The captivating Connemara! We are celebrating these horses as our May Breed of the Month on YourDressage!
Did you know that dressage riders who choose a Connemara as their dressage mount are eligible for special awards through the Adequan®/USDF All-Breeds Awards program, as the American Connemara Pony Society is a participating organization?
Here, a rider originally from Region 2 shares how she navigated the competitive world of horse showing with all odds against her. After moving to Florida, a much kinder trainer than she was used to introduced her to a very opinionated Connemara, and the pair of underdogs blossomed into long-lasting partners.
By Becki Orze
I would like to introduce you to Spring Loaded, known to his friends as Sam. This little Connemara cross has been my partner throughout one of the most challenging and rewarding journeys of my life. Our partnership has ultimately been serendipitous, but not without many stumbling blocks. We were both underdogs – whom nobody took very seriously – but ended up bringing out the best in each other.
To understand how Sam and I came into each other’s lives, I have to give you a quick history of my riding journey. I grew up in a large middle-class family that was comfortable, but owning a horse was beyond our means. We lived in a dense suburb of Chicago, so the only option for owning a horse would mean boarding at least 30 minutes away. Somehow, I still managed to become obsessed with horses at a young age. When I was about 12, my parents indulged me and let me start taking riding lessons. Just by chance, the barn where I began taking lessons was a dressage barn – I was hooked immediately.
My parents could afford to pay for one group lesson a week. If I wanted more group lessons, or private lessons, I would have to find a way to pay for them myself. I was probably only 13 or 14 when I started working in the barn in exchange for riding privileges, and then I became a working student almost as soon as I started formal riding lessons.
Although working for my lessons early in my riding career taught me a ton of useful skills in the barn, it did not impress the barn owner. The barn was in an affluent neighborhood, with many young riders whose parents could afford decent horses and to show in the local dressage community, which helped boost the popularity of the barn – I would never be one of those young riders. The barn owner once pulled my mother aside and told her I was “not serious enough or dedicated enough” to be successful in the sport. Of course, what she actually meant was that we weren’t making her enough money.
I was so in love with the sport that I was able to overlook how I was often treated at that barn. I rode there for another five years, continuing to work in the barn, and became the designated rider for “naughty” ponies. Since I never had a horse of my own, I relied on the collection of school horses. I was petite, but becoming a decent rider, so I often found myself being assigned lesson ponies who had dumped some poor little kid the day before. Again, as a client doing little for the barn owner’s pocketbook or popularity, I often found myself riding the most “undesirable” horses. However, I would come to find that this was a blessing in disguise, and one that would serve me well when I started riding Sam.
I left that barn when I went off to college and toyed with the idea of making the horse industry my career. I took my sophomore year of college off to be a full-time working student at Tempel Farms in northern Illinois, the then home of the famous Lipizzaner stallions. There, I finally got to sit on some upper-level schoolmasters, and began to really ride and understand some movements. One winter, I also worked part-time for JJ Tate, who was extraordinarily generous with her more educated horses. These situations were the exceptions.
Generally, I continued to ride the kind of horses that people with real resources did not want to ride. I continued plugging along, finding opportunities to ride wherever and however I could, but I still never had a horse to call my own.
Ultimately, I did end up in a career with animals, but not horses. I became an aquarium biologist. In my mid-20s, I found myself in Tampa, Florida, for a job. I was new to the area and on the lookout for a new riding “situation,” when an issue of Dressage Today magazine accidentally led me to the barn where I would find Sam. One of my new coworkers saw the magazine on my desk and said, “Oh! My sister-in-law is a retired dressage trainer!” I quickly jumped on that information and reached out to her family member for a local recommendation. That is how I came to ride at Tristan Oaks in Plant City, Florida, with Jill Hardt.
I think I had taken only two or three lessons at Tristan Oaks when the barn manager pulled me aside and said, “You look like you know your way around a barn. Do you want a job?” This was music to my low-income ears!! Like most animal jobs, being an aquarium biologist is a labor of love. It is a fun and fascinating job, but I was salaried at about $28,000 a year. So, I jumped at the opportunity to work off my lessons with Jill.
Jill was extraordinarily kind and supportive. She, too, had made her own way in the dressage industry, by way of stubborn grit and little financial support from anyone else. We became fast friends, and she was a big advocate of trying to find a way for me to gain experience on good horses, and even get out to show. We spent several years trying to find a situation or combination of situations to make it happen.
I rode, and even showed some of Jill’s school and sale horses while we looked for the right option. We thought we had struck gold when a new client brought an older FEI schoolmaster into the barn, looking for a shared boarding situation. I thought I might finally be able to earn my USDF Rider Medals, but that relationship did not work out. The horse ended up needing more maintenance and special care than I could afford, even when only paying a fraction of the costs.
In the meantime, Jill had a scrappy but handsome large Connemara cross pony sitting on her property that had previously been a bit of a handful under saddle. Jill had bought Sam sight unseen, based on a postcard-sized picture of him as a youngster. She got him on the farm and put some training on him, and she actually managed to sell him at one point… but the buyers gave him back. They didn’t even want their money back, just a good home for him, and not with them. He became a school horse option for braver and more experienced riders.
Sam was naturally a fancy little mover. However, his confirmation was not that great for dressage; he was a little weak in the wrong places, and sitting his trot was like being on a jackhammer. Additionally, his registered name, Spring Loaded, also suited him, as his favorite form of objection was bucking, and he objected to a lot. Needless to say, Sam was not the most popular guy on the farm.
After the older FEI schoolmaster situation fell through, I was feeling pretty defeated and had a moment of emotionally throwing my hands in the air. I went to Jill and asked if I could make a deal with her to ride Sam for a bit – mostly out of a lack of better options. Sam could benefit from some consistent riding, and I desperately wanted a horse to which I could have more frequent and regular access.
With the right rider, he could crank out a really decent First Level test, and was schooling Second Level. Sam was also a very easy keeper; he lived outside in a dirt paddock, and only needed simple front shoes. I hoped this little horse could be a diamond in the rough, and I knew Jill would probably give me a good deal on leasing him since he wasn’t doing much else. After all, I had cut my teeth riding naughty and undesirable horses. I was pretty confident I could handle Sam’s antics.
Jill and I worked out a deal in 2010 where I would do evening chores for a couple of nights a week on the farm, pay Sam’s farrier bill, and continue to share him as a school horse option in exchange for essentially unlimited access and riding privileges on him. This was the closest I had ever gotten to having a horse of my own.
Finally, having a horse mostly to myself, I immediately set my sights on goals that I had only dreamt about for the last 15 years. I could try to qualify for the Great American Insurance Group/USDF Regional Dressage Championships, and I could even possibly get my USDF Bronze Medal!! Once again, though, finances were a limiting factor. Typically, I could only afford one USDF-recognized show per season, and I would have to pick from a show series at the nearby fairgrounds, close enough to sleep in my own bed, or the showgrounds a little further away that allowed tent camping for only $35 a night. Shows that required hotel stays were a big strain on my budget, so I avoided them.
Sam and I made our show debut at the local fairgrounds a few months after I struck my new deal with Jill, and things went well enough. Sam had some naughty moments, but nothing outside of his typical character. Thanks to his decent gaits, though, we qualified for Regionals at First Level. I was elated – I was going to ride in the Regional Championships! I scraped and saved all summer to put together the funds for the Championships in the fall.
Going to Regionals had been on my bucket list for so long, but as you can probably guess, due to my and Sam’s lack of experience at such a big show, the weekend didn’t go great. In retrospect, I was a little out over my skis. I probably should have waited a season or two to attempt such an intimidating and costly endeavor, but I was just so eager to finally have the means (just barely) to attempt something I had been daydreaming about for over a decade.
My very first ride for the weekend was a First Level Test 3 practice class. The warm-up was totally reasonable, so we entered the on-deck area and began cantering around the ring, waiting for our bell to enter. I came out of the short side of the arena and put my leg on Sam to go forward, and he exploded into a series of bucks and hops down the long side. He has always had a buck on him, but this was exceptional, even for him. It took almost the entire length of the arena for me to get him under control. The moment I got his head up and stopped him, the bell rang from the other side of the ring.
We actually got through the test without any more fireworks, but my confidence was completely shot. I distinctly remember the ring steward’s exact words as she checked my bit just outside the ring after the test. She looked up at me and said, “That was some nice riding!” For a moment, I thought that she liked our quiet test, and maybe it was better than it felt. A second later, she finished her thought with, “I can’t believe you stayed on!!” It was not the kind of attention I had been hoping for, and worse, Sam had actually really scared me for the first time.
That meltdown outside the ring of our very first test of the weekend sent me into a spiral of doubt. Now I understand it was probably just the nervous tension in both of us that caused the exceptional bucking fit, but at the time, I overanalyzed everything about my equipment and riding, and went about changing a bunch of things at the show, which, of course, is not the best strategy. But, my decisions were emotional, not logical. On top of it, I actually hurt my back sitting through those bucks, and was in pain for the rest of the weekend.
One of the changes I made was to remove my spurs for my Championship test. We ended up making a couple of costly mistakes that involved Sam breaking from the canter (my newfound fear of putting my leg on him meant he was constantly behind my aids), and we placed outside of the ribbons. I remember finding a spot in one of the grooming stalls, laying flat on the cool floor to try to help my strained back feel better, and just thinking, “Maybe this isn’t for me. Maybe I don’t have what it takes. All this effort and money down the drain, and now I’m afraid of Sam.”
Thank goodness for my friend, trainer, and Sam’s owner, Jill Hardt. She kept me grounded during this huge disappointment, and the months that followed, encouraging and helping me with Sam. We spent the next two years on a slightly less extreme rollercoaster ride, but we definitely still had our ups and downs. The things Sam did well were great, and the things he didn’t do well, we really bombed. Our test sheets were often characterized by an entertaining extreme of 7s and 8s, combined with 3s and 4s. We didn’t get a lot of 5s and 6s. Those 7s and 8s, combined with Jill’s guidance, were enough to keep me from giving up on Sam.
Four years after I began my partnership with Sam, we finally had our Cinderella moment. I continued to train and show Sam, squeaking out scores towards my Bronze. We never blew the socks off anyone, but by putting in correctly ridden tests, we could manage scores in the low- to mid-60s on a good day. In March 2014, we were just one score away from earning my Bronze Medal.
I entered a show that had a special award, whose prize was a gorgeous ribbon that was more beautiful than any Regional Championship ribbon or High Point ribbon I had ever seen. The ribbon was for a “continuing potential” award, given to the horse-and-rider combination with the highest combined average score from Second Level Test 3 and Third Level Test 1. Those were exactly the tests that we had been showing for the last couple of years. It was a long shot, but I figured maybe I could finally earn the big fancy ribbon that I wasn’t able to take home from Regionals years ago.
As I mentioned before, the shows I could afford to attend had to meet pretty specific price point criteria. This meant that sometimes I went to shows completely alone, because the ones I chose were not always the same shows that worked with my trainer’s or her other clients’ schedules. This was one of those shows: no coach, no test reader, no one on the ringside to hand me water or wipe my boots. Just me and Sam, doing our thing, and we finally did it! We got the score we had been chasing for so long on the first day of the show, earning my USDF Bronze Rider Medal! It had taken four years and some tears to get through the three necessary levels, but we got there. It was a nice boost going into our attempt at the special award the next day.
The Third Level test was first. It didn’t go great, and Sam felt tired. The flying changes, one of our biggest challenges to date, were more buck than change. Our final score was nothing impressive. The last test of the weekend was our Second Level Test 3.
I tried (and still try) not to worry about what anyone else in the warm-up ring was doing, but I could tell by the movements that they were schooling which horses were going to be my competition, and there were some big, fancy horses in that ring. I felt kind of silly, but I had paid the fees, and we were all dressed up and ready to go, so it was time to see it through.
Maybe it was the intimidation of the horses in the warm-up that made me downplay our performance in my mind, or maybe it was because Sam and I were both pretty tired, but I left the ring feeling a little defeated after my test. I did not feel like it had been our best performance. Before going back to the barn, I actually went back into the warm-up ring and schooled for a minute or two until I got a little better feeling from Sam and felt okay about finishing. I packed up and got Sam on the trailer, sure that I had not placed well in the class. I pulled around to the show office to pick up my test before heading home.
I walked inside and told the office staff which test I was looking for. The show secretary looked at me and said, “I think you won that class.” I thought she had mistaken me for someone else. Sure enough, she turned around with the test in hand, grabbed a blue ribbon, and handed it to me. The score was 68%!! Our highest score ever at a recognized show. That score came with more prizes than I had won collectively in the previous four years with Sam; it won us a Dover Adult Amateur Medal, and Sam was awarded the Non-Warmblood High Point of the show. It also clinched that giant beautiful ribbon for the continuing potential award. I walked out of that office with my arms literally full of prizes. Almost twenty years into my riding career, and for the first time, I finally really felt successful.
If that last test on Sam had not gone so well, that could have easily been the end of my journey with him. When I started riding him, Jill and I said, “We will try for a Bronze Medal, and see what happens.” It seemed like even that might be a stretch, based on the way he sometimes behaved during training and at shows. Then, in that eleventh hour, the day after we had already gotten our Bronze Medal, the universe seemed to kick us in the butt and say, “Look at your potential. You are not done yet; you belong here, and you can do this!”
I stuck with Sam after that. Jill and I knew what he was, and that he would never be anything exceptionally impressive or flashy. We knew the scores would always be mediocre. But we thought that with correct training and well-ridden tests, we might have a shot at earning my Silver Medal. In a way, it almost made it more interesting and fun that he was so nontraditional, and a bit of an underdog.
We stuck our noses to the grindstone and moved forward. The same deal continued between Jill and me. In addition to my 40-hour-a-week full-time job, I worked about ten hours a week for Jill in the barn, in exchange for lessons and the ride on Sam. I probably spent an additional ten hours a week just riding and training on my own. I never paid out of pocket for time with Sam or lessons with Jill – every minute was paid for in sweat in the barn. Jill very rarely sat on Sam herself for his training, but was always our rock and guiding light.
The next nine years were full of more ups and downs, some related to riding and some related to my personal life. There were stretches where I could barely ride at all, and stretches where I practically lived at the barn. I had to move over an hour away from the barn, so I often slept in a small cottage on the property, if available, in order to fit in extra early morning rides. If a working student was living in the cottage, I sometimes slept on Jill’s couch in her home.
COVID hit in early 2020 and derailed many things about life for all of us. I had a terrible hip injury, followed by surgery (unrelated to riding) that slowed me down physically and destroyed my already weak financial state for a couple of years. Jill had become like family, and sometimes Sam felt more like an emotional support animal that gave me something to look forward to. Jill and I did what we do best together and laughed about our slow but steady progress. Our mantra became “PSG by 23.” We were not sure if it would take until Sam was 23 years old or if it would be the year 2023, but we were going to show Sam at Prix St. Georges.
As it turned out, our chant worked. In March of 2023, at the same show that had inspired us to keep trying nine years earlier, Sam and I earned our last score for our Silver Medal. It took us 13 years to go from showing First Level together to earning our last Prix St. Georges score for our Silver Medal, but against long odds, we did it.
My parents had flown down from Chicago, and many of my good friends came to cheer us on. It was a wonderful day full of celebration and support. Still, I couldn’t help but think about the owner of that first barn saying I wasn’t dedicated or serious enough – guess I proved her wrong! Thanks to the support of the much kinder and more generous soul I had found in Jill, I was able to make my wildest dream come true with an unlikely partner in a less-than-ideal situation.
There were a lot of times on this journey when I felt like I was trying to put a round peg in a square hole because it was the only peg I could afford. But looking back now, I can see that when things were painfully slow, it might have actually been exactly the right pace. The work was genuinely hard for Sam, which made it easy to get him into a bad spot behaviorally if you pushed too hard. He needed his strength built up carefully and slowly, and you couldn’t ask too much, or he would get very resistant very quickly. Jill and I agree that, had he been put into an intensive full-time training regiment, either his mind or his body would have likely broken down. And if Sam had been more cooperative or pleasant to ride, it’s likely that someone with more resources would have bought him long before I even met my first goals with him. The snail’s pace was what both of us needed for this to actually work. Maybe it was always meant to be that way.
Sam and I are still part of each other’s lives. We will not be pursuing a Gold Medal, but we still have a lot of fun schooling the PSG at home with Jill, who is still helping us discover new things about each other all the time. After 13 years of training and showing him, he still technically belongs to Jill, and has shifted to more school horse responsibilities in his semi-retirement. All the training, and his age, have made him a model citizen. He has become a favorite with several students, and even gives little kids up-down lessons. Sam will be 23 years old in May 2024, and we hope that the sturdy Connemara in him grants us many more years to come!
