Rebecca Anderson Overcomes Major Health Obstacle to Win Showmanship at 2013 AQHYA World Show
To look at the smiling face and witness the exuberant personality of AQHA youth, Rebecca Anderson, you’d never know she had to overcome some difficult circumstances to attend the Youth World Show this year. More specifically, Anderson is currently competing with two skull fractures and a brain bleed.
“I’ve been with John and Jill [Briggs] for the summer working with my horse,” Anderson says. “I went back to Nebraska two weeks ago to go to a medical camp I got accepted into. I was shadowing an anesthesiologist, I was in surgery, and I was fine. It was really neat.”
“Then, I went to watch a different procedure, where they blocked a lady’s nerve in her neck. The lady wasn’t handling it very well. The next thing I know I’m in the ER because I’ve ended up passing out. They took me to get a CAT scan, and they said it was clean. Then, I started throwing up, so I went to a different hospital and they took another CAT scan.”
The second scan revealed that Anderson had sustained two skull fractures, one near her temple and one at the base of her skull, in addition to a brain bleed. She remained at the hospital in the Intensive Care Unit for two days and was finally released last Sunday.
Caption: Rebecca Anderson and Rachel Kolb embrace when they discover the final placings.
“Coming down here, I didn’t think I was going to be able to show,” she says. “At home, I was just sleeping and trying to walk around. I was still lightheaded then, so it was amazing that I was able to trot in the pattern.”
“This pattern, I felt, was meant for me. It really showed off my horse’s abilities. I loved the long walk off. I really pushed my trot, I was really happy with my back up, and my setups were good.”
After practicing the pattern last night, Anderson and her trainers had a definite game plan going into the finals. But after discovering that the size of today’s pattern was a bit different than they had practiced, they made a few adjustments on the fly.
“I was seventh to go, and we came up after the first [exhibitor] to see the size and setup,” she says. “We knew it was a little bit smaller, and we had to make some adjustments.”
Throughout this entire process, Anderson relied on the love and support of her family, the empathy and expertise of her horse trainers, and the talent of her trustworthy mare “Invy” to achieve a goal that she only dreamed was possible. Although she has placed in the top ten in Youth Showmanship in previous years and won the Quarter Horse Congress in 2012, this is her first AQHYA World Championship title.
Showmanship:
1-Ok Shes Unzipped/Rebecca Anderson
2-Remarkable Can/Rachel Kolb
3-A Perfect Pleasure/Sydney Scheckel
4-KM Sudden Lil Zip/Madison Thiel
5=Zippos Kat Man Do/Bailey Anderson
