To be at the top of dressage you have to have an amazing relationship with your horse, no question. Training a horse to Grand Prix not only takes talent and skill but also a great deal of knowledge of and respect for your equine partner. Some riders make their way to the top and are then given great horses to ride. Others are still finding their way: when a top horse enters their life, it teaches them and pretty much ignites their dressage career. So how do riders cope when a horse is taken from them?
How do they deal with the grief if a top horse dies? How do they find the strength to get back to the stable and continue on a horse that will always be "not that horse"?
Australian rider Hayley Beresford made a name for herself on one very talented Lusitano and feels his loss was by far the greatest she has experienced during her career. "Relampago was both my Olympic and WEG partner, losing him was devastating," explained Hayley. "Reli made me!"
Injured in a tragic road accident, Relampago was put to sleep and Hayley wished everyday that she could have prevented his untimely death. "I wish I had not driven him to the clinic, or driven him myself, I wish I could turn back time!"
Certain that this loss made her question her career, Hayley strongly believes that our sport is particularly tough because you can't just buy a new pair of running shoes. "The death of Relampago did make me ride my other horses differently but I never resented another horse for not being the same as he was. I know I took the emotion into my riding on other horses and it took me allot to get over the accident, I still think about him every day. Things around the stable and my home remind me of how great he was each day."
Not over the feeling that this can happen, or may happen again, Hayley has learnt to face the tough aspects of our sport and has used it to make her stronger both in and out of the saddle. "There is not a single day where I don’t think and reflect about Reli. I owe him and I miss him," she said.
While Hayley's is one of sadness, there is the other kind of partner loss that happens at the end of a long career. Equally as convinced that this horse made him who is, David Blake knew his first Grand Prix partner Falsterbo as the most intense stallion he ever met. "He was very attractive and extremely dominant. He never missed anything within his environment," said David. "As I began to get to know him, I realized that he needed to always feel as if he ruled the entire facility. I never tried to make him submit to me. Falsterbo had everything you need in a HP performance horse. Three super gaits, all the collectability in the world and expressive extensions."
Teaching David more than he could have ever hoped for, Falsterbo viewed himself as exactly what he was, a stallion, and at that the top stallion, meaning David had to learn the art of adapting himself to the horse. "Falsterbo would only "allow" you to ride him. You could not insist that Falsterbo do anything if he did not want to. Falsterbo taught me that I was not going to change him. If he was not willing I would lower my expectations to what he would allow me to have from him and that’s all I got. Many times I would not warm up Falsterbo before a test. He was so reactive to other horses that he would sometimes spend the whole warm-up rearing. I don't think this was a naughty behaviour, in his mind he was trying to show everyone in the entire new place that he was dominant. Unfortunately for me I was also subservient and on his back."
Honoured to share a part of Falsterbo's career, David feels the horse was the culmination of his experience with naughty horses and taught him how to be comfortable with any sort of behavior. "When I started my business I rode a lot of naughty horses. This made me comfortable with " bad " behavior. When Falsterbo would "act up" it did not frighten me. I think the biggest thing he did for me is to show other professionals what I had learned from my experiences with other horses and how I could relate to some degree of success with this stallion."
Certain that without Falsterbo he would not have gained critical show experience in the CDI small tour, David was very sad when the horse was sold and also worried for his future. "Falsterbo was very particular and had been set in his ways for a long time. I worried that there was not enough time for someone to learn the art of him before he was too old to be competitive.”
Missing his partner terribly since he left Arroyo, David truly feels that Falsterbo may have liked, or at least tolerated, him. David really loved him the horse for just who he was. "I will never forget him, to be accepted by Falsterbo was the greatest show of respect I've ever been granted by anyone."
Finally, the loss of a partner can end a career and for now 82-year old Marie Gahan, when her Prix St George horse "Donnie" became lame, she knew she didn't have the strength to start a new partnership. "My greatest loss was when “Donnie” broke down, as I knew that would be the end of my competition career: I was too old to train another horse up to FEI," said Marie.
Riding, judging and competing for over half a century, Marie was a student of Nuno Oliveira and felt this final loss was one of the toughest of her career. "He was ready to have his first start at Prix St George’s level and it was pretty devastating when the vets said he had to be put down as a result of deadly laminitis. I felt it even more for Donnie, as he had to be “put down” at the vet’s practice and I never saw him again."
However, the experience taught Marie to never give up and that when you are knocked down, to get up again; focussing on your next move and not allowing yourself to wallow in self-pity. "Are you going to continue riding? Or are you going to retire? If you are going to continue to ride and I was still reasonably capable, then look for something else. I was not interested in riding just for the sake of riding (a ride in the bush) I wanted to go on training something: I had the training bug. However, I knew I couldn't start on a new horse. I had many horses offered to me but they had to be something special, I didn’t want just anything, and then Maria found the lovely Friesian mare, Suske, for me- she was a delight for me in my old age, beautifully mannered, a real lady and a delight to train."
Certain that the loss of a horse would never have stopped her, Marie feels that training horses is an obsession that she could never give up. "I certainly did not think of it as a “career”. My obsession was to be able to ride better, everything I learnt to do- the next day there was another step to learn. Sure I was very competitive, I really enjoyed that part of it, but when I got to the stage of being too old to compete, I still got up every day with the idea of the next advancement up the ladder of training.”
Not believing that our sport is particularly tough because you can’t replace a trained horse so easily, Marie knows there is nothing that can give you as much pleasure as re-training a spoilt horse and developing that close relationship with a grateful horse. "This hasn’t just happened to me, I have seen it happen to other people, even people that are not experienced but they have acquired some poor, ill-treated horse and because they treat it kindly and with affection, the horse becomes devoted to them, they wait at the gate for them, they call out to them, they follow them around the paddock. But I guess if your main interest is competing and you lose a highly trained horse, it is a bitter blow, but it happens to the professionals all the time: they don’t own the horses they compete on, the owners turn round and sell them; they lose their ride, they can’t afford to let their emotions be involved.”
To Marie said it was simply a matter of “move on or never ride again”, and that for her, was not an option. "I could never let that affect my training of the next horse, I just put it out of my head. I never, ever thought of it happening again as I am a fairly positive person. I don’t worry about anything until it happens. I never thought of training as a labour, I enjoyed every bit of it, even when I had to go back to the beginning again. These are the thoughts of an old person, regarding horses; I have not had it easy. I never got the chance to learn to ride properly until I married my second husband, Peter, at age 36. I only had a couple of young ponies, so I started having lessons on them. Old Squish, my first instructor, talked me into dressage riding but I had to breed everything I rode- we could not afford to buy a horse. This was quite time-consuming so it was many years before I had a sizeable dressage horse, but when I finally bred him, he was a very good horse and I sailed through the novice ranks, got to medium and realized I did not have a “deep seat”. I was perched on their backs, hence the long quest to find the ‘deep independent seat” as it is not possible to achieve correct collection without it. That is why Nuno was such a “god” to me because that is when I first began to see the “light” and was able to begin the long road to feeling and correcting all the bad habits I had acquired from learning to ride untutored."
I guess, like Marie, we are all on our own journey and we are just so lucky that these wonderful creatures offer us the chance to share their own journey with them.
Blessed that they happily enter our obsession making us, the people, the riders and maybe even the star athletes that we are, even if it doesn't last as long as we would wish it could.
by Sarah Warne for Eurodressage
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