Sussex County’s horse industry has changed dramatically in the 25 years since Chicago native Sharyn Chapkowski moved to Lewes.
The lone farm offering full-care board was full, so she had to sell her riding horse. “I was working, so I was on the road all the time, and she needed good care,” she said.
Chapkowski was in the healthcare business, selling silicone endotracheal tubes for animals. The tubes were initially used in operations on humans, then Chapkowski developed them for use in animals. She traveled across the United States and England, making presentations at universities whose faculty featured the products in papers. Her work selling the product earned her the nickname “Tubes” at trade shows.
During operations, the patient’s trachea must be kept open to prevent aspiration, she explained, and that’s what the silicone tubes were used for. They were a big deal, she said, because silicone is completely inert and can be sterilized and used repeatedly.
Working in the veterinary-products industry, she traveled extensively, and also met her future husband, Chuck Betyeman. She moved to Delaware to join him.
Leaving her riding horse behind in Chicago, she also left behind a small foxhunting group and big horse shows.
“We hunted on 5,000 acres. It was a small hunt, there were maybe 15 of us, and we went every Sunday,” she said. The hunt wasn’t recognized, because the group was so small.
There was even less here, when she arrived.
Once in Lewes, she found she couldn’t leave horses behind and began working with Standardbred racehorses, purchasing two young animals from Hazell Smith of Lewes. The horses were trained by the Marsh family of Rehoboth.
“I would go to Rehoboth every morning and clean stalls and prep my horse to jog,” she said. Her horses raced in Delaware and Maryland.
When one of them, Nevertheless, suffered a racing injury, Chapkowski took her home to Cripple Creek Stables, her farm between Lewes and Milton. “One day I put a saddle on her,” she said, and harness racing “Never” became a riding horse.
Was it hard to retrain her? “No,” Chapkowski quickly replies, except that whenever the rest of the hunt horses were cantering, Never would trot, and keep up. She had paced as a racehorse – running with lateral pairs of legs instead of diagonal ones as in a trot. But her mother was a trotting horse and without the hobbles that encourage pacing, she trotted naturally.
The pair took up foxhunting with the Wicomico Hunt Club. They headed out every Wednesday and each weekend to run with the hounds. Chapkowski describes Never, whose picture sits on an end table in her living room, as one of the best hunt horses.
She said the Wicomico group, like the rest of the horse industry in the area, has grown significantly over the years. She guesses the hunt had 25 to 35 members when she first joined, and last year it listed 75 members.
With more people moving to the Eastern Shore, the need for equestrian facilities has grown, she said, and barns have sprung up in response. But, it isn’t just one discipline of riding Chapkowski sees. “There’s everything – pleasure riding, hunting, eventing, horse shows, dressage …,” she said. “It’s just amazing.”
And there are more small-time horse-keepers too, she said.
But with all the growth, opportunities for riders have dwindled.
“There were so many places to ride because there used to be so much more farmland,” she said, recalling long rides out through the woods and across farm fields outside Milton to collect a couple riding buddies for a day of riding out in the open.
More people in the area have meant more development and less open space. Now, Chapkowski said, riders have to trailer their horses to places such as Trap Pond, Redden State Forest or the beaches that allow riding. Increased traffic has also put a cramp on riders who want to head out. “Now you can’t really even bring your horse on the road,” she said, noting not only the volume but also the speed of drivers can make roadside riding treacherous.
She and her horses – her personal horses and boarders – have some quiet in Cripple Creek. There are seven horses now in the two barns original to the property. She added on to one barn, putting in more stalls and a hayloft. The other one, built of planks from the Rehoboth Beach boardwalk, was left as it was, weathered by salt, sand, surf and sun, and still showing the marks where it was once nailed down as a walkway on the beach.
