The School of Hard Knocks
While an Equine Studies Major at
The Stockbridge School of Agriculture
a 5 month co-operative work study was required as part of the curriculum. I had been driving
horses for some years now, and wanted to get more into driving. Jerry Schrurink, the program
coordinator said he might be able to help me get a position with a lady on the north shore
in Massachusetts. He dismissed the idea, because this was a very tough woman, and he didn't
think our personalities could work together. After prodding for nearly another two weeks,
he finally gave me the name and number but told me, "wait until I give her a call." That
woman was renowned Coachwoman, U.S.E.T driver, Deidre Pirie.
In my time at Aquilla Farm, in Hamilton Massachusetts, Mrs. Pirie and her longtime Coachman Marc Johnson introduced me to a whole new type I've driving that I had little exposure to in the past. While I knew quite a bit about draft horses, commercial and recreational driving, this was all together more refined. We worked the four-in-hand almost daily in support of Marc’s effort to earn a slot on the U.S.E.T team. I cleaned mountains of harness of all different shapes and descriptions. I competed in my first Combined Driving Event with her Welsh stallion Sydney. We came in first in our division at the Myopia Combined Driving Event. I crewed for the four-in-hand when the Park Drag was pulled out for a special occasion at Suffolk Downs. In short quoting from my journal kept to turn in upon return to Stockbridge in the fall, “I’ve learned more in the past five months than I knew there was to learn, and found that there is a hundred times that waiting for me yet to learn.”
Moving South
After graduation from Stockbridge I went to work in South Carolina, for Cindy Nord.
Cindy is best known for owning championship Morgan Horses, but at her ranch in
S. Carolina it was mostly Clydesdales. There was also a potpourri of other horses
with various lameness’s for me to work with. Cindy had even gone so far as to suggest
going to Europe to find C.D.E. horses for me to compete. I conceded that my experience
at that time was not broad enough, and I didn’t have the confidence to make that kind of
move yet. My position as trainer there gave me the kinds of experiences I needed to
begin to understand how to train horses. Together with her local vets, and some of the
top vets that travel the eastern seaboard we put these horses on the road to soundness.
It was there that I gained much of my experience shoeing horses. Every six weeks our
farrier would fly down from Pennsylvania and set up shop at our barn. It took us nearly
a week to shoe all of the horses there. I acted as apprentice, and was expected learn
enough to repair what damage they could do in the six week interval between visits.
Learning Four-in-Hand
After more than a year in South Carolina, I moved on to Florida. Willard Rhodes was just
wading into the sport of Pleasure Driving, and need a Coachman. At the time he had a
pair of older Morgans that he soon added to with a pair of Le Cheval
Canadiens. This
was to make up his four-in-hand. The Canadiens had very little experience. They had
been driven a little and perhaps sat upon only a couple of times. This was my first good
experience bringing horses nearly from scratch. With some visits from Willard’s Vermont
neighbor, John Greenall, Willard and I learned side by side the ins and outs of driving
four-in-hand. One day Willard happened to mention, "I’ve got a coach horn out there in
the office. If you were a proper coachman for me, you’d know how to play it.”
I spent
most evenings there trying to make tunes from a 52” brass pipe with a bell at one end
and a mouthpiece at the other. It wasn’t until an evening at Willard’s farm in Vermont
that I realized that I was becoming convincing at sounding the horn. Guests of the Rhodes
commented that it was a nice touch for him to have recordings of coaching calls being
played over loudspeakers from the carriage house on the hill. The guests had to be
introduced to me and see me play in person to be convinced that it was just another
evening practice session. Later that summer Willard and I got our feet wet with pleasure
showing at the Canadian Classic north of Toronto. Willard drove his Morgans in the
pair division, I drove the Canadiens in the tandem division, and John earned his first
victories in the four-in-hand classes. It was also at that show that I got my first
experience sounding a horn from a Park Drag, for Tudor Oaks Farm. Little did I know
that some day I would be driving that very Drag.
Go West Young Man
The following December I accepted a position with Stewart Title Guarantee, in Houston
Texas. The Morris family has been long active in Coaching. At the time Stewart Morris
Jr. was the president of the Carriage Association of America. He recently had acquired
the silver medal with a winning pair of Lipizzaner horses at the ’93 World Pair C.D.E.
Championship. Stewart had been driving these horses at the advanced level, and
aspired to gain a spot on the U.S.E.T. The Morris’s have one
of the finest collections of Brewster carriages I’ve seen, most of which were built for
the same gentleman. What is equally remarkable is that almost all of the carriages in
their collection get regular use. It was in the streets of Galveston, TX that I first
drove a Park Drag. The four-in-hand and carriages were used frequently for Stewart
Title special events through-out the southeast.
Recruitment Call
One day in my office at the Morris Ranch & Conference Center I got a phone call from
Tudor Oaks Farm, in Illinois. “Frankly Andy, I’m trying to recruit you away from Texas.”
About a month later I was getting ready to bring the Haflingers of Tudor Oaks to the
first Equitana U.S.A. . Tudor Oaks gave me the chance to compete at both Pleasure
Driving shows and Combined Driving Events. At the pleasure shows I entered the Coaching,
Four-in-hand, Pair, and Tandem Divisions. This kept me and the patchwork team (different
each time) of young horse people I was sent with very busy. Comparatively, competing a
pair at a three day Combined Driving Event with one or two people to help seemed very
easy. We nearly always topped our division when showing in that format. In the winter I
brought 10 of Tudor Oak’s Haflingers to Southern Pines, North Carolina. There I leased
a barn from my old friend Willard Rhodes, and hired a full time and a part time groom.
The ponies excelled in these circumstances. There was no more training and retraining
help, as the two grooms were a constant as opposed to the never ending cycle of
volunteers and rotating help in Illinois. I had three driving lessons a week with Bill
Long, later and more influentially, Wiebe Dragstra.
Two days I schooled two of the
ponies under saddle with 2 time National Champion Combined Training Rider,
Denny Emerson.
instructing me. Wiebe maintained a relationship as a coach after my return to Illinois.
A constantly changing staff led to difficulties and dangerous situations leading to my
parting ways with Tudor Oaks Farm. TOF soon after subcontracted their driving program
to Wiebe, who went on to compete very successfully.
Break Time
It had been several years since I had left my roots in New England. After my time at
Tudor Oaks, I knew that I no longer wanted to work as a family servant. In fact after
having put in as many frequent flyer miles over the hard top as a typical business traveler puts
in the air, I was ready for a break. I moved back to the area in
Massachusetts that I grew up in and began a career in real estate. Several
months passed as I helped people sell their houses and find new ones. One day a phone
call came from an ad I had placed in an equine publication about real estate, but instead
the customer was wondering if she could have a lesson or two. Not too long after that
there was “just this one horse” that she wanted me to start as a driving horse. Then
there came a friend whom had two horses that needed training. Then a few more lessons
here and there. More and more of my time was spent training and instructing, and it was
more fun than real estate. Finally I made the decision to sell my last house and have
not looked back since.
Coachman's Delight, Inc., 2006
Today Coachman’s Delight is as rewarding to me as working with horses has ever been. I have a wide variety of students all around the country, who are involved in all sorts of carriage driving. I learn as much every day I work with horses and people as I did when I started, perhaps more.
This year will be another building year in the area of outfitting. I have been very carefully building this portion of the business to reflect the values that I maintain in the training and instructing part of Coachman’s Delight. Margo Farnsworth has joined the team to make help things run
smoothly on the web and in the office. She also hits the road with me from time to time to help run our booth. Since the introduction of Ideal Harness, we’ve been filling orders at a steadily increasing pace. I remain idealistic in selling products that I actually use day in and day out. Some have smirked at this approach, but I give two reasons for this. I wish to treat my customers as I do the clients of my training business, making sure they get the right equipment for the job. Second, there’s a darn good chance that I’ll spend some time with some of my customers on the field, in a clinic or a competition. That means I’ll have to use the things that I sold, and I hate using stuff that doesn’t do its job!