Mary Lou Gallagher’s Dressage Journey NODA Director at Large

By Mary Lou Gallagher

This article earned first place in the 2023 GMO Newsletter Awards for first person experience articles for GMOs with 175-499 members. It originally appeared in NODA News, the newsletter for the Northern Ohio Dressage Association, 2022, Issue 12.

I grew up loving horses. I put reins on my tricycle, read all the Black Stallion books and rode the merry-go-round all the time. (Too old to have lusted for My Little Pony). But it wasn’t until I had finished college and started teaching that I took my first riding lesson at the old Campbell stables on Bagley Road in Berea. There I met Margaret McElhany and eventually followed her to Rocky River Stables.

The first horse I had bought was a Heinzer (i.e. 57 varieties or the equine version of a mutt) who was never meant to be a dressage horse. A few mistakes later I ended up with Tiberius, otherwise known in the barn as P-fred the Pferd in honor of his German breeding. We had several great years of showing in both schooling and recognized competitions, and I got to third level. (One more good ride and I would have won my bronze medal.) My most memorable time with Pfred, however, came after our show days were over. He showed me that flying changes were so easy that I could circle the arena for 15 minutes doing tempi changes all over the place. I might not have been as accurate as Reiner Klimke but my smile would have matched his at the Olympics.

By then a new love had entered my life. I found that running a horse show could be as much fun as riding in one. I started with the NODA schooling shows. Carey Smith had handed over the show supplies, a cardboard box containing an adding machine, a stapler, a bronze bell, and not much else. (We still have the bronze bell.) Shows grew in size and number. So for many years I was running all over the region to Red Raider, Liberty Bell, Cross Wind, Willow Run, Brecksville Stables, Timberlane and at home at Rocky River. Shows were now a two ring circus except for the one year we put a third ring on the grass at Rocky River and offered dressage driving classes. My last contribution to the NODA Schooling show program was the introduction of the championship show at the end of the season. It had started out as two rides in front of two judges (scores being averaged to determine the championship) and eventually ended up in its current format of one ride before a panel of judges.

I must also have grown up watching too many old Andy Rooney movies (you know, the ones where he is always suggesting “let’s put on a show.”) Anyway, I now had this brilliant idea that NODA should put on a recognized show. At the time (1988) there were only three recognized shows in Ohio for the entire summer, so what could be more fun? Bev Mendocino became the first manager and I took over the secretary’s office. What could go wrong? Well, we started out with no show grounds, no rings, no computer or computer programs, no internet, and no idea what we had gotten into. To add to the frenzy, I had been selected to appear as a contestant on Jeopardy on the Monday before the show. I took a red-eye flight home on Wednesday in time to pack up my secretary stuff and my horse to get to the show grounds on Friday. Didn’t I tell you? In those days a secretary could also show so I put myself down for four classes. (I won three of them!) The worst part of the show was filing the results. There were no computer programs at that time so all the results had to be typed with full address and all numbers for horse/owner/rider for every competitor in each class. I should have learned my lesson and said once was enough. But it was so much fun that I did it for 25 years. In subsequent years I also took on secretarial duties with the FOSP show at the Chagrin Polo field, at Lake Erie College series and finally at Grand Haven.

My last great idea was to get my technical delegate’s license. I did mention above that I taught high school so that must mean I still had lots of free time (?) each summer. I spent almost 20 years mainly in Ohio and Michigan as a TD and often brought home new ideas to share with the NODA shows.

I would like to say that I found time to keep up with my riding but, sometimes life doesn’t give us everything. I lost Tiberius to colic in 2000 and didn’t venture onto another horse for several years. Eventually I got the opportunity to ride Sue Horst’s retired FEI show horse for a few years and afterwards took lessons from Marty Costello on Guinness. Guinness had no hocks and thus no collection but he taught me how to half-pass with grace and elegance. A few more years and he and I would have been ready to join the Century Club. Alas my riding days (so far) ended up with my hip replacement surgery five years ago.

So now I am retired from teaching and riding. So I must have a lot of fun doing nothing.

Wrong you are! I have been on the NODA board for gazillion years. Currently I am kept busy offering unsolicited opinions as one of its Directors at Large. (I would even consider myself its eminence grise except for the fact that I pay my hairdresser good money to keep me looking brown.) And if you go to a NODA show, look for me hanging around and still having as much fun as before.