Birthday wish turns into love for a lifetime

Jersey Shore woman competing in the Intercollegiate Horse Show National Championship

By ANNA TELATOVICH atelatovich@sungazette.com
JERSEY SHORE — All Veronica Bruce wanted for her seventh birthday was a pony ride.

Today, the 20-year-old from Jersey Shore is competing for the University of Maryland in the Intercollegiate Horse Show Assn. National Championship in Burbank, Calif.

“I always knew I wanted to ride horses. I never though that I’d actually be able to qualify for nationals,” she said.

Veronica’s mother, Cindy, remembers where her daughters passion for horses began.

“We used to pass here and she saw this little gray pony out in the field,” Cindy said of Fairplay Farm, which the Bruce’s later purchased and owned until recently. “She said ‘Oh, mommy, you know what I want for my birthday? All I want is a pony ride.’ So we came here for a pony ride and then it went to lessons and then she started showing Buster.”

Buster, a palomino Quarter Horse, was the first horse in the Bruce family. “I used to show him until I was about 15,” Veronica said. Despite opposition, she trained and rode Buster in the English style, which is opposite of the Western-style of riding, which is how palominos usually compete.

“Then I got a bigger horse that could jump higher,” Veronica said.

That’s when the Bruce’s found Leroy, a thoroughbred that was put out to pasture. The huge, dark brown animal came with a temper and “petrified” Veronica, she said. “He was just so much bigger and more difficult.”

As an untrained, or green, horse, Leroy gave both Veronica and her parents more than a few frights.

“I couldn’t begin to tell you how many times she ended up on the ground with him,” Cindy said of Leroy, whose show name is Bedazzled. “He used to throw her like a rag doll. I can’t even begin to tell you how many concussions she had.”

Veronica’s father, Greg, watched his daughter struggle with Leroy, too. “If we went to the hospital and was in riding clothes, they checked her for a concussion automatically,” he said.

But it paid off. Veronica has jumped Leroy as high as 3-feet, 6-inches.

Fighting the parental instinct to comfort their daughter after a fall from a horse was one of the hardest lessons the Bruce’s had to learn. “Keep quiet and be patient,” was Greg’s most difficult lesson, he said. “If a trainer is telling her something, you learn to let the trainer handle it. If she’d fall off at a show, the parental urge is to jump over the fence and go see her.”

Difficult, untrained horses like Buster and Leroy are the kind Veronica likes to ride, according to her parents. “Falling off makes you a better rider,” Veronica said.

Veronica is one of about 50 girls on the university’s equestrian team and is only one of four from a three-state region to attend the national competition that concludes today. “Right now, she’s one of the top 20 riders in the nation,” Cindy said.

Cindy and Bruce are with their daughter today in California. “We haven’t missed a horse show yet,” she said.

Veronica is competing at the intermediate level in English riding and is competing in “equitation on the flat” where she will “walk-trot-canter” a horse she is unfamiliar with.

At the collegiate level, equestrians ride horses that belong to the barn where competitions are held and riders have no advance contact with the horse. “You don’t know anything about them, like what upsets them or how to handle them differently,” Veronica said. “But since Leroy was so bad, that kind of prepared me,” she said.

Veronica said that riding a horse isn’t as simple as it may look. “You use every muscle in your body,” she said. “My legs get so sore. You constantly have to be squeezing. It keeps they’re whole body compact. You have to use your stomach and back to keep them going at the right pace ... They think you just sit there and point the horse.”

After college, Veronica hopes to have her own farm. “But I have no idea what I want to do, but I want to work with animals.” She mentioned training and selling horses as a possible career.

And whatever she decides, Veronica has her parents support 100 percent. Leroy, Buster and the rescued pony, Tony, will remain at Fairplay Farms until Veronica graduates from college. “Then she can have the truck and the trailer and take her horses wherever she’s going and we’ll probably follow her,” her father said.