When you ask someone who knew Joan Osgood what she was like, it doesn’t take long to realize that she was a jack of all trades.

Osgood’s list of passions from across her lifetime weave an intricate web, from figure skating, skiing, and sewing to nursing, horses, travel and more.

But of all her interests, horses have probably been around the longest.

“It was ultimately because of Mom that I have now established this lifelong love of the Morgan horse,” Osgood’s daughter Heidi Metcalf, 56, of Piermont, said. “She’s instilled in me the love for the breed and respect for the breed.”

Osgood, born in 1934, grew up in Connecticut and discovered the equine world as a young girl.

She developed her passion for horses at a camp in upstate New York which she attended at seven years old and owned her own horse throughout her childhood.

After moving to a farm in Piermont with her family in 1951, she met her future husband, Dean Osgood, in high school at Bradford Academy, whom she married five years later.

Osgood then became interested in the Morgan horse — a breed native to Vermont — when she studied Occupational Therapy at the University of New Hampshire.

Osgood and her husband began a family in Bennington, Vt., and moved back to her parents’ Piermont farm in 1971. For a time, Osgood occupied her time as a stay-at-home mother for her five children, but she never let her passion for horses die. Instead, she shared it with her children and other budding equestrians.

“She taught me to ride,” Osgood’s other daughter, Wendy Soucy, said. “She was always giving up her time to take me to pony club meetings, to horse shows.”

Osgood trained, boarded and bred horses, and taught riding lessons at their family farm, called Mel-O-D farm, for many years. She created and led the Rocking Horse 4H Club for about 40 years and started a horse summer camp for youth, which Soucy helped manage as head instructor beginning in 1978.

“I was so in love with horses and training, I told (Osgood) I didn’t want to go to college,” Soucy, 62, said.

But Osgood’s dedication to her 4H club and horse camp inspired Soucy to pursue animal science and occupational education studies in college, and became a memorable and valued experience for her students over the years.

Rachel Hobbs, 36, of Socorro, N.M., took riding lessons with Osgood at Mel-O-D farm and participated in Rocking Horse 4H events from age eight to 18.

Hobbs grew up in Piermont as Osgood’s neighbor, and “we could see the horses and her farm from our house,” she said.

Hobbs became interested in horses from seeing them over at Osgood’s farm, and eventually arranged to take lessons and join 4H.

“I spent so much time over at her barn,” she said, noting that she helped with regular barn chores while she was boarding her own horse there for some time.

Nearly 30 years later, Hobbs still appreciates and practices the lessons she learned from Osgood.

“She taught me how to ride a horse, but that’s really the least that she taught me,” Hobbs said. “She was a hugely formative presence in my life.”

Though the 4H club was focused on riding, showing and horse culture education, it also encouraged personal growth and taught public speaking skills.

At 4H events, Osgood taught her young club members learn from their mistakes so they could improve over time.

“Sometimes I did well and sometimes I didn’t; sometimes I fell of my horse or sometimes I was participating in a public speaking event and I didn’t do so well,” Hobbs explained. “No matter how we did, Joan was just this constant encouraging presence.”

As a riding instructor, Osgood wanted her students to feel capable and connected to their horse.

When it came to tacking up and caring for a horse, Osgood “wanted us to do as much of everything as we could (by ourselves),” Hobbs said.

Rhythm and focused breathing are key elements to good horseback riding, and Osgood, who was also an established vocalist as a member of the North Country Chorus, the Pine Hill Singers, and the Hanover Christmas Revels, brought some of her knowledge of music into the ring on the farm.

“She would have us listen to the rhythm of the horse’s hooves and body movement while we were riding so that we could learn to be connected to the horse,” Hobbs remembered.

To help improve her students’ posture on horseback, “(Osgood) would always say: “Imagine that there’s a string coming out of the top of your head going up into the sky and it’s pulling your head up straight and it’s opening your chest,” Hobbs added.

In 1978, Osgood’s love for the Morgan horse sent her to England, where she traveled to for over 10 years to establish the breed abroad with her sister, Jeanne Mellin Herrick, and UK artists and farm owners Angela Connor Bulmer and John Bulmer.

Though the breed was founded in Vermont and already institutionalized in the United States, its international reach had yet to be instated, and Osgood played a fundamental role in integrating the breed with horse culture in England at the time.

While there, she ran clinics, taught youth and spread education on the Morgan horse.

When she wasn’t with horses or teaching lessons, Osgood pursued a number of hobbies, usually alongside her husband, like figure skating.

“She and Dad were beautiful to watch on the ice,” Soucy said. “They both would just get together and literally float around on the ice dancing on skates.”

The pair also skied together, mountain biked on area rail trails, traveled all over the world to perform with the North Country Chorus, and Osgood was a “Putt-putt Queen,” always stopping to use a miniature golf course when they were on the road and saw one, Metcalf said.

“She was loving and supportive,” her son, Mark Osgood, 57, of Ault, Colo., said.

Mark, who was less interested in horses than his mother and siblings, still received the same encouragement from Osgood that she conveyed to fellow equestrians.

“I’d just sit down and talk to her,” Mark said. “She (had) really good listening skills, she really just showed her love.”

Osgood’s personality was overwhelmingly positive, and a little witty, too.

“I would mess with her, my brother-in-law would mess with her, she would mess back,” Mark said. “She was witty and smart with her responses.”

Osgood also worked in vascular health at Dartmouth-Hitchcock for a few of years, and she held a nurse’s assistant position for many years at Alice Peck Day and then Little Rivers in Bradford.

In August, at 87, Osgood judged a horse show at Camp Farwell in Newbury, one of her final horse events before she passed away in early March.

“I drove over with her ... dropped her off,” Soucy said. “They actually wrote to me later and said ‘your mom ended up staying the whole day, everybody loved her, she did great.’ ”

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