“Are you just going to sit there like a soup sandwich?” George Morris asks wryly. And so another clinic with the legendary horseman begins, an experience full of memorable quips, some of which are uncomfortable for riders to hear and make the audience squirm. At age 78, Morris still commands respect with ease, and even the auditors seem to sit up somewhat straighter in his presence.

Born in Uxbridge, Ontario in 1983, Jessica Phoenix is a veteran Olympic, World Equestrian and Pan American Games competitor. She was named 2011 Equestrian of the Year by Equine Canada following a historic individual gold-medal finish at the 2011 Pan American Games in Mexico. “Probably my most successful off-the-track Thoroughbred was Exponential,” she says. “I rode him at the World Equestrian Games in 2010 and the Summer Olympics in London in 2012. I’m trying to retire him because he’s 19 years old. But he’s such an incredible athlete that he prefers to be kept in some sort of work. He was seventh at Rolex at the Horse Fair in 2011 and he also went to Burghley (UK) and finished in the top 25.”

I’ve towed horses for many years with a two-horse bumper-pull trailer attached to the truck in the traditional way – with a ball mount hitch. Some riders towed larger gooseneck trailers hitched to a mechanism permanently welded into the middle of the truck box. I’ve always thought that type of hitch would be incredibly inconvenient whenever you wanted to use the truck for other purposes.