Sacred Equestrians
22623 64 th Ave V2Y 2N8 Langley, BC, Canada

Hello Eventers, here is the list of competitions for 2021: Also - we are currently making plans for clinics, and more info will be coming in January. Merry Christmas!! Stay safe!!

USDF is saddened to report that dressage clinician, competitor, and prolific author Jane Savoie died January 4, 2021, at the age of 72. She had battled major he...alth issues for five years, including the blood cancer multiple myeloma. Aboard the 1981 Dutch-bred gelding Zapatero, Savoie was the reserve rider for the 1992 US Olympic dressage team. She went on to attain numerous Grand Prix-level honors and national rankings with a succession of mounts, including Eastwood, Genaldon, and Jolicoeur. Savoie counted Herbert Rehbein, Robert Dover, and Cindy Sydnor among her most important dressage teachers. As an instructor herself, she was the dressage coach for the 1996 and 2004 Canadian Olympic eventing teams, and she coached her friend Susan Blinks to a team bronze medal at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Another well-known student is Savoie’s close friend the dressage professional Ruth Hogan-Poulsen. A gifted motivational speaker, writer, and teacher, Savoie endeared herself to legions of riders, especially adult amateurs, with her unflagging encouragement and cheerful enthusiasm. She recognized and appreciated adult amateurs’ dedication and struggles to master the sitting trot, deal with spooky horses and show nerves, and other dressage dilemmas. She never condescended to adult amateurs and they loved her for it, flocking to her clinics, buying her books, and subscribing to her online Dressage Mentor program, where they felt they had found a friend in Savoie and her tales of life with her Friesian, Moshi, and her dog, Indy. Savoie was one of the first to bring the science of sport psychology to the equestrian world. Her first and best-known book, That Winning Feeling! Program Your Mind for Peak Performance, was published in 1992 and is now in its eighth edition. She also championed dressage as useful training for every horse, as evidenced by such books as Cross-Train Your Horse and her final nonfiction work, Dressage Between the Jumps: The Secret to Improving Your Horse’s Performance, published in 2020. Always up for a challenge, Savoie took up several new endeavors later in life. She began ballroom dancing at the age of 63. Her first attempt at writing fiction, the romance novel Second Chances, set in the world of dressage, was published less than one month before her death. For her many contributions to American dressage, Savoie was inducted into the Roemer Foundation/USDF Hall of Fame in 2019. *Note: USDF strongly recommends all riders wear protective headgear when mounted.

From Soda, Prize, Duey and Ollie!! #sacredequestrians #ridinglessons #thebestschoolhorses

Somewhere in the world, the 2028 Olympic champion is a foal out in a field. He’s ewe-necked, sickle-hocked, downhill and shaggy, with a club foot and a chunk of... mane missing, because his buddy chewed it off. Somewhere in the world, there’s a young horse that everyone says is too short to make it big. In three years, he’ll be jumping the standards, but right now he’s fat and short and no one is paying him any mind. Somewhere in the world there’s a 7-year-old who can’t turn right, and a 10-year-old who has not shown the ability to put more than two one-tempis together without losing it, and a 14-year-old who hasn’t yet reached his peak, and all of them will be at the next Olympic Games. Somewhere else in the world, there’s a rider who is thinking of packing it in. Maybe the bills are getting out of control, or she’s killing herself to get enough help in her own riding development because she’s having to spend all her time riding and teaching to make ends meet and change needs to happen, and she’s wondering if it’s worth it. She’s thinking it’s time to just give up and be a local trainer, to shelve her dreams of international competition. And then she’s going to shake off the doubt, double down, and make a team in the next 15 years. Somewhere in the world, one of the next great team riders is 9 years old and couldn’t tell if she was on the right posting diagonal if her life depended on it. Somewhere in the world there’s a future team rider who just got told that she’ll never make it because she’s too chubby, because she’s too short, because she’s too late. There are horses who will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars that will never amount to anything, and there are horses who will be touted as the Next Big Thing only to be never seen or heard from again, and there are horses who will fly under the radar until suddenly they’re setting the world on fire. There are riders who will win Junior and Young Rider competitions only to quit riding completely, riders who will be touted as the Next Big Thing only to get stuck in their comfort zones and never come to fruition, and there are riders who will make their first Olympic team at 50, at 55, at even older than that. And yes, there are the horses that will be brilliant from day one, and there are the riders for whom success both comes early and stays late. But more often than not, history has shown that the unlikely story, the horse who was passed over in favor of his more expensive stablemate, the rider who no one saw coming, is the more likely path to greatness. Credit and written by Lauren Sprieser at Chronicle Of The Horse

love a good play on words!

Some horse humor

Amazing rider and brilliant trainer plus phenomenal horse. They make it look easy!!

One of 4 heart horses I’ve been fortunate to know. Love him to bits! His first time teaching a 4 year old! He was so careful and conscientious! A very special boy!

If the horse that you are riding is not the horse that you feel secure and comfortable while riding, there are 59,999,999 other horses out there----- Just a thought-----