BELFAST – At 18 months old, Melanie Grant still teeters on unsure toddler’s legs. She still needs a midmorning nap. She still sucks on a pacifier and communicates in a kind of baby gurgle.

One place Melanie is at home, however, is on a horse. She’s been riding the big animals – so outsized for her that she looks like a little doll when she’s in a saddle – since she was 8 months old.

Melanie may seem young, but a love of horses permeates her life. Her grandmother and mother both ride. Her brother Clint started showing horses when he was about Melanie’s age. Her mother Callie and father Fred board and own several horses at their home in Prospect.

And the Waldo County Riding and Driving Club is the perfect place for Melanie, Clint, and Callie to show their skills.

The low-key, 50-member club, which owns four acres of land on Route 52 in Belfast, has four shows on this summer’s schedule. The second show, held on a recent Sunday, was plagued by rain and wind that seemed to dampen some of the horse’s spirits and drove away spectators.

But riders of all ages and abilities like Callie, Melanie and Clint Grant; Megyn Winchester, the 18-year-old daughter of club president Dick Winchester; 11-year-old Rachael Courant, and dozens of others stuck around. They coaxed their mounts around the wet, muddy show ring for ribbons, show experience, and camaraderie.

“You congratulate other people and it doesn’t matter what you place,” said Megyn Winchester. “It’s nice to get first and second, but if you don’t place first and second, it doesn’t matter. That’s what I like.”

Something for everyone

With 39 classes in the WCRDC’s shows (the next show, the Ellsworth Lions Club’s All-Trophy show on Aug. 20 will have 30 classes), there’s something for every skill level and interest.

The classes are divided into several categories. There are English and Western styles of riding. Classes are also divided by age and the method of judging. In the pleasure classes, the judge looks at the horse’s performance and the rider’s ability to show the horse at its best. In the equitation classes, the rider is judged.

Horses are shown at a variety of gaits, including walk, trot, canter, and lope. Some classes call for the rider to back up the horse. There is a pairs class, trail classes in which riders guide horses through a series of obstacles, some jumping classes, and a class in which riders guide horses along with some parade music.

There’s also an open costume class, held at a walk gait, in which appearance, originality, and creativity of both the rider and the horse are judged.

Jeff Smith, an Owls Head resident who judged the most recent show, started out showing horses and got into judging when his brother, already a judge, couldn’t handle all the judging requests himself. Smith has been judging for 20 years.

As a child Smith and his family showed at WCRDC, among other shows in Union and Warren, but has let all of that slip over the years.

“In our heyday we were all over the state,” he said. “My horse died a number of years ago. The last horse we had at my folks’ farm just passed away about 10 days ago. It’s an end of an era, the first time in like 35 years we haven’t had any horses at the farm. It’s a little different.”

Fun for the whole family

For Callie Grant, show days are spent balancing two children who both need help getting ready for their classes, and then preparing for her own classes.

Melanie competes in the lead line class, in which the rider sits on the horse but another person walks in front of the horse, leading it around the show ring. Callie walks alongside the horse, carefully watching Melanie. Melanie’s grandmother Barbara Perkins leads the horse, a 22-year-old paint named El Paso Dawn that the Grant family houses but does not own.

Sitting on Dawn in the wooded area behind the ring, Melanie played with her hat and fidgeted while she waited for her turn to walk around the ring.

“I wouldn’t make her do it,” Callie Grant said. “I kind of worried about that, that people would think I was pushing her into it. But as long as she’s not sitting on the horse screaming, I figure she’s liking it. … I take it show to show. I know she’s tired and if she had been tired and fussing on the horse, I wouldn’t have done it. It’s not worth the ribbon to have an ugly kid. Definitely not.”

As the only competitor in the class, Melanie needed only to walk once around the ring to earn her blue ribbon. After her turn around the dirt oval, Callie took Melanie off the horse and put her into a stroller to focus on helping Clint get ready for his classes. And she wanted to ride in some of the adult Western classes later that afternoon.

Once Melanie is sitting in the stroller, she closes her eyes and sucks on a pacifier. She’s still holding the blue ribbon.

Outfitting the baby for horse shows took some creativity on Callie Grant’s part.

Melanie’s tiny brown cowboy boots came from Wal-Mart. Her plaid vest, ruffled white shirt, and black pants are part of a little boy’s suit purchased at Goodwill. Her black cowboy hat came from a tack shop.

“I was worried about that, because even in the mail-order magazines there’s nothing that little,” Callie Grant said. “They start at size four to six. But the suit is the kind of thing the adults wear, so it works.”

Melanie’s saddle is a hand-me-down. Callie’s sister used it when she was riding as a child, and Clint used the saddle when he was Melanie’s age. Melanie’s legs don’t quite reach the stirrups yet.

Clint has a busier day than his young sister. A 9-year-old who will be in fourth grade at the Jewett School in Bucksport, Clint has been showing horses since he was 15 months old and competes in several classes.

Riding a quarterhorse named Hat’s Duke, Clint took second place in that event and also won the youth open walk-trot pleasure class and was second in the youth open walk-trot equitation.

Dressed as a scarecrow with a pumpkin head, Clint also won the open costume class.

“I keep waiting for him to like motorcycles or something else, but I think it helps that my husband is involved and that we do it as a family,” Callie Grant said. “And he still likes it.”

His favorite is the open trail walk-trot, in which riders guide the horses backward through a small maze of poles on the ground, over some wood planks, and ride the horse to a mailbox posted along the ring’s rail.

“They always have fun stuff,” Clint said. “They have the mailbox, where you have to take the mail about of the mailbox and put it back in. You have to back through some posts. Usually you have to do a lot of walking and trotting.”

Later in the afternoon, it’s the kids’ turn to watch Mom show, which she started doing as a teen-ager at the Jackson Horse and Pony Club and later at WCRDC. Callie rode Dawn in several of the Western classes, taking first with another rider in the pairs class and then placing second in the open trail class.

Continuing tradition

The Grants certainly aren’t the only family that has strong ties to the club and to horses in general. In fact, many of the young girls who compete at WCRDC – and most of the competitors are girls and women – had a mother who herself participated in horse shows. Some even ride horses their mothers rode as children.

Rachael Courant, an 11-year-old who lives in nearby Northport, rode Mr. Twilight in the morning English classes. Courant’s mother, Sandra Rogers, has had the horse, nicknamed Fritz, since she was 12. Rogers bottle-fed and trained the horse herself.

“[Fritz’s mother] would not accept him,” Courant said. “She was kicking him around the stall, so the owner called my mother and asked if she would like a foal. And my grandmother said yes, so Fritz became my mother’s horse.”

Courant has been riding Fritz, now a young-looking 27, since she was 5. She plans to ride another of the family’s three horses, an Arabian mare, in a show this September, but still feels the bond between her mother and Fritz.

“[The Arabian is] a really fast and a quick horse,” Courant said. “Fritz, he’s strong willed and he’s willing to do anything. He’s a real good horse, he’s patient, and also he doesn’t act his age. He’s pretty darn powerful. He acts up in front of my mom now, but she’s had him since he was half-an-hour old.”

Horses lead toward career

Unlike many of the young riders involved with the Waldo County club, Megyn Winchester had little background in horses when she started riding in the shows in 1994. When she asked for a horse of her own, Megyn’s father Dick said he and his wife Avis were against it.

But they relented and bought a horse.

Now, Dick Winchester is the president of the WCRDC, Avis is on the board of directors, and Megyn is a Searsport High graduate, starting veterinary medical technology courses at Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pa., this fall.

“They said we were not going to have a horse,” Megyn recalled. “But my dad cleared off some land and I took over his boat shed and turned it into a barn. My mom had cows and chickens when she was young but no horses. But I got her into it a little bit.”

Megyn, who won seven firsts Sunday, is taking her horse Oley with her. She plans to try out for Wilson’s equestrian team.

Megyn said she’s always loved animals and is taking care of 11 horses, plus the Winchester family’s two horses, at a farm in Lincolnville this summer.

“It’s been good for her,” Dick Winchester said. “It’s kept her focused and I just do it for the kids. She’s stayed focused on it and that’s good. I’ve gone with her all the way.”