About me

About Me

Welcome to Attainable Dressage and Horsemanship. In my decades of time with horses I have learned much, maybe accomplished a few impressive things, and made a lot of mistakes. I’m certainly not the best in anything, but since I have never had lot of resources, I think I have learned a lot the “hard way.” When the learning is hard, you have to be resourceful. While the are many mistakes along the way, there are many valuable lesson. All I want to do is share my knowledge to help others. 

​Don’t let anyone tell you what you need to do or have to buy. Hard work is always better. In the picture on the right is me on my first horse, an Appy/TB I got from the horse camp I went to at 17. The horse camp was probably my best base in learning horsemanship. I never could afford lessons or instructions, so I just did what I could with him doing the best I could. I wanted to learn, but knew regular lessons were not going to be useful, and I certainly couldn’t afford the “best.”I ended up going to a horse college for nine months at 20 and having access to some top dressage, western, and jumping training–I was the only person that did all three because I wanted to get an education. And of course I wasn’t interested in dressage! I  really wanted to do the fun jumping and three day. After that, I ended up in Virginia for about six months working for a three day event trainer who was fresh off a gold medal team win in the Olympics. It was brutal and almost broke me mentally and physically, but I was cleaning and riding all day, riding one top level eventer and ponying another all day long to condition them. THAT was an invaluable lesson to learn. Learning how to pony and condition horses is something everyone should have to learn right from the very beginning. Horses are athletes, and conditioning is the key to everything. 

When I came back,  I ended up working for a hunter/jumper trainer for awhile. I learned more about course designer because she did that as well as training. I finally ended up starting to bring the dressage trainer from the now defunct horse college to my area for clinics (he had been long listed for the Olympics and to this day still works as a trainer) and somehow all of that clicked. I would bring him in once or twice a year for clinics as I could manage, and that was the totality of the help I had. I could afford to show dressage (versus an real H/J shows or eventing) and my Appy adored it. We started showing dressage when he was about 12 and went to our first championships at 3rd level. We did OK. He never had an extended trot, but was super talented and could half pass, pirouette, and do the tempi changes up the whazoo. We did try GP a few times, but he never had a passage (though he could piaffe up a storm) and when we got out all time high score of %58, I gave it up. We settled in at I-1 and started doing freestyles, competing until he was 28. At about 16 I accidentally discovered he was partially blind, and he slowly got worse over time. By about 23 he was completely blind, though you couldn’t tell by his eyes. By the time it was obvious he was blind, the USEF had changed the rules and completely blind horses were legal to compete. 

https://www.ipshr.com/Tribute%20Page/Bimbo’s%20Tribute%20Page.htm

In those years I was one of the first people to go through the L (learner) judge program and passed with distinction, which meant I was qualified to go through the other programs in licensing. I never did because I could not afford it, and it’s certainly not something you make you money back on. Over the years I worked with Dennis H. Callin a lot, and call him my friend, as well as did symposiums with Bengt Ljungquist, clinics with Lilo Fore, Sonya Vracko, and other people as presented to learn where I could. Back when, CDS used to have amazing symposiums to attend and watch the whole processof trainers like Kyra Kyrklund, Aky Van Grunsven