Coping with the Covid season–Heather Mason has found her method

Heather Mason was the U.S. Dressage Federation’s owner of the year in 2019. In 2020, however, like so many others during the pandemic fallout, “We are taking it one week at a time,” said the trainer, who owns Flying Change Farm in Tewksbury.

This is not the year for lofty aspirations.

Heather was riding the Grand Prix at the Red Tail Farm show yesterday in Bedminster–after the show’s first day was cancelled due to the tropical storm, which left the venue relying on a generator while more than 500,000 power company customers in New Jersey were stranded without electricity. Will 2020’s insults never end?

Heather has tailored her expectations to match the circumstances. She is shooting for Regional Championships, but the USDF’s National Championships at the Kentucky Horse Park in November remain a question mark. After seven people attending a show at the park were found to be Covid positive last weekend, this week’s U.S. Equestrian Federation Pony Finals were cancelled, followed by a decision to scrap the U.S. Hunter Jumper Association’s Green Incentive and International Hunter Derby Championships.

Last night, the U.S. Eventing Association announced it was cancelling its American Eventing Championships at the end of the month for health and safety reasons, amid concern about competitors coming to the park from 41 states.

There’s time before the November USDF Championships to see what develops, but “If things start looking worse again around the country, we probably won’t go to Nationals,” Heather observed.

She never planned on riding at the USEF’s National Championships in Illinois this month, though she has one client who is thinking of going.to the venue, where hunter/jumper shows have been held for weeks and the dressage festival is definitely scheduled to take place..

Once Covid struck, Heather decided early on this year not to show her younger horses, giving them an extra season to mature and perhaps start competing at a higher level than they would have entered this season. So she’s focusing on her Grand Prix mounts, noting that they are older, so she wants to make the most of the time she has left with them. They are Lincoln, a 15-year-old bred by Cornell University, and Warsteiner, 17, a KWPN by Riverman out of a Roemer mare.

Warsteiner earned 72.283 percent at Red Tail to finish second behind another Tewksbury resident, Alice Tarjan, on Harvest (73.152).

Discussing Warsteiner, Heather said, “He’s still getting better. As long as he keeps getting better, I’ll continue showing him.”  Her plan was to do “the bare minimum” to get her horses qualified for Regionals. So she was happy to go to a show just a 20-minute drive from her farm. Warsteiner’s test gave him his final qualifying score.

“We get a lot of good people coming to Red Tail. It was a pretty heavy duty Grand Prix class for a  one-day show,” she observed.

Listing Warsteiner’s pluses and minuses, she conceded, “He’s not as sensitive as I would like,” then happily added, “but he’s so reliable.” However, she pointed out that he “doesn’t get a good walking score because that’s his `talking movement.’ He whinnies (at the walk) every test. He just wants everybody to watch him.”

Always practical, Heather is looking on the bright side of a generally dismal 2020.

She categorized it as “kind of an in-between year,”adding, “it was nice we could get out and still show,” without doing as much as she usually does in her jam-packed schedule.

But Covid has made one big change in her approach. During her decades as a trainer, Heather, 51, said, “one thing I never imagined with my business is doing virtual lessons, but now I am doing those via FaceTime and WhatsApp.”

Some of her New York clients, who usually ship to her farm or attend her clinics in their state, are now being taught via FaceTime. That also applies to clients from Monmouth County. She usually travels more than an hour to work with them, but the state’s Stay at Home order in March gave that more than a half-halt. Another person who is taking advantage of Face Time is a new client from Vermont, who was supposed to come to New Jersey for a weekend in March, when things started closing.

Heather has been too busy to go to the USDF’s annual meeting in recent years, but she’ll dip into another virtual experience this fall because the organization’s convention will be on line, a boon to trainers like herself who have a lot going on.

In her case, that means riding 10 horses a day, in addition to giving lessons. Heather’s younger horses are on hold for her. They include a “late developer,” the 8-year-old Nicene, being ridden by Alex Crossen at Third and Fourth Level. Alex, an amateur, will do one more year with the horse before Heather takes over. Nicene’s 7-year-old full brother, the 17.1-hand New Beginnings, won Regionals last year at First Level and First Level Freestyle. Both are by her stallion, Nimbus. Another project is  a 3-year-old by Jazz out of a Krack C mare. “He, I think, will be really nice. He’s pretty level-headed,” said Heather, who plans to show him in 2021.

One disappointment Heather doesn’t have to deal with this year is what some of her contemporaries faced when the Olympics were cancelled. She never had ambitions for making that team.

“I decided the Olympics is a little too much life-consuming,” she explained.  “I’d have to cut back on my number of horses and concentrate on one or two. I  like variety, so that’s a little bit of a problem for me.”

Heather keeps “plenty busy” with stalls full of her old retired Grand Prix horses, horses in training, clinics and a “small but great” group of boarders. They are on a schedule with social distancing, tacking up outside and keeping their equipment in their cars to make sure everyone stays safe.

The times are certainly unusual.

“Shows are so different,” she commented. “There’s a bare minimum of people, no one milling about. They’re doing their thing and leaving.” On the plus side, “it makes spookier horses much easier, because you don’t have to worry about running anyone else over when you’re headed to the ring.”

Even so, she said, she’s looking forward to the time when finally, “it will be nice for parents and other people to be able to come and watch.”