Lindsay Berreth

Adrienne Lyle’s 2012 London Olympic Games mount, Wizard, has incurred a minor injury that will prevent him from traveling to Europe to compete next month.

The 14-year-old Oldenburg gelding was slightly off on his left front, so Lyle, 28, decided to get him checked. “We thought maybe it was a bruise. We gave it a week, and he was still a hair off, so we decided to send him for an MRI,” she said. “It revealed he has an acute bruise on his coffin bone from probably smashing his foot down, pawing, anything really. He’s kind of a rambunctious child.”

Spectators and riders could be forgiven for doing a double-take at Florida events this winter as Forrest Nymph, a 14.3-hand New Forest pony, ate up the cross-country courses in preliminary divisions with Lauren DeNeve aboard.

Officials at the Bureau of Animal Health and Welfare in Illinois enforced a quarantine at Double W Stables in Gurnee, Ill., on March 6. Two horses at the facility were euthanized after developing clinical neurological symptoms of Equine Herpes Virus-1. Double W Stables is a boarding facility located in Lake County, about an hour from Chicago.

Four-star eventer Jennifer Wooten married Andres Macouzet on March 2 in a ceremony in Tepoztlan, Mexico.

Wooten met Macouzet, an equine veterinarian, through Daisy Tognazzini, who owns her former four-star mount, The Good Witch. They’ve been together for two years.

Eventer Kelli Temple was injured while schooling a young horse cross-country three weeks ago in Aiken, S.C.

Temple incurred multiple fractures to her left hip when she fell off and hit the jump. “I didn’t have to have surgery, thankfully. It was a stable fracture,” she said. “It’s basically like if you broke your ribs. It hurts a lot, and you’re supposed to stay stable, but there really isn’t anything they can do about it. It just takes time.”

They say the three keys to success are location, location and location. Louisiana is not known as a hotbed of eventing. It’s fairly flat, quite warm and only hosts two U.S. Eventing Association recognized horse trials a year, but to Sydney Conley Elliott, it’s home. 

While she may be geographically at a disadvantage, Elliott has managed to run a successful training business, virtually by herself, and compete at the upper levels. “Living here, you know you’re in for a drive,” she said with a laugh.

Event riders from around the world are rallying behind a petition started by the British-based Event Riders Association to change the Fédération Equestre International’s new minimum eligibility requirements.

On Feb. 24, four-star eventer Holly Payne was schooling cross-country on a 4-year-old horse when a freak accident resulted in a broken foot. “I was literally just walking across the field, and he spooked at something, and he spun and just slipped and fell down and landed on my foot. The only thing I can think of is that my foot was in the stirrup, and it crushed my foot,” she said.

The neurological form of EHV-1 has been confirmed in six horses in Quebec, Canada, New Jersey and Utah.

On Feb. 20, the Bédard Quarter Horse riding stable in Chicoutini, Quebec noticed a 12-year-old mare was exhibiting neurological signs. She was referred to the large animal clinic at the University of Montreal Veterinary Hospital in Saint Hyacinthe, Quebec on Feb 23, where she was immediately isolated.

Within a few hours, her health deteriorated and she was humanely euthanized.

After a horse competing at the HITS Ocala show in Ocala, Fla., tested positive for the neurological form of the equine herpes virus (EHV-1), that horse is in stable condition, the HITS shows in Ocala are continuing as usual with one tent barn in quarantine, the showgrounds at the FTI Winter Equestrian Festival had a horse with a suspicious fever that tested negative for EHV-1, and seven state quarantines are in place in Florida.