September 28, 2006

WEG Journals from Devon - Mack's Musings
"Those Furtive Ulterior Motives"
Special to Dressage Daily #2, Page Two
By Father Mack (a.k.a.: Father Larry David McCormick)

Alrighty, then. With that exemplar of a particularly blatant ulterior motive etched upon our minds, I bid the two of us to cast our minds upon a really good horse show we love to attend. Let Dressage at Devon serve as my case in point. Admittedly, we grace these shows with our presence primarily to watch the sport. [On my part, I hope to see Doctor Cesar Parra and his mount Fürst Fabio compete at Devon!] I have no doubt that you ride at the highest level your skill and your horse’s prowess can attain. But it is such fun to watch other people striving as we do. Occasionally, they may even achieve better results.

With that as a given, what impetus may I ask lies just beneath your or my surface, a force that propels us to the show grounds? I will not presume to speak for you taking as my caution the advice that it is seldom a good idea to confess someone else’s sins or shortcomings (it only makes my father confessor angry and makes me look like a complete idiot). Thus, I will bare my own ulterior motives – with specific reference to Devon – while I call upon you to plumb the depths of your own heart.

(1) Corgis. I love them. I suspect that the psychologists and psychiatrists in our reading audience are sharpening their pencils even now with an eye toward the article they will write for some appropriate journal on the topic of Corgiphilia. Nevertheless, I shall press forward. If you have tortured yourself with the reading of yours truly’s first “musing” for the Devon show, you already know that I consider myself blessed to share a domicile with one of these wee canines (the three cats are casting nasty glances in my direction as I type this paragraph, but I shall persevere nonetheless).

Corgis abound at dressage shows – whether for the reasons I have previously provided (<http://horsesdaily.com/news/dressage/2006/06dev/mack/09-22-canine_companions1.html >) or simply because God (in his infinite wisdom) thinks that they make horses look even more stately, I do not presume to know. If you are like me and can barely tear your attention away from these little charmers to watch the Grand Prix Special, then you know what I am talking about.

(2) Temptation to buy another horse. [WARNING: You don’t want your spouse or significant other peering over your shoulder as you read this portion of my scribbling.] Don’t we all go to a larger gathering of horse fanatics convinced that we have the right horse for us . . . NEVERTHELESS, we slow down and take a sideways glance at those photocopied offerings of horses for sale before we pass them by completely?

Whether I have grown a second cranium and imagine that I can afford to take care of two (or more!) steeds /or/ I am mulling over the possibility of retiring old dobbin and replacing him with a younger, flashier mount, we must admit that we read the puff pieces about the horses on offer. We may even (when aforesaid spouse or S.O. isn’t looking) tear off one of those dangling bits of paper with address and telephone number printed thereon. What an ulterior motive this constitutes!

(3) Shopping. I love to shop. (Not as much as I love Corgis, pace Fiona, but I do love to shop.) I may not buy cartloads of goods, but what a powerful stimulus to absent myself from the home stable and venture down the road to the show grounds is this Siren’s call? The cottages and tents and other vendors’ venues that surround the Dixon Oval and meander toward the Gold Ring are sufficient to bring this Odysseus onto the rocks.

We may fall prey to the allure of sweets while wandering past Dark Horse Chocolates (let the endorphins abound!). Perhaps I have pretensions of Haute Ecole and ask Boy De Winter (of De Winter Hats, out of the Netherlands) to fit me for an appropriate chapeau. Whose mind is not capable of some expansion through the reading of the countless worthwhile books that Janet and the nice folks at Knight Equestrian Books lug from their home base in Maine all the way down to Pennsylvania? And won’t our four-legged friends know how special they are in our minds when we stop by Mary Phelps’ booth for an insurance estimate courtesy of Markel Insurance! Need a spiffy bit of “bling” to call attention to yourself? Drop by Jane Heart’s cottage and watch as the dollars are summoned from your purse or wallet.

The list goes on, but I sense that your attention span is waning. A “shop ’til you drop” ulterior motive for attending any major horse show – Devon in particular – can be topped only by my all-time-favorite ulterior motive:

(4) “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The opportunity to assist people – individuals I do not know and who I may never have the joy of meeting – this for me is an inescapable enticement. The constant reminder when one is on the premises of the Devon show that this undertaking is purely for the benefit of Thorncroft Therapeutic Horseback Riding (http://www.thorncroft.org/) brings me back to the outskirts of Philadelphia year after year.

Even if there were not a single Corgi on the premises, no bulletin boards beckoning to me with prospects of other horses to buy, and nary a scarf nor a Swarovski crystal browband to be purchased, the chance to help handicapped or disabled men, women, and children so that they may know the elation of being on a horse’s back . . . well, I would walk all the way from my home to Devon over crushed glass with bare feet just to indulge that ulterior motive.

How about you? What are the ulterior motives that bring you to a horse show? I’d love to know. My e-mail address: mailto:frmac@columbia.edu