trucker’s insurance company would reimburse them. But the truck driver who hit them was Canadian, and the Canadian insurance company declared that the accident wasn’t really their problem.

“I was on the phone all day, every day,” recalled Brenda. “I had to call our state insurance commissioner. Our insurance company paid to have the truck repaired, but we still had to pay the deductible. We’re shopping for a new insurance company. Our agent chuckled when I called him. He said, ‘Well, aren’t you in a fix?’ “

A Host of Setbacks
Eventually, the Canadian insurance company did pay up, but Brenda believes that the only thing that persuaded them was finding out that one of the horses had been injured. Here’s Awesome ended up with deep bone bruises all over his body and a possible concussion.

“He was entered in four shows, and he’s not going to do that,” said Sara. “He’s not young, he’s just green. He’s 9 now and going training level. I was hoping to get him up to prelim and do a one-star, but that’s not going to happen this year.”

Instead he’ll rest at a farm in Kentucky until Sara and Gary are ready to head back West.

Tony wasn’t injured, but his preparations were pushed back, and the mental toll on Sara was significant.

“I really don’t know how I got through,” she said. “I was a mess. I focused on my horse and getting him better and taking care of the one that was hurt. I got to go home for a few days in February, and that was really good. Mostly my mom took care of all of it, and that took a huge load off of us. This is the longest I’ve ever been away from my mom, and it’s tough.”

Sara’s first event of the season was an intermediate division at Rocking Horse, and she made her season’s first advanced start at Pine Top (Ga.) March 4-5. They placed 10th after lowering some rails and incurring time faults on cross-country.

“Our dressage and stadium wasn’t what I’m used to from him,” admitted Sara.

“I think the accident set her back,” said Brenda. “All the things took some of her concentration away from what she came to do. Tony’s just now starting to act like himself. It was a huge move for us to do this–go and really get prepared. Then their program went out the window right away. They were behind on everything and had to play catch up.”

But as Sara and Gary continued to focus on riding instead of the accident, things improved.

Poplar Place (Ga.), on March 25-26, was Sara’s next advanced outing. “He was really good and getting back into his work mode,” enthused Sara.

They plan to compete in the FEI World Cup qualifier at The Fork (N.C.), on April 8-9, and then head to Kentucky for Rolex.

“It Could Have Been Worse”
During late March and April, Sara Mittleider and her father, Gary, stayed at Debi Crowley’s Cotton Meadows Farm in Elkmont, Ala. Sara rode there, while Gary taught riding lessons as a way to earn a little extra income.

“Once you sort things out, you just go on with your life as best as you can,” said Gary. “We’ve tried to remind ourselves that there was a purpose for coming back here. It wasn’t to get in this wreck, but that’s what happened. You just try to pass the wreck and do what you need to do next. Take care of today and plan what you’re going to do the next day so you can get to where you want to go.”

But their truck has broken down on them once since being repaired, and it’s been to the shop three times to replace engine belts that keep fraying.

“This isn’t the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, but it ranks up there, and it wasn’t fun,” admitted Gary.

“Still, we’ve met some really nice people that we wouldn’t have met any other way,” he added thoughtfully. “Nobody was killed, and I’m hopeful that the horses will be all right. I’m very grateful that Sara’s little horse wasn’t hurt. That would have ended our trip.

“A lot of bad things happened, but it could have been worse.”