#6

This weekend was far from fun. I have been having a wonderful time in FL for the last couple of weeks. Being away from school was wonderful, I was able to get most of my school work done within a two hour time period I did question why I even went to school when I was able to do it all on my own. Being able to ride my horse’s everyday and get lessons was amazing it was amazing experience and I learned a lot. Another plus was being able to go to all of the shows while I was there. Well this weekend started out great everyone from team Chiacchia was placed well after the first day. We were all having so much fun together; we knew it was going to be a fun weekend. Well we were very wrong. Saturday morning came around it started out well, my trainer Darren Chiacchia went out to the warm up on his first horse Baron Verdi. This was a very young horse that was very new to the sport. Darren was very nervous about this ride because the course was very difficult. Well Darren and Baron came up to fence five and Baron did the unthinkable he chested the fence which caused him to do a rotational fall onto Darren. Darren’s chest was crushed. He was then airlifted to the nearest hospital for further treatment. Everyone from the team was so scared to ride we were not sure what to do. But we knew if we didn’t compete Darren would be mad at us so we decided to go for it. Later that afternoon Jon Holling went out on his own horse Direct Merger while jumping fence 8 “Monty” had a heart attack and collapsed and died. It was so sad the watch this happen. Monty was everything to Jon and he was hoping to make the Olympic team this summer. When we thought that the day couldn’t get any worse it did my friend Missy Miller was the next up to go out on the course on her own Leprechauns’ Rowdy Boy. They were looking amazing! She came down the hill to this huge water jump and while going over the first element Rowdy Boy had a heart attack and crashed into the second fence, and flew Missy into the water. Rowdy died instantly. Hearing Missy scream “Get him” “not my Rowdy Boy” was horrible he was the love of her life and her best friend. Team Chiacchia scratched all of the horses from the rest of the competition and went home. We were not willing to risk any more of our horses or riders getting hurt. I hope that Darren makes a full recovery and will be back in the saddle soon. It is going to be very weird at the barn for awhile without him and Monty and Rowdy. They will forever be missed.