Originally bred as pack animals, mules make a unique addition to the dressage scene
With their long ears and unique conformation, mules don’t exactly blend in at dressage shows. Although they’re typically associated with pulling wagons or mountain pack trips, mules can and do compete in dressage!
When we checked, a total of 60 mules were registered with the USDF to compete in licensed dressage competition. Of those, 44 have competed at least once in the past two years—a few at the FEI levels. Let’s meet a few of these successful dressage longears and their human partners.
Buckeye: The Model Mule
Fans of Breyer model horses may remember Buckeye, a leopard Appaloosa mule owned by Christina Gregory and ridden by Samantha Majors, who competed in both traditional (at First and Second Levels) and Western dressage. Buckeye was immortalized as a Breyer, and he and Majors appeared at Breyer’s annual collectors extravaganza, Breyerfest, at the Kentucky Horse Park in 2019.
Now being ridden by Majors’ mom, Jenni, Buckeye also competes in jumping. The eye-catching spotted equine made a repeat appearance at Breyerfest in 2025, to the delight of mule fans everywhere.
Tom Collins: Every Day Is Mule Day
Known for its annual Mule Days festival, Bishop, California has become synonymous with mules. Bishop native and professional horse trainer Rebecca Evans made a name for herself in the dressage world with a mule named Tom Collins.
Evans explains that a client had asked her to find “a dressage mule that could also go fox hunting.” She found Tom Collins in Oregon.
“I liked him because he was balanced and uphill, and had good suspension,” Evans says. “Mules tend to be pretty flat or have a more downhill build.” A good dressage horse has “swing” in its back, she explains, but “a mule doesn’t have the same lateral movement as a horse. By design, they are pulling animals and take the load on their forehand. They’re also very smart. So when you’re training for dressage and moving up the levels, you have to be pretty specific when you’re training them. Finding that balance can be difficult, but once they figure something out, they can replicate it. So you have to be astute as a trainer and also have a mule that can do that.”
Now based in Middleburg, Virginia, Evans was raised in Bishop, a central-California town near the Nevada border, where grew up riding and at age 14 began working for trainers. The husband of one trainer owned a pack station, and in their early twenties Evans and her twin sister began working for the station, which packed supplies (on mules, of course) into the Sierras for guests who were hiking and camping in the back country.
“Not long after that, a vet came to me about training a mule he wanted to compete in jumping and dressage at Mule Days,” Evans says. “It escalated from there.”
She calls Mule Days “a big thing” and notes with some bemusement that “in the horse world, a lot of trainers, the higher up you go, don’t have a lot of respect for mules.” She says she once asked a mule trainer whether he liked working with mules. “He was quiet for a bit and then said, ‘I like training mules because they make me a better horse trainer.’”
To train a mule successfully, Evans says, “you have to have infinite patience, a sense of humor, and you have to finesse it. They’re so smart, you can’t coerce them into anything. It’s hard! It’s not an easy job.”
In 2019, Evans and Tom Collins qualified to compete at the US Dressage Finals presented by Adequan®, where they finished ninth in the Second Level Open division.
“One of the judge’s comments was that the mule ‘does everything with a smile on his face,’” she recalls. “To have a judge really see that is something. You have to have a good working relationship with a mule or you’re never going to get them to do anything. It was really fun to be there, and of course people loved him. He had a little fan club after that!”
Evans remains a staunch advocate for mules in equestrian sport. “The amount of work put into them is the same for any other show horse, and they deserve just as much recognition,” she says.
Heart B Porter Creek: FEI Mule
At around age 12, Audrey Goldsmith saw her first mules while on a family vacation to the Grand Canyon and “thought, ‘I’m gonna have me one of those someday!’”
Years later, Goldsmith’s interest in mules was reignited after she attended Mule Days in California. Then a hunter/jumper trainer, she decided it would be fun to “explore different aspects of riding.” She purchased two mules, one of which was the three-day-old Heart B Porter Creek. (“I’d been in touch with the breeders, and I made a totally unprofessional decision and bought him sight unseen,” she confesses.)
With “Porter” and his half-brother, Tuxedo, Goldsmith has won numerous championships in disciplines ranging from jumping, English and Western pleasure, and trail to dressage. At first, dressage was more prescriptive than competitive for Porter, however.
“We lived in California not far from the ocean, and I’d take him to the beach and take him for walks,” she recalls. “But then he started tripping and falling on his knees, and I was fairly certain he was neurological, but it was much harder to get these things diagnosed then. A friend brought a young dressage horse over, and she suggested I try dressage with him to help with his back and his balance, and that was the beginning of the journey.”
In 2003, Goldsmith began campaigning Porter in licensed dressage competition. The pair successfully rose up the levels to Prix St. Georges; and Goldsmith earned her USDF bronze and silver medals aboard her mule—the first time a mule has earned that distinction.
Eventually, dressage with Porter became a passion project rather than a training tool.
“His scores were insane; he was just amazing,” Goldsmith says. She says that most dressage judges received the long-eared equine warmly (although “[the late] Colonel Burton just couldn’t cope with a mule!”) and that “a couple of competitors were disgruntled,” but the general public embraced Porter, who had a fan club and a Facebook page, she says.
After earning very respectable scores at Training and First Levels, “we really struggled in the deep, dark hole of Second Level, but everyone kept encouraging me,” Goldsmith says. Porter, she says, “was so obedient and had three good gaits. He was half-Thoroughbred, and even his canter was good. His changes were clean, though he always swung his hind end, but everything was accurate and he was so well-behaved. Sometimes I’ll look back and think it was just a gift, but I’ll look at videos and see that no, he really did earn it.”
Goldsmith, who’s now based in Oregon, tips her hat to fellow mule enthusiast Laura Hermanson of California, who with the molly mule Heart B Dyna became the first mule/rider pair to compete at the US Dressage Finals, in 2015. The following year, Hermanson returned to the Kentucky Horse Park for Finals with another mule, Behold the Desert.
Another of Goldsmith’s shout-outs goes to the well-known mule trainer Meredith Hodges, owner of Lucky Three Ranch in Colorado and daughter of the late legendary Peanuts cartoonist Charles M. Schulz. Hodges is “the person I went to, to help fund mules in the [Adequan®/USDF] All-Breeds Program…. Meredith sponsored ten years of All-Breeds for the American Mule Association,” she says.
Goldsmith is proud of what she’s accomplished on her mules, noting that she takes dressage competition seriously; for her, a mule is not a cute sideshow attraction amidst the warmbloods.
“One of the tests I saved, the comment was ‘seamless test,’” she says. “I should put it in a frame. That’s the goal. And to do it on a mule, that was awesome to me.”
Editor’s note: At press time, the American Mule Association was not an Adequan®/USDF All-Breeds participating organization. To learn more about mules, visit the American Mule Association’s website.
