Note: This article first appeared in EQUUS magazine in April 2000. To read more about Elmer Bandit, see "Record-Breaking Gelding Not Done Yet," Roundup, in the January 2009 issue of EQUUS.
If Duracell's Energizer bunny ever runs down, a little gray gelding named Elmer Bandit would be happy to fill in. At 29, an age when most horses are happy just to be relaxing in a pasture savoring the spring grass, Elmer will be shooting for his 19th North American Trail Ride Conference (NATRC) National Championship. To reach that goal, Elmer and his owner, Mary Anna Wood of Independence, Mo., will compete in as many as 11 separate 60-mile competitive rides.
Competitive trail riding is a sport in which a horse and rider complete a marked trail within a specified time period. But it's not a speed event. Along the way, judges observe the competitors, evaluating them in categories such as a rider's horsemanship and courtesy on the trail and a horse's manners and conditioning. Competitors start with a perfect score of 100, and judges deduct points for errors.
Elmer's career as a competitive trail horse has been as distinguished as it has been long. As a "youngster" of 15, he became the first of five horses ever inducted into the NATRC Hall of Fame. In 1980, he won the Bev Tibbitts Grand Champion Award for having the highest average score in the nation. In 1999, Elmer won his 18th NATRC National Championship and brought his career total of competitive miles up to 14,300 in 239 competitions. (Elmer is the NATRC's second highest mileage horse, behind the 23-year-old American Saddlebred gelding Wing Tempo, who has 17,590 miles. Wood herself has 14,210 rider miles, just a hair behind Wing Tempo's rider, Shirley Sobol, who has 14,220.)
In 1998, Elmer won three rides, including two Sweepstakes awards as the highest-scoring horse in the open division. That October, in the 60-mile Kansas Flint Hills Ride, Elmer almost tied with a horse 23 years his junior; he just missed his fourth perfect score by a single point.
"He had a 99 because [the veterinary judge] docked him a point for laying his ears back on his last trot circle," says Wood. "The wind was blowing hard, and he hates circling." (In NATRC events, competitors must either longe or circle their horses in-hand in both directions before the judges to check for soundness.) Elmer's scores are almost always in the 90s.
Little Big Horse
In his 23 years of competitive trail riding, Elmer has developed a unique collection of skills. He pickets anywhere--on the foot or on a line--and rolls and urinates on command. An equine botanist, Elmer has perfected selective grazing at the trot, Wood reports. He divides plants into three categories--edible (raspberry and mulberry), inedible (sassafras) and "will-do-in-a-pinch" (dogwood).
And trailers? No problem. Elmer jumps the two and a half feet in and out of Wood's two-horse model.
Elmer even mentors younger horses. "Several horse owners call him 'Uncle Elmer' because he's good at leading an inexperienced horse into a trailer or baby-sitting a new horse down the trail," says Wood.
But all those years of experience do give a horse some pretty strong opinions. For one thing, Elmer doesn't like to get his feet wet, so he is becoming an expert at keeping dry during creek crossings.
"You would swear he has X-ray vision and knows where the rocks are," says Lucy Hirsh, DVM, a veterinarian, NATRC competitor and one of Wood's good friends, who was mentored by Wood. "I recall one water crossing with logs in it where other horses were scrambling and getting wet above their knees. Elmer picked a path through the middle along a little rock shelf and barely got the tops of his hooves wet. The judges were amazed."
Wood has also schooled Elmer in Western pleasure (he hates to slow jog) and hunt seat (he still does a bit of jumping, up to two feet). Since he was 4, the pair has taken dressage lessons to learn rhythm and balance, and Elmer can deftly perform leg yields, shoulder-in, haunches-in and flying changes.
In camp, Elmer is well known as a vocalist. A confirmed extrovert, he loves to chatter, especially when he wants attention. And he is more accurate than an alarm clock when his breakfast is due.
Elmer began his long trail career at a Girl Scout camp in Ten Sleep, Wyoming, where Wood says she "broke Elmer going down the trail." A Certified Horsemanship Association instructor, Wood rode Elmer when leading scouts on six-day pack trips, on which they wrangled up to 185 head of horses.
