BY PATRICE D. BUCCIARELLI
When Jill Elbrecht became pregnant with her son Benjamin, she worried about how she would keep her mare Betsy in shape when she could no longer ride.
“I didn’t want Betsy in her stall going stir-crazy, but I didn’t want to get into a lease agreement, and I could only afford to pay our trainer to ride her once a week,” says Elbrecht. “Fortunately, my trainer came up with a solution.”
When she met Elbrecht’s trainer Clarissa Cupolo at Gemini Performance horses, Shanna Decker had spent her life around horses, but was not in a financial position to purchase one of her own. So Cupolo arranged for the pair to meet. “I had already seen Shanna ride, and I knew that she was the caliber of rider that someone would pay to ride their horse,” says Cupolo. “I knew Betsy was the kind of horse people would pay to ride, so it was the perfect arrangement.”
SHARING STRATEGIES