Wayne, Ill. – The 2015 Markel/USEF Young & Developing Horse Dressage National Championships continued today with final tests that determined national champions across three divisions: Developing Horse Prix St. Georges, Four- and Five-Year-Olds. The developing horses performed the USEF Developing Horse Prix St. Georges Test, the five-year-olds performed the FEI Five-Year-Old Final Test, and the four-year-olds performed the USEF Four-Year-Old Test. In each division, 60% percent of...

David Beisel and Call Me Hannes (Phelps Media Group) Traverse City, Mich. - The four-week Great Lakes Equestrian Festival came to a close on a high note with the $50,000 Great Lakes Grand Prix, presented by The Peninsula Group at Morgan Stanley. Enthusiasts, friends, owners and community members gathered to watch the great sport of show jumping at Flintfields Horse Park. David Beisel, from Goshen, Ohio and Call Me Hannes, a huge gray Holsteiner gelding, owned by Harlow Investments, LLC of...

Traverse City, Mich. - Peter Pletcher added to his blue ribbon collection from Wednesday with a variety of tricolor honors as the first hunter champions were crowned during the 11th Annual Horse Shows By the Bay Hunter/Jumper Series. Margaret Anderson's CR Beethoven clinched the Wrenwood Farm Grand Performance Hunter Championship and combined High-Performance/Second Year Green Hunter Championship, sponsored by Top Call LLC and Missy and Doug Smith, by winning four out of the five classes...

Ammeretto and David Beisel (Tricia Booker Photography) Traverse City, MI - Ammaretto and David Beisel cruised to the blue ribbon in the $2,500 CMJ Sporthorse 1.40m Jumper Speed Stake, one of Thursday's featured classes at Horse Shows by the Bay. Over a Chris Brandt-designed track, Beisel and the bay Dutch Warmblood (Numero Uno--Ranna) jumped clear in 63.61 seconds as the 11th of 12 competitors in the ring. Beisel, of Goshen, OH, has ridden the 8-year-old stallion for the past five years and...

I guess the beginning is a great place to start. I grew up in Maine, the oldest of five, to a father who was in the military and a mother who was a housewife until the youngest of my siblings was in Junior-High school. We grew up on the other side of middle-class, OK, we were poor. I grew up watching spaghetti westerns in black and white on Saturday afternoons. I always loved the intrigue of being a Cowboy, pushing cattle up the Chisholm Trail, fighting bad guys and Indians. Next to the pony...

(Lindsay McCall) Lyman, ME - One term often used in reference to future medal winning U.S. high-performance equestrians, is the word 'development'. By further educating and integrating the athletes, judges, trainers, and supporters from all levels will help develop and evolve each discipline. The 2013 U.S. Para-Equestrian Dressage Symposium created the platform to accomplish this task. At the Carlisle Academy Integrative Equine Therapy & Sports in Lyman, Maine, internationally...

Kathleen Raine with Breanna (Lindsay McCall for HorseGirlTV.com) Del Mar, CA - Accuracy, elasticity, and quality describe the championship rides in Saturday’s 2013 Rancho Valencia Dressage Affaire CDI-YJ3*. Steffen Peters and Dutch Warmblood, Vaya Con Dios, earned the FEI Intermediaire I Test championship solidifying the dressage partnership for this past show jumper. Twenty year-old Amelia Child and Veto garnered the win in the FEI Young Rider Individual Test adding a top score to her...

Megan Nusz and Charlotte Jacobs Honored as East Conference Winners of the Show Jumping Hall of Fame Jumper Classic Series Nusz and Jacobs receive their awards from (l-r) Allan Shore, Treasurer of the National Horse Show Association of America; George Morris, President of the Show Jumping Hall of Fame; and Bill Weeks of Taylor Harris Insurance Services (PMG) Lexington, KY - Abigail McArdle and Cosma 20 won the $50,000 Show Jumping Hall of Fame Junior/Amateur-Owner Championship Presented by...

Temecula, CA - Michael Pollard, of Dalton, Ga., rode Schoensgreen Hanni to a narrow lead in the dressage phase of the CCI3* at the Galway Downs International Three-Day Event. Scoring 46.4 penalties, Pollard just eclipsed Phillip Dutton on Atlas (47.0). Hawley Bennett-Awad stands a close third on Five O’Clock Somewhere (48.2) and McKenna Shea is fourth on Landioso (48.4). “I was happy. It was probably the best dressage test we’ve done at a CCI. [We] just had a little bobble in...

The seventh in a series of guest blog posts from Michelle Binder Before we learn to read we must learn the ABC’s. William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle (1593-1676) suggested an analogy between the education of a child and horse trainers who made unrealistic demands on young horses. Centuries ago he asked, ‘I would fain ask such stupid people, whether, by beating a boy, they could teach him to read, without first showing him his alphabet?’1 Systematic progressive training is not...