Ladies riding trip to Ocala

As mentioned, we left Colorado with some hopes and no set times to ride with trainers. Happily, we ended up watching three lessons and taking 6 (5 for Lisa). We also had a bonus 4-in-hand carriage ride which merits its own post. We must give special thanks to Peter Atkins for creating so many opportunities for us. He he took this friendship with our friend very seriously, and by proxy took very good care of us. We really benefited from his most gracious welcome and efforts to reach out to his fellow horsemen. I think he even might have felt a bit sorry for us, two aging equestrians trying to wedge our way into the Ocala horse world.

PETER ATKINS

Peter is a 5* eventer (who isn’t, in Ocala?) who has a lovely farm very near our AirBnb. He is originally from Australia and has done everything crazy you can do with a horse, including racing hurdles. He comes from a family of horseman, and his mother still rides at 86 (goals!). He showed us a video of his Mum doing a jump course in Australia, and bragged that she had the best turns of any of the riders in the class AND that she was riding a difficult horse. We were a not worried about ageism on Peter’s part after we saw this video. We were first introduced to Peter’s teaching style while watching him teach a lesson to Susan and Morgan doing grid work. Susan Tracy was advertised as his “crazy” New York client, and Susan brought Morgan Lavelle with her. They were both riding Susan’s horses. Morgan is an athletic, bright young woman who is aspiring to high levels of riding but with the hope of doing it with kind, humane training.  She was a brilliant rider and we expect to see her go far and we can say we met her when. We watched them walk, then trot through a pile of poles, literally scattered on the ground (“pick up sticks”). “Put your eyes where you want your horse’s feet to go” instructed Peter (but just with your eyes, not your head). We watched the slightly nervous horses go from skittering through the grid to carefully placing their feet right where there riders wanted them to go. The jumps after the pile of poles got bigger, with Peter insisting on a “dressage quality canter” and keeping your chest up (“stand up over the jump”). This apparently is the safest way to prevent a fall over the head of the horse should they stop or stumble. Who knew?

We also watched Peter teach a group of Hungarians led by Andras Szieberth (one American, his wife)) on their homebred Holsteiners at Majestic Oaks training center, a lovely facility specifically for people to bring in horses for a schooling fee to ride the lovely fences. During this lesson we heard Peter shouting “dressage quality canter!” and “canter backward!” (more on that later) to almost every rider to every fence. One thing that really impressed us about Peter was his consideration of the horse. If a horse (or rider) was afraid of a jump, he had them go more slowly, or do a smaller version, or jump it the other way, until the horse had confidence to do the original scary jump. For instance, to get the horses used to the water, he had them just all trot around the water in a circle and then just stand there. He allowed riders to introduce the horses to fences by walking up to and engaging with them. He also frequently called to riders to not “chase” their horses with their seats. Just let the jump come to the horse with the dressage quality canter. This seemed to work out well with all of the horses and riders. But bear in mind, these were some high quality and business-like horses, with some high quality riders. Here are some photos below, including one of me by a fence edited with a red line showing the height at which Lisa and I are comfortable jumping.