Far from Kentucky's majestic stables, Jonathan Sheppard runs his operation out of a late 19th century dairy barn converted for racehorses. 

Inside the main barn, a cluster of thick leather and brass halters hang from an overhead hook.  A chestnut filly gets a foot trimming with very little fuss. A veterinarian administers vaccinations.   Off in a corner a mash of hot oats is brewing in a steel kettle.  Horses poke their heads out of adjoining stalls, while a pair of crescent horned goats wander at will keeping both animals and humans company.

The morning after a dazzling snowfall two grays are led out to an adjacent field joining a mob of other fillies.  The grays-- Forever Together and Informed Decision-- dig and pick at hidden shoots of grass, then suddenly wheel around and gallop off, white plumes steaming from their nostrils in the frosty air.

They are owner George Strawbridge's champion girls.  But here's the thing: thoroughbred trainers just don't turn out two champion-level animals together.  The risk is far too great.  But for Sheppard, it is yet another of the natural approaches that sets him apart from other top American trainers.

"I just think we use too much stuff.  Too much of everything," Ellen Lea says, considering the world's dependence on fossil fuels, and the environmental damage that dependence creates.  "There's got to be a bottom to everything, but not solar energy.  I really feel like the carbon footprint is important," she explains, "I feel like this is doing my part."  Lea is part of a fast-growing contingent of land owners who have made the leap to alternative energy.  In a couple of months, engineers from Penn Renewables of Quakertown, PA will begin installation of panels that will convert the house, the barns and the stables to solar energy.

The original part of the house at Willow Lake Farm was built in 1713, and was probably heated with wood or coal, or a combination of both.  Kerosene lights and candles provided the ambience for the 18th Century farmers who settled here.

Lea's great uncle purchased the farm in 1934, and she grew up here. "Twenty years ago my mother said ‘what do you want me to do with the farm?' We had a family meeting," she explains, at which she and her siblings discussed the farm and what it meant to the family.  "They all have fabulous memories of living here," and didn't want to see the farm sold to developers, who were enthusiastically offering huge sums of money for 165 rolling acres in this southeastern corner of Montgomery County. The siblings decided that Lea should take over the farm, and purchase it from the estate.

"Mother decided to put a conservation easement on it," Lea says, and provided in her will for as much land as Lea wanted to be carved out of the easement.  She retained 26 acres, and the rest is part of the Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association's portfolio of conserved land.  Lea and her husband, Dr. Dale Schilling, a large animal veterinarian, breed thoroughbred racehorses.  From their sunroom they can watch their yearlings in a gently sloping pasture that sits just across a small pond.  Even swaddled in a thick blanket of new snow, the farm is a stunning expanse of pastures, streams and thick woods.

Sally Addington of Polk, Pa., vividly remembers watching Craig Cameron's Extreme Cowboy Races on television. The races' emphasis on horsemanship and speed mesmerized her, and the tricky series of obstacles for horse and rider to navigate only made her more eager try her hand at this up-and-coming discipline.

"I thought, ‘I can do that,'" Addington said, so she applied to compete at Equine Affaire in Columbus, Ohio, in 2007. "I had a real big head thinking I was going to win this thing. But my horse decided he didn't want to go through the obstacles. So I ended up placing 13th. It was an eye opener for me and I'm glad it happened because I needed to be taken down a peg or two."

The next year, she missed the deadline to apply for the Extreme Cowboy Races, but in 2009 Addington applied and was accepted. With a new attitude, she set off for Ohio with the goal of placing in the top 10 and establishing a better bond with her horse, Ghost of a Chance, an 11-year-old grade gelding.

"It was just he and I time. Every moment was spent together, talking to him," she said. "He's got such a large vocabulary of words, and he does know them. He's my best bud. We had a beautiful ride in the semi-finals, and at that point I didn't even care if I made it to the finals."
When scores were posted, Addington was third going into the finals round, so she made a new goal to make it into the top five. Cameron requires all riders to ride the finals round bareback, so Addington removed her saddle and anxiously awaited her turn.

"Then someone told me to put my saddle back on because there was going to be a run-off for first place," Addington said. "I started crying because I knew the worst I could do was second place. I went into the run-off and won."

Later in 2009, she competed in another Extreme Cowboy Race in West Springfield, Mass., winning that competition, too. By now, Addington had garnered enough attention on the Extreme Cowboy Race circuit that people began asking if they would see her at Equine Affaire in Pomona, Calif., in January 2010.

Jessica Ransehousen, hailed as the woman who single-handedly revolutionized the sport of dressage in the United States, received the USEF Lifetime Achievement Award and the Jimmy A. Williams Trophy, the USEF's highest individual honor, last month at the Pegasus Awards dinner in Louisville, Ky.

Ransehousen, a dedicated athlete who competed in three Olympic Games and a Pan American Games, and a revolutionary coach who served as Chef d'Equipe for three Olympic Games, two World Championships and four Pan American Games, was surprised to hear she had won the prestigious award.

"I was doing a clinic in North Carolina at the beginning of December when I had a call from David O'Connor," she said. "I was in the middle of a clinic, so I called him back the next day, but he didn't answer. My imagination started running away with me, and I was wondering what was wrong. I finally got him the next day, and he said, ‘You won the Lifetime Achievement Award.' I said, ‘What for?' And he said, ‘Well, you deserve it.'"

Indeed, considering Ransehousen's titanic contributions to the sport of dressage, she deserves this honor. While she officially retired in 2004 and now spends most of her time teaching and training at her Blue Hill Farm in Unionville, PA, she continues to coach the top U.S. dressage riders. Thanks to her hard work in 2009 as Chef d'Equipe at both the 2009 FEI World Cup Final and the CDIO Aachen, the year was monumental for the U.S. dressage program.

Score one for the jockeys.  And their sport's image.
Controversial owner Michael Gill, who led all North American owners in wins and purse earnings in 2009, is liquidating his stable so that he can leave racing.  Again. Gill's actions were the result of the firestorm that erupted following two breakdowns at Penn National Race Course in late January.  Since the early 2000's Gill has operated out of Elk Creek Ranch, a large training center in Oxford, Pa.

In early February Gill was ousted from Hollywood Casino at Penn National by order of the Pennsylvania Horse Racing Commission.  Gill was boycotted by members of the Penn National riding colony after his horse Laughing Moon broke down shortly after the wire in the fifth race on January 23, causing another horse and rider to also go down.

Only after Gill's one remaining horse on the card was scratched did the jockeys agree to saddle up again.  Two nights before, Gill's Melodeeman suffered a similar catastrophic breakdown. The jockeys took action following repeated instances where Gill-owned horses broke down at the Grantville, Pa. track.  According to reports in the Daily Racing Form (DRF), six Gill horses have suffered catastrophic breakdowns since Oct. 1, an unusually high number.  Another nine of his horses were pulled up, eased or went lame over that span of time.  Several jockeys on horses behind the fallen horses were thrown from their mounts.

Many jockeys and horsemen at the track, citing safety concerns, informed the Pennsylvania Racing Commission (PHRC) that they would not take mounts or enter their horses in races alongside Gill's horses. On the morning of Feb. 3 Gill said he received a call from the PHRC asking him if he planned to scratch his horses entered for that evening.  He stated he intended to race and an hour later received the ejection notice from PHRC acting executive secretary Michael Dillon.

A gaggle of geese and ducks alerted a passing neighor to the plight of Ranger, a draft mare who fell through snow covered ice into an eight foot deep pond.

A gaggle of ducks and geese squawked furiously to alert anyone within earshot that a horse had broken through the ice in their pond, located near Canonsburg, PA. It was late afternoon on Tuesday, Feb. 17.  "They were having an awful time," said Duane Terpenning, of the North Strabane Township Fire Department (NSTFD).  "They were letting everyone know there was a problem." 

And it was a big problem, too.  Terpenning says that the horse had been in the water, which was about eight feet deep, about 45 minutes when rescue units from North Strabane and Peters Township arrived.  "It was off the roadway a long ways, and pretty hard to get to. The conditions out here are horrible," he says, noting that they've got about three feet of snow still on the ground. A neighbor driving past the farm noticed the horse in the pond and alerted the fire department.

17 Hand Percheron

Terpenning said there were other horses on the property, but only one had ventured out onto the ice.  Fortunately for the horse, responders from both Fire Departments had been trained in large animal rescue.  Ed Childers and Paul Williams of the NSTFD have been coordinating training classes in large animal rescue for first responders in the region. Williams, who is also a farrier, was on the scene on Tuesday and helped rescue the 17-hand Percheron mare. The classes focus on rescue of large animals, and also on barn and trailer safety.  Childers, a volunteer for NSTFD, believes this type of training is something that every horse owner should have. "We take the animals we love, and that trust us, and put them in a trailer and hit the road.  The animal doesn't know that you're not prepared."

It took firefighters about an hour to get the horse out of the pond.  "They've got a pretty good size flat sled they use for ice rescue," Terpenning says.  "They were able to move that out to the middle of the pond and get the horse's head up."  They attached a halter and lead, and then began cutting the ice to the edge of the pond.  Captain Marc Scott, of the Peters Township Fire Department, says that rescuers used chain saws to cut the ice, which was about eight inches thick.  "When the horse started to get agitated to the point where she was moving around," he says, "it actually helped us with her egress to the shore."