Skip to main content
MENU

Team #528 Laurel Gershwin DVM and Wintergreen Cameo

Team #528: Laurel Gershwin DVM and Wintergreen Cameo
Ages: 74 & 26
Combined Age: 100

I first became acquainted with horses in the summer of 1955 when I was eight years old. My cousins were taking riding lessons in Carmel Valley, California, where my parents had just purchased a summer home. I took a riding lesson (western) with them and thus began my lifelong love affair with horses. I began taking English riding lessons at a local stable in the fall when I returned to my home in Oakland. However, it was not until I was 12 that I finally got my own horse.

Lollipop was a 16-hand black grade Morgan mare, who was my soul mate. Together we went on all day bareback trail rides, competed in local horse shows, dabbled in some barrel racing, and participated in the Orinda 4-H Club. At the end of my senior year of high school, I was awarded the Horsemastership championship award from my 4-H club for my performance on written, grooming, and riding tests. Lollipop accompanied me to Davis, California, when I attended college and veterinary school. Sadly, she died from colic during my freshman year of vet school.

Despite being a professor at the University of California, School of Veterinary Medicine, and raising three children, I have continued riding throughout the years and have owned some wonderful horses.  Two particularly special horses were: Mischief Maker, a Quarter Horse mare who loved to jump and lived to be 32; and Willie Wonka, a Morgan gelding who lived to be almost 32.  In my early 50s I decided to get a warmblood as a dressage partner and purchased a young Hanoverian gelding. After only owning him for about three months during a rainy season with no place to lunge, he bucked me off as I was mounting and broke my back. This set my riding back as the doctor told me I could not get on a horse for a year. At the end of that year Cameo came into my life. I sold the warmblood and purchased Wintergreen Cameo from Ann Taylor, a Morgan breeder. Cameo was about six years old at that time and had been trained to First Level dressage by Susan Garmier. Cameo helped me to regain my confidence after the accident.

Cameo and I have been together for about 20 years now. We have continued to work with Susan on our dressage. As my equine family grew, I moved Cameo from her home stable at Woodland Stallion Station to our little farm in Davis, where she lives with my five other horses and a pony. In her later years, Cameo has been ridden by two of my five granddaughters during their visits. About six years ago, Cameo was diagnosed with equine Cushing’s disease and has been on medication since then.  She had an episode of laminitis in the summer of 2020 and had some time off to recover. I chose to do our Century ride at my arena, rather than at a show, as shows were always stressful for Cameo and horses with Cushing’s disease don’t do well with high levels of stress. We were fortunate to get judge Barbi Breen-Gurley (who is also a Century Club member) to be our judge on October 23rd, 2021.  Cameo and I rode Training Level, Test 3.  Cameo is 26 and I am 74. Surrounded by friends and family Cameo rose to the occasion and we ended our Century Club ride with tumultuous applause!

Laurel and Cameo completed Training Level, Test 3, on October 23, 2021, to join the Century Club.