Our Featured Adult Rider of the Month is Anna Laurence
After “staying the blazes home” for three months, June saw our riders return jubilantly to their second home at Lancers. This month our featured adult rider, Anna, who has recently returned as an adult J-rider so eloquently portrays Lancers as “home”.
Anna has been riding for 24 years. In the summer of 1996, she had the chance to ride a horse at a family friend’s and remembers going home to tell her mother she wanted to take riding lessons. Her mother called Lancers that very day and signed her up for the beginner course. Anna notes that there was no waitlist back then! Anna spent most of her youth at Lancers and moved away from Halifax in 2004. We were very pleased to have Anna rejoin Lancers after moving back in late 2019 for work.
Over her many years at Lancers, Anna has done pretty much everything one may associate with Lancers. She worked as a barn monitor, at camp, in the office, and as a stablehand. She ran the Junior Executive, helped with hay and shavings, tended to sick horses, ridden in the Musical Ride, backed young horses, showed hunters and jumpers, and everything else! Anna notes that she recently hasn’t been as involved again yet but she looks forward to seeing how her “adult professional” skill set can assist Lancers.
According to Anna, the best part about Lancers, besides the smell and getting to be near horses and horsey people, is the community, the people, and the spirit of doing things in the name of community and caretaking, both of horses and one another. As Anna just recently returned to Halifax with her partner Joe in tow, coming back to Lancers, she explains, “has been a big part of feeling part of Halifax again”.
Over the years, there have been many Lancer horses who Anna has loved starting with Panda and now with Clementine. Anna also had her own horse, Kobe, who she was able to keep at Lancers before we moved away from boarding non-Lancer horses. Anna also has a self-professed soft spot for Bud as he is the last Lancer horse left from when she last rode here. She rode him when he was a baby and is proud to see him be the old reliable guy he is these days.
Reflecting on her favourite Lancer memories, Anna explained, “Lancers is one of those places in my life where there are so many memories they're not very distinct. It's more a general feeling of warmth when I think of the place and the sorts of things I've done there”.
She added, “I don't think I can overstate the impact Lancers has had on my life and it has been huge...Lancers is very literally the space I grew up in”. By age 14, she was at Lancers daily for often many hours. Enduring friendships were built; when she moved to Ottawa in 2004, she was able to connect with former Lancer, Jenna Robbins, with whom she would go riding. Above all, Anna explained, “ Lancers deeply influenced and reinforced many of the aspects of my character I am most proud of. Lancers taught me to be responsible, and how to take responsibility for mistakes. I also learned resilience and how to work and persist at a thing in spite of its potential difficulty. Lancers taught me not just how to be a good horseman(person) - but the value of competence in a field. Lancers reinforced in me reliability and caring, the imperative to take care of others who need assistance - equine, human, or otherwise. Lancers taught me to be independent, and plan, and structure my days well. Lancers is also a place where I learned so much about relationships and friendships and what it takes to make them work”.
So perfectly summing up the Lancer experience, Anna closed by saying, “It feels almost trite to say, but Lancers really helped make me who I am. And I can tell you that despite 15 years away, when I walked into that barn in November 2019, returning as a member for the first time in a long time, despite all the new faces and change the place has seen, it really felt like coming home”.
Anna, we are glad to have you home and we can't wait to have you more involved again!
#FeatureFriday
