My Story
I grew up with horses, there has never been a time in my life without a special horse there to mark it. When I was little I would beg my Mom to let me ride her horse all the time and even if she didn’t want me to ride her that day I would go out to the barn and spend as much time with her as possible, brushing her and whatever else I could think of just to be around her . My parents finally got me my own horse when I was 10, a little old part Morgan pony, Bess. I spent so much time with her! In the summer I would ride her three times a day, she was the perfect first horse. With her I began my showing career of about one show a month. I started out riding and competing in western, showmanship and trail, not long after I also started learning and showing hunt seat.
After I outgrew Bess I moved on to my Mom’s beautiful buckskin Morgan mare, Mystery. We were a very successful pair, we competed in 4-H, Open shows, Morgan shows and one year of OHSET. We competed in the same disciplines as I did with my first horse, but we added jumping to the list. After a couple years of being in the blues and winning championships with Mystery I was ready for a new challenge. My dream had always been to get a yearling and train it myself and to be able to say that I was the only one who had ever worked with it.
When I was 14 my parents made my dream come true. They bought me the most adorable Morgan filly I’d ever seen, SHR Immortal Hope (Holly). She was truly a project! She knew nothing and was quite a crazy handful when I started her, but I fell in love with her immediately and I knew all the hours of hard work were going to be worth it. I started showing her when she was 3, we had a great start and it only continued to get better. My senior year is hard to forget- with my little 5 year old Holly who had only ever been ridden (or worked with at all) by me - at fair we won Grand Champion in English, Showmanship, Trail, Saddle Seat and reserve Grand Champ in Western; at State Fair we won Medallions in Showmanship and Hunt Seat; at the State OHSET meet we got 2nd in Hunt Seat (by only .25!) and got 3rd in Saddle Seat, top ten in Showmanship and Trail as well. We also won the Trail Championship at the Far West Regional Championship Morgan Show.
After that, I took a break from showing for a couple years. I was feeling bored with Holly, I felt like we had conquered every goal I had set for us and I was ready for another new challenge.
So, I started over again with another yearling, this time a Morgan gelding, Ensbrook Trivanti. Right after I bought Trivanti I starting learning about Dressage with Holly. Now I felt like I probably shouldn’t have gotten myself another horse because there was so much to learn about Dressage! Holly and I began competing in Dressage shows while I was putting ground work on Trivanti and waiting for him to be old enough to start riding. Holly and I won Champion or reserve Champion at every Dressage show we ever competed in. We showed in Training Level through First Level, we were schooling Second Level and were going to compete in it the next show season until she injured herself during turnout one day. Unfortunately she never came back completely from that injury- likely because she had a degenerative condition which I learned some years later- so her showing career was cut tragically short.
Heartbreaking as that was, the silver lining was by that time I was able to ride Trivanti and I could start focusing on him. His show career started off incredibly successfully. As a 4 year old he won the Junior Horse Hunter Pleasure Championship at the Oregon Morgan Classic, and then the next year, as a 5 year old we won High Point Dressage and the Open Hunter Pleasure Championship at that show. Fast forward years and many successful shows later to 2023 and we won a very ;arge Open FEI Prix St. Georges class at the prestigious Dressage at DevonWood show!
Dressage is unique because there are so many levels and so much to learn in each one. I love that I am continually learning and growing in my knowledge and skills with horses. Working with horses and their people is such a rewarding experience, I am so blessed that I get to be a part of others’ learning with their horses.