From the Ground Up

yourdressage

June 3

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?

What do you do when you can't find a horse that checks all the boxes? Breed your own! Here, a rider from Region 2 shares how she planned on eventing with her homebred Connemara cross, and how they ended up doing FEI-level dressage instead.

By Kristen Young; Photos by Lisa Michelle Dean Photography

I had Shiloh's mom, Elsbeth, for 17 years. She was an Off-Track Thoroughbred (OTTB) that I competed with in three-day eventing, going so far as to participate in Young Riders together.

After taking a riding hiatus in college, I began thinking about finding my next horse; I honestly thought I would continue to event. The next question I asked myself was: how am I going to find a horse as nice as Elsbeth? She was sound, a great mover, sweet, and had great confirmation.

The only answer I could come up with was to breed her and create another Elsbeth. With this decision made, she was bred to the fantastic Connemara stallion Aladdin's Denver, owned by Marynell Eyles at Ridgetop Connemaras, in Virginia. This cross produced Elsbeth's Shiloh.

Shiloh was the first horse I started from the very beginning. I had taken horses off the track, but I had never started one of my own from the ground up. He was bred to be an event horse, and with that plan in mind, that is exactly how I started him. We evented at the Beginner Novice level as a four-year-old.

I quickly realized, however, that after starting my career and returning from a ten-year hiatus from competing, I had no desire to jump big fences anymore. With the lack of desire also came a loss of some of my nerve.

I also started to notice that as Shiloh was coming along in his training, he was quite talented in the dressage phase. I had always enjoyed dressage, so I made the decision to drop eventing and compete in straight dressage. This would turn out to be the best decision ever!

The biggest challenge I faced in this switch was that Shiloh and I were learning dressage together. I am sure there were many times when he must have thought, "My human is crazy; she has no clue what she is doing."

At the same time, this was also the most rewarding part of our journey. As we learned and accomplished new skills and began moving up the levels, each success was that much sweeter.

However, we did face some setbacks on our journey; right as we were moving up to Second Level, Shiloh had an accident in his paddock. He stepped on a broken T-post, resulting in surgery to remove his coffin bone. He then had to wear a hospital plate for several months as he made a remarkable recovery. Knocking on wood as I write this, he is now seventeen years old and still sound.

When we embarked on our dressage journey, I dreamt of earning my USDF Bronze Medal. Well, sure enough, I got it! Then, my Silver Medal didn't seem that far out of reach, so we kept going. And came the Silver Medal! We moved up to Intermediate 1, where we earned our scores for my Gold Medal, and we have now started schooling the Grand Prix work. Having brought Shiloh along from an unbroke baby to a successful FEI horse under the guidance of great trainers and clinicians - while doing all of the riding myself - is certainly my greatest accomplishment.

While riding in a clinic once, the clinician Kimberly Schisler Sosebee told me that Shiloh and I were like an old married couple - that the understanding and communication between us helped us maintain the strength of our bond.

My day job is as a critical care physician assistant, where I often care for patients who cannot communicate their needs verbally. I firmly believe that the skills I've learned to communicate with Shiloh have greatly contributed to my ability to understand and communicate with these patients, leading to better care outcomes.

As an adult amateur, my work life can often get in the way of my riding life, but I am lucky. Shiloh is the type of horse I can get on after one or two weeks (or longer!) of not riding, and I will still have the same horse I did before the break. I can get on him, go right into the show ring, and be confident that I have a safe, sane horse under my saddle. Shiloh is happy to go for a hack, work in the arena, incorporate some cavaletti into our ride, or bop around a cross-country course (only the small jumps now, of course!).

Connemaras and Connemara crosses are athletic, smart, and great-brained horses; they are sensible and sturdy. There are no limits - Connemaras can do it all.