AHYA President's Corner

AHYA Welcomes Laura Killian as the 2011-12 AHYA President!

Hello AHYA!

I am Laura Killian, your new AHYA president. I know this year will be an incredible experience serving AHYA with the new Board of Directors: Vice President Haley Harrington (R1), Treasurer Hannah Bell (R2), Secretary Marissa Jensen (R5) and the rest of the fantastic Youth Directors.

Now for a little about my life and horses...
I am a sophomore in college at Penn State University studying Business Marketing and Equine Science. This year I get to take classes about horse management, horse judging and animal science! How cool is that :-)
I am also the Special Events chair of the Penn State Dressage team. Last year, I was even given the opportunity to compete in Intercollegiate Dressage Association competitions for PSU. I'm a part of a few non-horsey clubs at school too such as the ski club, judo team, THON and some dance organizations. Outside of school, I am the Youth Director of the Pennsylvania Equine Council and spend any free time traveling, enjoying the outdoors, working out or with my family and friends.

I am a member of Region 15, specifically from Lancaster, PA. My mom, Marie Killian, has always been horse crazy so when she married my dad, Rick Killian, she made it clear that someday she'd have horses in her backyard. When I was 2 years old we moved to a small farm, which is where my family still lives today. Our family rented camp horses every winter and this is when my obsession with horses began. A few years later, my family was ready to buy a horse that would be ours forever. We planned on purchasing a safe, older quarter horse. That all changed when a 5 month old Arabian stuck her head out of the stall and began nibbling on my dad's jacket pocket. Kirashana+, affectionately known as Kira spent the first 7 years of her life primarily as a "pasture ornament" while I developed my riding skills as a 4H member with my welsh pony Cocoa Puff. After a few years of showing Cocoa in low hunter classes and showmanship, I was ready to learn how to ride Kira and enter my first A-rate show! Soon Kira and I were excelling in hunter pleasure, equitation, native costume, trail, sport horse under saddle, sport horse in-hand, halter and showmanship. But Kira thought she was too smart to just do rail work, so we switched to dressage so that she'd have to rely on me for cues instead of anticipating them. I fell in love with dressage when I saw how it transformed her mind and body. My family decided to purchase a 7 month old Arabian/Andalusian, MS Spanish Legacy++, to be my next dressage prospect. She is only 4 years old and already had wins a 1st level in open and Arabian USDF shows and is schooling 2nd level movements. She also has showed in halter, sport horse in-hand, showmanship, sport horse under saddle and show hack. Unfortunately, she did not grow as much as we had hoped for my long legs, so we purchased one more addition to the family, Shana's Romance. She is a black 4 month old Arabian/Oldenburg with a star. My family went to see her birth in Albuquerque, New Mexico and I went to visit her again during Youth Nationals, but now she is finally home in Pennsylvania. Speaking of Youth Nationals...

Youth Nationals began with the annual AHYA Convention. The theme this year was "Under the Sea". We started out with some fun icebreakers activities so all of the delegates could get to know one another while our volunteers helped everyone to sign-in. Convention ran smoothly and we had great guest speakers, Ferrara Photography and convention sponsor, Horseshow.com to entertain our delegates in between elections. Next, we held games for the youth during the Welcome Party. Later in the week, we also had the golf cart parade, consignment sale, flying pigs, poker run, stick horse workshop, ice cream social, cutting clinic, dunk tank, hippology contest and novice horse judging contest.

I plan to continue to share my passion for the Arabian horse with others by reaching out to other organizations, such as breed associations, horse councils, discipline specific shows, therapeutic riding groups and youth development programs. I hope this encourages other board members, youth directors and AHYA members to do the same and help the rest of the world to understand why we love out horses.

Feel free to contact me by email at LZK125@psu.edu with any concerns, questions and exciting updates on your Arabians. I'd love to hear from all of you or see photos of the awesome Arabians in your life!

~ Laura Killian
AHYA President

AHYA Past President's