BY DREW HINSHAW

Staff Reporter

LAPLACE – It was 6 a.m. on the morning of her fifth birthday when Gramercy’s Taylor Meyer woke her nanny up with a momentous phone call: She was finally old enough to register in the horse haltering league.

Since Meyer was three, Nita Thomas – part-babysitter, part-coach – had been training the girl to handle horses as proscribed by the centuries-old tradition of haltering. Walk the horse, show him or her off, then stop the horse with both pairs of legs squared with each other, ears perked up, head gently lifted. It’s almost like a beauty pageant for mares, Thomas says.

Now, at the age of 10, with seven years of horse haltering experience to draw from, Meyer is headed to the American Quarter Horse Youth Association World Championship in Fort Worth, Texas. From August 4-11, she, her gelding Scooter, and her mare Tinkabell will compete in two divisions against hundreds of horse halterers drawn from around America and beyond. Familiar faces at the far-away championship will include Vacherie resident Shelby Guidry, who halters horses in the same league as Meyer.

The Meyers say rearing horses – let alone training them to compete – has been hard-work, but a tremendously valuable experience. If a pet can teach a child responsibility, Thomas says, then a horse is the Ivy League of responsible pet ownership.

For three or four hours every afternoon, Meyer and her younger sister Mikayla Meyer attend to their four horses and one pony: They clean the stalls, feed the horses, give them water, exercise them, brush, train and talk to them.

In this effort, the girl’s mentor has been Chip, a sturdy steed, elderly and seemingly quite wise: A professor, perhaps in a previous life. The girls and their nanny joke that Chip trained them, and they might be right. For the first couple or three years of their training, the girls spent their afternoons exercising Chip, learning from the patient beast what makes a horse happy.

Chip’s tutelage continues to help the girls succeed in haltering competitions, which Thomas says is all about having a deep relationship with your horse. To win, candidates need to exhibit command over their animal, something that can take years of training to develop.

&#8220You have to keep practicing,” says Mikayla Meyer. True to her word, she’ll be missing the first few days of school to show off her horse haltering skills in a contest in Jackson, Miss.

&#8220It’s just so much fun,” says Taylor Meyer. &#8220You get to watch as your friend goes, and you cheer for them, and then when it’s your turn, they cheer for you.”