Rick Smith Memorial brings people, horses together to create something special

That Sudbury Sports Guy: Annual horse show to be held at Foothills Farm this weekend

Article content Pausing for a moment, Dave Scott reconsiders his first answer. “It is the people,” Scott said when asked about the prevailing lure of being a horseman and all that this entails. Delving a bit deeper, the longtime local businessman retracts only slightly, identifying the young riders as the biggest draw — specifically, the ability to witness their voyage from an initial introduction to the ponies to the excited teens and pre-teens who form the bulk of the field this weekend at the annual Rick Smith Memorial Trillium Show at Foothills Farm.

That second answer hits a little closer to home for the friendly gent who grew up in Port Credit with a love of horses, but no real outlet to enjoy their company on a more personal level. “I did a couple of trail rides as a kid but never really got into it until I had kids,” said the man who purchased Foothills along with his wife Laurel back in 2011 and has been a mainstay on the property most every day since. “My sister had bought a trail ride for my kids,” recalled Scott, father to Kelly and Jennifer.

“The girls were infatuated with it and got involved in a very primitive fashion: no tack, no helmets, just riding ponies bareback all day long on the weekends.” Before long, his two daughters and spouse were all showing at Foothills, and a friendship was struck quickly with Rick Smith and Cathy Inch, the couple at the forefront of the venue opened in 1979 and has produced a stream of top-quality riders over the course of the ensuing decades. When Rick passed far too early in 2008 at the age of 56, Dave Scott was close by, having purchased property directly across the street.

With Cathy still busy with a multitude of coaching undertakings in the world of equestrianism and son Jedd ready to move along to the next step in his life, a very natural handover occurred, one that sees Dave still as much a part of the upcoming weekend as he ever has been. “Leading up to the show, there is a lot of stress,” he said. “But when it all comes together, it looks fantastic.

And then you start going around to take care of all of the customers that are here. “I still work the shows. It becomes almost like one big family.”

And as in any large family gathering, the younger generation is at the forefront. The adults in the crowd are anxious to support the likes of 15-year-old Emma Pilbacka, making the jump to a more demanding style of riding aboard Sampson, competing in the High-Low 2.6/2.3 children’s-adult amateur hunter class, as well as tackling the A equitation on flats. “This is my first year trying to be competitive, or at least trying to develop really solid skills in my division and my age group,” said Pilbacka, a 15-year-old Grade 11 student at St. Benedict Secondary School who is also an avid Nordic skier.

“I’m learning a lot about how the horse reacts to you (as a rider) and how you can fix things on the course.” Pilbacka is now at a stage that is at least a few steps removed from when she first competed at the age of seven or eight, and where the horse-rider dynamic may have sat 180 degrees opposite to what she now experiences. “I started with a little school pony (Candy) who took me to the poles classes,” said Pilbacka.

“She was amazing. She took me around, took very, very good care of me and knew exactly what she was doing. She brought me to the point where I could move on to different horses.”

Making his return to the ring following a little while away, Sampson has slid in nicely this summer for where Pilbacka would like to go. “I like him because he knows his job,” she said. “He gives me a lot of opportunities to learn and teaches me a lot of lessons.”

As a young rider, Pilbacka has one primary area of focus at the moment. “A lot of my work is with my positioning, the way I present myself in the saddle,” she said. “I think by the end of summer, that will be developed and strong.”

All of which brings her to the next fork in the road in her riding career. “I am still trying to decide what style I want to go into,” Pilbacka said. “It will either be hunters or the jumpers.

I have never been in the jumpers before — that’s a whole new world for me.” And with a little bit of luck and a whole lot of hard work, Pilbacka and the balance of the Foothills riders, as well as those from out of town, will soon be able to experience something of a whole new world at the facility they have come to know and love. “We have a number of infrastructure projects that we have planned,” Dave Scott said.

“We want to put in a completely automated outdoor water system so that all of the paddocks have heated water — no more three- to four-hours-a-day job of hauling water.” “The outdoor sand ring is another big project,” Scott added. “Before the snow flies, we hope to completely excavate that and replace the sand with some special material like we have in the indoor ring — as well as a bed of properly drained gravel so that it will be like the show rings down at Palgrave and other facilities.”

Perhaps all to be done in time for the next Rick Smith horse show in 2027. In the meantime, Scott and others will have to glean some happiness just from encountering all of the people who make the horsing world special. And he is just fine with that.

Randy Pascal’s That Sudbury Sports Guy column runs regularly in The Sudbury Star.