Jen's Life on Horseback
,I'm Lynda Sappington, Marketing Director/Webmistress and former Newsletter Editor for Dancing Horse Farm. Oh, and I'm Jen Truett's mom too. I'm going to tell you the story of Jen growing up on horseback. There is also a series of slide shows that will tell the story even better than I can, but I thought it might be helpful to give you a frame of reference.
I rode when I was pregnant with Jen until I couldn't get my foot anywhere near the stirrup anymore even with the mounting block or the tailgate of my station wagon. I rode forward seat (hunter/jumper) in those days. Her birth announcements showed a baby riding a stick horse, of course! When she could sit up unsupported (so she didn't wobble), her daddy (John) would hand Jen to me after I'd worked our Quarter Horse, Shannon, (or I'd give her to John to hold on the horse, depending on which of us was riding that day) and she'd get a ride around the arena. She loved it! And years later, she rode that same wonderful Steubben Siegfried saddle on her Quarter Horse, Chica Love Notes, to many championships!
Jen was in her first show at 9 months old - seriously! John and I had matching South Carolina t-shirts and I sewed an applique and a strip of ribbon on a white shirt of Jen's so she'd match us. We got 3rd place in the Costume Class! Then, as now, she rode with a big grin on her face. :D
We had to sell Shannon that year and didn't own a horse again until we moved to our first farm, a five acre place near New Lebanon, Ohio. Jen was 5 when we went shopping for horses. We were looking at a Quarter Horse mare who was trained to jump, which John has always loved (since he met me, anyway - he never rode before that). They also had a black grade QH mare there named Darby for sale who I thought was pretty and had a sweet disposition. While I was talking to the owner and watching the horse go that John was interested in, I realized my little girl was gone! I looked around and there coming in the arena door was Jen with a big grin on her face, riding in a western saddle by herself on a 15.2 hand horse. She'd been shown how to steer and stop and then turned loose in the indoor. I told John if he wanted the jumper, it was okay with me, but that black horse was OURS!
We built a paddock so tiny that Darby couldn't canter easily (supple she was not!) so Jen would be safer as she first learned to ride. I also made a point of teaching her to ride bareback, to help her get a feel for the horse's movement. Darby was one of the smoothest-gaited Quarter Horses I've ever ridden, so Jen wasn't in danger of being bounced off in normal riding. Her little feet barely reached past the saddle skirt at first, but she had (and still does) a great sense of balance and was moving with the horse well in no time at all either in a saddle or bareback. I was later very glad I taught her to ride bareback when she was so young.
We built a larger arena (about the size of a small dressage arena) so she could canter on Darby when Jen was probably 7. She became such a good little rider at home that when she was 8, I contacted the most highly-recommended 4-H club in our area, the Happy Hoofers of Preble County, Ohio, to ask if she could participate so she'd learn to ride in company. They were kind enough to let her ride in their meetings, and she became good at it in no time. She was too young for membership, so she wasn't allowed to participate in the county fair, but she attended every meeting and showed Darby in the open show at the county fair. When she was 9, she was a real 4-H member and showed in the Preble County Fair as well as a few open shows. On "play day" during the county fair that first year, she was still in the arena when the announcer said everyone would play Simon Says, and before long, she was cantering without stirrups with a total of sixty (I said "60"!) other horses in the ring!! I was SO glad I'd trained her to ride bareback so she had a good seat! She managed to stay in the game for quite a while, and she never looked unsteady in her saddle no matter what they asked her to do.
Jen won several awards during her 4-H years for getting the most sponsors for the Happy Hoofers annual show (which was always on Mother's Day - I spent every Mother's Day for years at horse shows!), an early sign of her marketing skills that she uses today to benefit DHF.
Jen started showing regularly when she was ten, and had moved on from Darby (who really wasn't that happy showing) to my little foundation Quarter Horse mare, Major's Marty ("Fancy"). As you'll see in the slide show, Fancy wasn't fabulously beautiful and she was mutton withered, but she was a GREAT kids' horse (and a granddaughter of one of the QH foundation sires, King). Jen showed her until Jen was 12, competing in Pony Western Pleasure, Pony Horsemanship, showmanship, barrels, jumping, hunt seat pleasure and equitation, pony halter - pretty much anything you could show a pony in (Fancy was 13.3, if I recall correctly.)
Jen loved to show and wanted to "haul for points" when she was ten. I told her if I was going to haul her around every weekend, she'd have to earn it, so I put her in charge of the barn. We had seven horses at the time. I did the morning feeding and Jen cleaned stalls and did the evening feeding. She also rearranged the feed room to the point where I couldn't find anything! She's always been VERY organized, just as she is today. I'm an artist, so "organized" and I aren't closely related. She did an outstanding job of caring for the horses, and that was her job for the rest of the time she lived at home. She also exercised every rideable horse we had (some were too young to ride yet), helped me train the young ones (from helping with the ground driving to being the first one to lie across the horse's back - our babies were so broke by the time they were ready to ride, they didn't buck). In addition to these chores, we later learned, she also tamed her friends' badly behaved ponies. We'd gone to so much trouble to find the safest horses possible for her, and there she goes, getting the bucks out the neighbors' rank ponies!
Fancy could be stubborn, and her form of resistance was to back all the way across the field until you convinced her that she wasn't in charge. Once Jen was truly secure in the saddle at all gaits, I let her ride in the 4 acre field instead of the arena. I also didn't hover over her when she rode, but kept an eye on her from the house (except on the days I gave her lessons). She told me a few years ago the best thing I ever did was to leave her alone to figure out how to get Fancy to listen to her. She eventually started winning lots of classes with Fancy. One judge tried to buy Fancy right out from under her at one show, LOL!
Jen needed a new horse when she was 13 because she was simply too good a rider for Fancy's abilities, so we started looking at horses. In the meantime, the deadline to sign up with your "project horse" was nearing and Jen had no horse to list, so she signed up to ride her brother's Quarter pony, Leo ("Heavy Lantana," a grandson of Poco Bueno and Leo). She won a lot that year with Leo. He was a great kid's horse, tolerant of boys hanging off his neck or jumping over his rump like Roy Rogers or standing up under his belly (these are some of the things his previous boy showed us when we went to look at him). Jen got him so well in hand, one time I saw her sitting on him and piaffing quite nicely before any of us knew what a piaffe was! He was a talented horse and a lovely ride.
Marty Jo Hays, a judge and trainer who'd trained a filly for us, found a really lovely mare for Jen. Mindy Mill had been to the AQHA World Show in halter and was a beautiful English-type Quarter Horse mare. Marty had guaranteed her sound, and when Mindy turned out to have a soundness issue, Marty immediately found another horse for us. Chica Love Notes was pretty, talented, smart, had comfortable gaits and a quiet mind. She was so laid back, we used to say she had the personality of a marshmallow, but she really was a nice mare.
We had a cart and harness from when I'd tried to teach Fancy to drive (the neighbor's dog scared her while she had her blinders on, and that was the end of her non-existent driving career). We also had a pony sulky that we'd had horse size shafts made for so the horse could learn to pull that light cart and we wouldn't be out an expensive show cart if the horse went bonkers while hitched. Jen asked if she could use the cart and harness, and I told her to use the breaking cart (not the expensive show cart) and NOT to get in the seat, but to drive from the ground until I could check on how Chica was doing. Needless to say, TWO DAYS (that's *2* days!!) after she started driving Chica from the ground with no cart at all, I looked out the kitchen window and there they were at the very back of our five acres, with Jen CLIMBING INTO THE SHOW CART (the expensive one - not the breaking cart!)!! I just held my breath - two days of driving training and she's going to ride in the cart??? Dear Lord, please keep my child and that horse safe!! Chica worked beautifully, and the two of them were champions over adults for three years in the Central States driving classes!
Jen and Chica became a force to be reckoned with, to the point that some kids groaned to see she'd entered the same classes. A judge at one show told Marty Hays that he knew she was going to win every class that day the first time he saw her enter the ring - and she did!
Jen taught Chica reining just from reading the 4-H rule book. She kept the book shoved in the gullet of her western saddle as she ran the patterns out in our field. Their biggest win was at the All-American Youth Show in Columbus, where there were up to 200 entries per class. One of her classes went until 2 AM - the horses fell asleep while waiting to do their pattern! She also won classes at the Ohio State Fair with Chica. Ask to see her championship belt buckles sometime.
I knew Jen would be an excellent driver once she started driving cars because one day at the Preble County Fairgrounds when she was around 13, she had to change from a cart and harness to regular tack in only about one class (roughly 5 minutes - it was a small class). Her solution to the problem was to set off for the barn driving Chica at a spanking (brisk) trot - and drove that cart between two upright logs put between the barns to keep trucks out. There were only about two inches of clearance between each wheel hub and the post! She could've wrecked spectacularly, but as she very calmly said to her trying-to-get-over-being-scared-to-death, and should-I-kill-her-now-or-let-her-finish-the-show mother (me), she "had plenty of room!" *sigh* Meanwhile, I was acquiring worry lines from her total confidence in her skills and my fears for her safety!! Needless to say, her confidence was well-founded and my fears, although well-founded for most children, were just a waste of time and energy when it came to Jen. Eventually I learned to just take a deep breath and trust her judgement. She impressed me so much with her driving ability that I started teaching her to drive our truck at 14 on country roads and in the field, and danged if she wasn't a natural at that too (backing a horse trailer has never been an issue for her either). Wish I had her confidence and coordination!
By the time she was 15, Jen was too long-legged for Chica and had become bored with hunt seat, western, showmanship, reining and the equitation classes. She'd jumped some on Fancy and on Chica (poor Chica - deluxe western pleasure horse that she was, she didn't jump well but still qualified for and showed at the Ohio State Fair in jumping where the fences were 3'3"). Jen wanted to do more serious jumping, so her next horse was a 17 hand Thoroughbred named "Stretch" ("Imagine a Legacy"). He was so big, we didn't think she'd outgrow him for a while! Stretch was so long-bodied (everything about him was long and lanky!), he didn't realize his rear end belonged to him. I saw him hit the side of a 10 foot wide-open barn door with a hip, then look surprised that he'd done so! It took dressage to get him to understand where all of his parts were.
This was the year Jen started riding with a coach other than me. I didn't know about the new techniques in jumping (the ones that use dressage to collect the horse before fences), so she started riding with Pam Heinz while still riding Chica. She and Pam got along so well that Jen moved into the summer kitchen at her farm to be a working student during her first year of college. Jen stayed and helped Pam run her Heaven's Gate Farm throughout her college years. They're still good friends to this day.
Jen and Stretch did all the Pony Club stuff, but Stretch was a chicken in a horse suit when it came to cross country! He totally depended on Jen's courage to get them over fences. She'd been told at some point to "tell the horse to jump" so she did - she'd yell "STRETCH-JUMP-NOW!" in time with the last three strides to the takeoff point of a fence and Stretch jumped. I always felt that if she yelled "JUMP" at anyone with that much sheer force of personality, they'd jump too!
All of the other kids' horses on Jen's Pony Club team would do cross-country without fuss, but Stretch just couldn't bear to do all those scary fences. He was super at stadium jumping, though, and became the Ohio State Fair Champion over Fences, winning another western trophy buckle for Jen. He was also very good at dressage. His scores were usually the best ones at the Pony Club meets.
During the summer when she was 17, Jen moved to Muncie, Indiana, to be a working student for Jim and Dezanie Moore, two eventers who were teaching at Hartmeyer's (yup, the same Hartmeyer's that has Hartmeyer's Saddlery and those catalogs with the gorgeous models). Jen taught group lessons there herself as well as doing the hard work all working students are faced with.
One day after she returned from being a working student at Hartmeyer's, Jen, Stretch and I went to a friend's farm so she could practice their cross-country fences. One of those jumps was a picnic table-looking thing made of railroad ties. I was taking pics through a 300mm lens and froze when I saw Stretch just STOP in the middle of that picnic table jump and put his foot in the gap between the railroad ties on the top! He could've broken his leg. He SHOULD'VE broken his leg - it was a miracle he didn't (he wasn't injured at all!) Jen should've been flying through the air, both of them should've been hurt from him doing such a thing, but Jen managed to stay on top of him, and then Stretch very carefully stood on the top of that picnic table with his free foot, removed his other foot from between those railroad ties and backed off the jump. He never jumped a cross country fence again, but he still seemed to enjoy stadium jumps. She decided since he was a pretty good dressage horse, there was no point forcing him to jump. And this turning point is when Stretch's dressage career and Jen's love for dressage was born.
Life went on - Jen went to Sinclair College in Dayton full-time her senior year of high school through a special program called the Post-Secondary Enrollment Option (PSEO). She was the first ever in that program to do a full course load while still a high school student (usually the kids only took one or two classes) and she did it with honors! She only needed English to graduate from high school, so after I told the principal it made sense to count college English for her high school credit (which they'd never considered), they used that class as her last high school credit. Sinclair administrators wanted to honor Jen as the first success story for the PSEO program and gave her an honorary Associate's Degree in Psychology and added her name to a wall of acclamation in the administrator's office. Jen continued her education at Wright State University in Fairborn OH where she got her Bachelor of Science degree in psychology (research, not clinical). She took such heavy course loads that between that and starting college a year early, she graduated (Summa Cum Laude) two years before her high school class in a total of three years and one quarter. And all this while training Stretch and some clients' horses, her first jobs as a professional trainer.
After she finished college, she and Stretch went to Amenia, New York to be a working student for dressage trainer Trish Helmer. Toward the end of the summer, Jen seriously hurt her back and came home in a wheelchair. The timing was good because there was a letter waiting for her at home inviting her to be a Teaching Assistant at Wright State - in other words, she got a free ride (except for the cost of her books) to get a Master's degree! She got back to riding as soon as she could after the injury. And she graduated with a Master of Science in Criminal Justice.
The summer she was 21, Jen knew it was her last and only chance to do the North American Young Riders Championships, so she found an FEI level horse to lease (Dolorich, a Hanoverian gelding that belonged to Francesca Nicholetti) and entered only the shows required to qualify due to an illness in the family that prevented her from showing more. She qualified, shocking the other girls competing who couldn't figure out who she was and how she and that fat gelding (he'd been standing in a field when Jenny leased him, so he wasn't in "show shape") got good enough scores to qualify to be the alternate for the Region 2 Young Riders' team. The USEF (US Equestrian Federation) decided to make the alternates from all over the country an "individual" team, which included giving each of them a USET patch and the right to wear it, showing they'd been on a USET team at some point in their lives. The Young Riders Championships that year were at Temple Farm, near Chicago. We have some amazing memories of that time, including when, during a dinner hosted by Temple Farm, the Canadian team jumped up on the table to sing and dance to "YMCA" and the table collapsed under them! They all landed in a laughing heap - no injuries, thank goodness!
Jen trained some horses for various people while still in college and continued to show Stretch. She got him to Fourth Level and then realized he didn't have the talent to go any further. To get the kind of horse she wanted and still be able to afford it, she needed to buy a weanling. She studied videos over and over and then found Nachtwind ("Breezy") in North Dakota. She purchased her based on the video and had her delivered to our farm. Miss Breezy Baby stepped off that trailer as if she owned the place. My yearling Quarter Horse filly (out of Chica - the breeding was partial payment on a bronze sculpture I did of her sire) always cantered everywhere, while Breezy trotted or passaged. She finally learned to canter from my filly, Bitsy. Jen taught both of them to ground drive and drove them around every tree in the pasture, every post in the run-in shed and got them both so broke that when Bitsy went to a trainer to actually be ridden and get her first training under saddle, the trainer was disappointed she never once offered to buck! She rode off like a dream, which disappointed that western trainer a bit! LOL. Breezy went on to pull a carriage before she was backed. When she was three, she pulled that carriage in the Pfitzer Fantasia at Equine Affaire in Columbus, Ohio. The crowd loved her, especially when she bent her head to watch the spotlight that was following her in the Colosseum! It seemed she was following the light.
Breezy, a half Holsteiner/half Andalusian, was inspected, approved and branded by the American Warmblood Society (AWS) on Breezy's first birthday. In Slide Show 4: Amateur Dressage and Driving, you'll see a picture of her from that time with Breezy lying down in the stall and Jenny standing beside her. The AWS people were so nice to all of us - and they provided a carrot cake for everyone to celebrate Breezy's first birthday! That was fun. In the years after that, Jen and Lenny would invite friends to come to wherever they were boarding Breezy to help celebrate Breezy's birthday. Miss Breezy Baby would give people rides in her carriage and graciously accepted the carrots and other goodies people brought. It was always a lot of fun to celebrate Breezy's birthday.
A job change caused Jen and Lenny (who were married by this time) to move to Maryland, so they found a gorgeous 12 acre farm for Breezy and Oreo (Lenny's horse). Jen acquired Lydia and Lisalotte, two Oldenburg mares by Leonidas, from Hilda Gurney while they were in Maryland. Lydia had a shoulder issue nobody had been able to fix. Enter body worker Linda Booren and veterinary chiropractor Dr. Mark Haverkos. Lydia soon became not only sound, but the East Coast Champion in First Level Musical Freestyle among other things. These were Jen's amateur years - she didn't train for anyone else, although she did have a few boarders. She rode with Linda Zang (USEF "O" level judge) while in Maryland.
Another job change brought Jen and Lenny home to Ohio, where they founded the Dancing Horse Farm you now know. Once they got back here, Jen discovered Mary Wanless and biomechanics and her life changed tremendously. Breezy was sold to Lori Aman a couple of years after they got back to Ohio. Lisalotte was sold to someone who wanted her as a broodmare. Oreo was a school horse for a while, then was sold to someone who now rides to hounds on him. Lydia crossed the Rainbow Bridge in 2009 after a valiant fight with laminitis brought on by Potomac Horse Fever . Grace, a daughter of Peron who they'd bought in Maryland as a broodmare, was sold when Jen and Lenny decided they didn't have room for foals at such a busy training farm. Jen got Sunset on a trip to Denmark with Heather Blitz after Lydia's death, and Lafayette came with a group of horses from Maryland Jen was going to train and sell for their owner. Lafayette was sent to Jen to see if she could do anything with his soundness problems. She decided to give him a chance, and in 2011 (two years later), thanks to biomechanics, chiropractic by Dr. Mark Haverkos and regular body work, he was not only 100% sound, but the Region 2 First Level Musical Freestyle Champion with a record-breaking score of 78+%! Lafayette's full story is here.
Jen went on a horse-shopping trip to Holland in October 2016 and in January her purchase, a fabulous Westphalian gelding she named Absolute Dream, arrived at her winter farm in Florida. Dream was 2 when Jen bought him. He is beautiful, smart, an incredible mover and a total mush-pot, so sweet and affectionate! In his very first show in May 2018, he scored 72% in a Materiale class, high enough to earn him a place in the 4 year old championships! He and Taffy love each other and are good companions when Jen takes them places together.
For me, as a mother, to watch my little girl go from a tiny but long-legged 5 year old riding a 15.2 hand Quarter Horse to an accomplished woman riding in CDIs in Florida against Olympians from various countries is just astounding. And that she's done all that on a horse she bought for a dollar. *Mind Blown* You will see me get "misty" at shows every so often - it's all so unbelievable, but it's a true story. And now Jen has Dream, a dream-horse come to life to bring along from him just barely being backed . . . wow. Jen Dared to Dream, and those dreams have and are coming true!
And that's where we are for now. On to the slide show!
I rode when I was pregnant with Jen until I couldn't get my foot anywhere near the stirrup anymore even with the mounting block or the tailgate of my station wagon. I rode forward seat (hunter/jumper) in those days. Her birth announcements showed a baby riding a stick horse, of course! When she could sit up unsupported (so she didn't wobble), her daddy (John) would hand Jen to me after I'd worked our Quarter Horse, Shannon, (or I'd give her to John to hold on the horse, depending on which of us was riding that day) and she'd get a ride around the arena. She loved it! And years later, she rode that same wonderful Steubben Siegfried saddle on her Quarter Horse, Chica Love Notes, to many championships!
Jen was in her first show at 9 months old - seriously! John and I had matching South Carolina t-shirts and I sewed an applique and a strip of ribbon on a white shirt of Jen's so she'd match us. We got 3rd place in the Costume Class! Then, as now, she rode with a big grin on her face. :D
We had to sell Shannon that year and didn't own a horse again until we moved to our first farm, a five acre place near New Lebanon, Ohio. Jen was 5 when we went shopping for horses. We were looking at a Quarter Horse mare who was trained to jump, which John has always loved (since he met me, anyway - he never rode before that). They also had a black grade QH mare there named Darby for sale who I thought was pretty and had a sweet disposition. While I was talking to the owner and watching the horse go that John was interested in, I realized my little girl was gone! I looked around and there coming in the arena door was Jen with a big grin on her face, riding in a western saddle by herself on a 15.2 hand horse. She'd been shown how to steer and stop and then turned loose in the indoor. I told John if he wanted the jumper, it was okay with me, but that black horse was OURS!
We built a paddock so tiny that Darby couldn't canter easily (supple she was not!) so Jen would be safer as she first learned to ride. I also made a point of teaching her to ride bareback, to help her get a feel for the horse's movement. Darby was one of the smoothest-gaited Quarter Horses I've ever ridden, so Jen wasn't in danger of being bounced off in normal riding. Her little feet barely reached past the saddle skirt at first, but she had (and still does) a great sense of balance and was moving with the horse well in no time at all either in a saddle or bareback. I was later very glad I taught her to ride bareback when she was so young.
We built a larger arena (about the size of a small dressage arena) so she could canter on Darby when Jen was probably 7. She became such a good little rider at home that when she was 8, I contacted the most highly-recommended 4-H club in our area, the Happy Hoofers of Preble County, Ohio, to ask if she could participate so she'd learn to ride in company. They were kind enough to let her ride in their meetings, and she became good at it in no time. She was too young for membership, so she wasn't allowed to participate in the county fair, but she attended every meeting and showed Darby in the open show at the county fair. When she was 9, she was a real 4-H member and showed in the Preble County Fair as well as a few open shows. On "play day" during the county fair that first year, she was still in the arena when the announcer said everyone would play Simon Says, and before long, she was cantering without stirrups with a total of sixty (I said "60"!) other horses in the ring!! I was SO glad I'd trained her to ride bareback so she had a good seat! She managed to stay in the game for quite a while, and she never looked unsteady in her saddle no matter what they asked her to do.
Jen won several awards during her 4-H years for getting the most sponsors for the Happy Hoofers annual show (which was always on Mother's Day - I spent every Mother's Day for years at horse shows!), an early sign of her marketing skills that she uses today to benefit DHF.
Jen started showing regularly when she was ten, and had moved on from Darby (who really wasn't that happy showing) to my little foundation Quarter Horse mare, Major's Marty ("Fancy"). As you'll see in the slide show, Fancy wasn't fabulously beautiful and she was mutton withered, but she was a GREAT kids' horse (and a granddaughter of one of the QH foundation sires, King). Jen showed her until Jen was 12, competing in Pony Western Pleasure, Pony Horsemanship, showmanship, barrels, jumping, hunt seat pleasure and equitation, pony halter - pretty much anything you could show a pony in (Fancy was 13.3, if I recall correctly.)
Jen loved to show and wanted to "haul for points" when she was ten. I told her if I was going to haul her around every weekend, she'd have to earn it, so I put her in charge of the barn. We had seven horses at the time. I did the morning feeding and Jen cleaned stalls and did the evening feeding. She also rearranged the feed room to the point where I couldn't find anything! She's always been VERY organized, just as she is today. I'm an artist, so "organized" and I aren't closely related. She did an outstanding job of caring for the horses, and that was her job for the rest of the time she lived at home. She also exercised every rideable horse we had (some were too young to ride yet), helped me train the young ones (from helping with the ground driving to being the first one to lie across the horse's back - our babies were so broke by the time they were ready to ride, they didn't buck). In addition to these chores, we later learned, she also tamed her friends' badly behaved ponies. We'd gone to so much trouble to find the safest horses possible for her, and there she goes, getting the bucks out the neighbors' rank ponies!
Fancy could be stubborn, and her form of resistance was to back all the way across the field until you convinced her that she wasn't in charge. Once Jen was truly secure in the saddle at all gaits, I let her ride in the 4 acre field instead of the arena. I also didn't hover over her when she rode, but kept an eye on her from the house (except on the days I gave her lessons). She told me a few years ago the best thing I ever did was to leave her alone to figure out how to get Fancy to listen to her. She eventually started winning lots of classes with Fancy. One judge tried to buy Fancy right out from under her at one show, LOL!
Jen needed a new horse when she was 13 because she was simply too good a rider for Fancy's abilities, so we started looking at horses. In the meantime, the deadline to sign up with your "project horse" was nearing and Jen had no horse to list, so she signed up to ride her brother's Quarter pony, Leo ("Heavy Lantana," a grandson of Poco Bueno and Leo). She won a lot that year with Leo. He was a great kid's horse, tolerant of boys hanging off his neck or jumping over his rump like Roy Rogers or standing up under his belly (these are some of the things his previous boy showed us when we went to look at him). Jen got him so well in hand, one time I saw her sitting on him and piaffing quite nicely before any of us knew what a piaffe was! He was a talented horse and a lovely ride.
Marty Jo Hays, a judge and trainer who'd trained a filly for us, found a really lovely mare for Jen. Mindy Mill had been to the AQHA World Show in halter and was a beautiful English-type Quarter Horse mare. Marty had guaranteed her sound, and when Mindy turned out to have a soundness issue, Marty immediately found another horse for us. Chica Love Notes was pretty, talented, smart, had comfortable gaits and a quiet mind. She was so laid back, we used to say she had the personality of a marshmallow, but she really was a nice mare.
We had a cart and harness from when I'd tried to teach Fancy to drive (the neighbor's dog scared her while she had her blinders on, and that was the end of her non-existent driving career). We also had a pony sulky that we'd had horse size shafts made for so the horse could learn to pull that light cart and we wouldn't be out an expensive show cart if the horse went bonkers while hitched. Jen asked if she could use the cart and harness, and I told her to use the breaking cart (not the expensive show cart) and NOT to get in the seat, but to drive from the ground until I could check on how Chica was doing. Needless to say, TWO DAYS (that's *2* days!!) after she started driving Chica from the ground with no cart at all, I looked out the kitchen window and there they were at the very back of our five acres, with Jen CLIMBING INTO THE SHOW CART (the expensive one - not the breaking cart!)!! I just held my breath - two days of driving training and she's going to ride in the cart??? Dear Lord, please keep my child and that horse safe!! Chica worked beautifully, and the two of them were champions over adults for three years in the Central States driving classes!
Jen and Chica became a force to be reckoned with, to the point that some kids groaned to see she'd entered the same classes. A judge at one show told Marty Hays that he knew she was going to win every class that day the first time he saw her enter the ring - and she did!
Jen taught Chica reining just from reading the 4-H rule book. She kept the book shoved in the gullet of her western saddle as she ran the patterns out in our field. Their biggest win was at the All-American Youth Show in Columbus, where there were up to 200 entries per class. One of her classes went until 2 AM - the horses fell asleep while waiting to do their pattern! She also won classes at the Ohio State Fair with Chica. Ask to see her championship belt buckles sometime.
I knew Jen would be an excellent driver once she started driving cars because one day at the Preble County Fairgrounds when she was around 13, she had to change from a cart and harness to regular tack in only about one class (roughly 5 minutes - it was a small class). Her solution to the problem was to set off for the barn driving Chica at a spanking (brisk) trot - and drove that cart between two upright logs put between the barns to keep trucks out. There were only about two inches of clearance between each wheel hub and the post! She could've wrecked spectacularly, but as she very calmly said to her trying-to-get-over-being-scared-to-death, and should-I-kill-her-now-or-let-her-finish-the-show mother (me), she "had plenty of room!" *sigh* Meanwhile, I was acquiring worry lines from her total confidence in her skills and my fears for her safety!! Needless to say, her confidence was well-founded and my fears, although well-founded for most children, were just a waste of time and energy when it came to Jen. Eventually I learned to just take a deep breath and trust her judgement. She impressed me so much with her driving ability that I started teaching her to drive our truck at 14 on country roads and in the field, and danged if she wasn't a natural at that too (backing a horse trailer has never been an issue for her either). Wish I had her confidence and coordination!
By the time she was 15, Jen was too long-legged for Chica and had become bored with hunt seat, western, showmanship, reining and the equitation classes. She'd jumped some on Fancy and on Chica (poor Chica - deluxe western pleasure horse that she was, she didn't jump well but still qualified for and showed at the Ohio State Fair in jumping where the fences were 3'3"). Jen wanted to do more serious jumping, so her next horse was a 17 hand Thoroughbred named "Stretch" ("Imagine a Legacy"). He was so big, we didn't think she'd outgrow him for a while! Stretch was so long-bodied (everything about him was long and lanky!), he didn't realize his rear end belonged to him. I saw him hit the side of a 10 foot wide-open barn door with a hip, then look surprised that he'd done so! It took dressage to get him to understand where all of his parts were.
This was the year Jen started riding with a coach other than me. I didn't know about the new techniques in jumping (the ones that use dressage to collect the horse before fences), so she started riding with Pam Heinz while still riding Chica. She and Pam got along so well that Jen moved into the summer kitchen at her farm to be a working student during her first year of college. Jen stayed and helped Pam run her Heaven's Gate Farm throughout her college years. They're still good friends to this day.
Jen and Stretch did all the Pony Club stuff, but Stretch was a chicken in a horse suit when it came to cross country! He totally depended on Jen's courage to get them over fences. She'd been told at some point to "tell the horse to jump" so she did - she'd yell "STRETCH-JUMP-NOW!" in time with the last three strides to the takeoff point of a fence and Stretch jumped. I always felt that if she yelled "JUMP" at anyone with that much sheer force of personality, they'd jump too!
All of the other kids' horses on Jen's Pony Club team would do cross-country without fuss, but Stretch just couldn't bear to do all those scary fences. He was super at stadium jumping, though, and became the Ohio State Fair Champion over Fences, winning another western trophy buckle for Jen. He was also very good at dressage. His scores were usually the best ones at the Pony Club meets.
During the summer when she was 17, Jen moved to Muncie, Indiana, to be a working student for Jim and Dezanie Moore, two eventers who were teaching at Hartmeyer's (yup, the same Hartmeyer's that has Hartmeyer's Saddlery and those catalogs with the gorgeous models). Jen taught group lessons there herself as well as doing the hard work all working students are faced with.
One day after she returned from being a working student at Hartmeyer's, Jen, Stretch and I went to a friend's farm so she could practice their cross-country fences. One of those jumps was a picnic table-looking thing made of railroad ties. I was taking pics through a 300mm lens and froze when I saw Stretch just STOP in the middle of that picnic table jump and put his foot in the gap between the railroad ties on the top! He could've broken his leg. He SHOULD'VE broken his leg - it was a miracle he didn't (he wasn't injured at all!) Jen should've been flying through the air, both of them should've been hurt from him doing such a thing, but Jen managed to stay on top of him, and then Stretch very carefully stood on the top of that picnic table with his free foot, removed his other foot from between those railroad ties and backed off the jump. He never jumped a cross country fence again, but he still seemed to enjoy stadium jumps. She decided since he was a pretty good dressage horse, there was no point forcing him to jump. And this turning point is when Stretch's dressage career and Jen's love for dressage was born.
Life went on - Jen went to Sinclair College in Dayton full-time her senior year of high school through a special program called the Post-Secondary Enrollment Option (PSEO). She was the first ever in that program to do a full course load while still a high school student (usually the kids only took one or two classes) and she did it with honors! She only needed English to graduate from high school, so after I told the principal it made sense to count college English for her high school credit (which they'd never considered), they used that class as her last high school credit. Sinclair administrators wanted to honor Jen as the first success story for the PSEO program and gave her an honorary Associate's Degree in Psychology and added her name to a wall of acclamation in the administrator's office. Jen continued her education at Wright State University in Fairborn OH where she got her Bachelor of Science degree in psychology (research, not clinical). She took such heavy course loads that between that and starting college a year early, she graduated (Summa Cum Laude) two years before her high school class in a total of three years and one quarter. And all this while training Stretch and some clients' horses, her first jobs as a professional trainer.
After she finished college, she and Stretch went to Amenia, New York to be a working student for dressage trainer Trish Helmer. Toward the end of the summer, Jen seriously hurt her back and came home in a wheelchair. The timing was good because there was a letter waiting for her at home inviting her to be a Teaching Assistant at Wright State - in other words, she got a free ride (except for the cost of her books) to get a Master's degree! She got back to riding as soon as she could after the injury. And she graduated with a Master of Science in Criminal Justice.
The summer she was 21, Jen knew it was her last and only chance to do the North American Young Riders Championships, so she found an FEI level horse to lease (Dolorich, a Hanoverian gelding that belonged to Francesca Nicholetti) and entered only the shows required to qualify due to an illness in the family that prevented her from showing more. She qualified, shocking the other girls competing who couldn't figure out who she was and how she and that fat gelding (he'd been standing in a field when Jenny leased him, so he wasn't in "show shape") got good enough scores to qualify to be the alternate for the Region 2 Young Riders' team. The USEF (US Equestrian Federation) decided to make the alternates from all over the country an "individual" team, which included giving each of them a USET patch and the right to wear it, showing they'd been on a USET team at some point in their lives. The Young Riders Championships that year were at Temple Farm, near Chicago. We have some amazing memories of that time, including when, during a dinner hosted by Temple Farm, the Canadian team jumped up on the table to sing and dance to "YMCA" and the table collapsed under them! They all landed in a laughing heap - no injuries, thank goodness!
Jen trained some horses for various people while still in college and continued to show Stretch. She got him to Fourth Level and then realized he didn't have the talent to go any further. To get the kind of horse she wanted and still be able to afford it, she needed to buy a weanling. She studied videos over and over and then found Nachtwind ("Breezy") in North Dakota. She purchased her based on the video and had her delivered to our farm. Miss Breezy Baby stepped off that trailer as if she owned the place. My yearling Quarter Horse filly (out of Chica - the breeding was partial payment on a bronze sculpture I did of her sire) always cantered everywhere, while Breezy trotted or passaged. She finally learned to canter from my filly, Bitsy. Jen taught both of them to ground drive and drove them around every tree in the pasture, every post in the run-in shed and got them both so broke that when Bitsy went to a trainer to actually be ridden and get her first training under saddle, the trainer was disappointed she never once offered to buck! She rode off like a dream, which disappointed that western trainer a bit! LOL. Breezy went on to pull a carriage before she was backed. When she was three, she pulled that carriage in the Pfitzer Fantasia at Equine Affaire in Columbus, Ohio. The crowd loved her, especially when she bent her head to watch the spotlight that was following her in the Colosseum! It seemed she was following the light.
Breezy, a half Holsteiner/half Andalusian, was inspected, approved and branded by the American Warmblood Society (AWS) on Breezy's first birthday. In Slide Show 4: Amateur Dressage and Driving, you'll see a picture of her from that time with Breezy lying down in the stall and Jenny standing beside her. The AWS people were so nice to all of us - and they provided a carrot cake for everyone to celebrate Breezy's first birthday! That was fun. In the years after that, Jen and Lenny would invite friends to come to wherever they were boarding Breezy to help celebrate Breezy's birthday. Miss Breezy Baby would give people rides in her carriage and graciously accepted the carrots and other goodies people brought. It was always a lot of fun to celebrate Breezy's birthday.
A job change caused Jen and Lenny (who were married by this time) to move to Maryland, so they found a gorgeous 12 acre farm for Breezy and Oreo (Lenny's horse). Jen acquired Lydia and Lisalotte, two Oldenburg mares by Leonidas, from Hilda Gurney while they were in Maryland. Lydia had a shoulder issue nobody had been able to fix. Enter body worker Linda Booren and veterinary chiropractor Dr. Mark Haverkos. Lydia soon became not only sound, but the East Coast Champion in First Level Musical Freestyle among other things. These were Jen's amateur years - she didn't train for anyone else, although she did have a few boarders. She rode with Linda Zang (USEF "O" level judge) while in Maryland.
Another job change brought Jen and Lenny home to Ohio, where they founded the Dancing Horse Farm you now know. Once they got back here, Jen discovered Mary Wanless and biomechanics and her life changed tremendously. Breezy was sold to Lori Aman a couple of years after they got back to Ohio. Lisalotte was sold to someone who wanted her as a broodmare. Oreo was a school horse for a while, then was sold to someone who now rides to hounds on him. Lydia crossed the Rainbow Bridge in 2009 after a valiant fight with laminitis brought on by Potomac Horse Fever . Grace, a daughter of Peron who they'd bought in Maryland as a broodmare, was sold when Jen and Lenny decided they didn't have room for foals at such a busy training farm. Jen got Sunset on a trip to Denmark with Heather Blitz after Lydia's death, and Lafayette came with a group of horses from Maryland Jen was going to train and sell for their owner. Lafayette was sent to Jen to see if she could do anything with his soundness problems. She decided to give him a chance, and in 2011 (two years later), thanks to biomechanics, chiropractic by Dr. Mark Haverkos and regular body work, he was not only 100% sound, but the Region 2 First Level Musical Freestyle Champion with a record-breaking score of 78+%! Lafayette's full story is here.
Jen went on a horse-shopping trip to Holland in October 2016 and in January her purchase, a fabulous Westphalian gelding she named Absolute Dream, arrived at her winter farm in Florida. Dream was 2 when Jen bought him. He is beautiful, smart, an incredible mover and a total mush-pot, so sweet and affectionate! In his very first show in May 2018, he scored 72% in a Materiale class, high enough to earn him a place in the 4 year old championships! He and Taffy love each other and are good companions when Jen takes them places together.
For me, as a mother, to watch my little girl go from a tiny but long-legged 5 year old riding a 15.2 hand Quarter Horse to an accomplished woman riding in CDIs in Florida against Olympians from various countries is just astounding. And that she's done all that on a horse she bought for a dollar. *Mind Blown* You will see me get "misty" at shows every so often - it's all so unbelievable, but it's a true story. And now Jen has Dream, a dream-horse come to life to bring along from him just barely being backed . . . wow. Jen Dared to Dream, and those dreams have and are coming true!
And that's where we are for now. On to the slide show!
