How I Became An Equine Professional (With Gratitude to Heidi)

You have to understand, being a working student is not like being an assistant trainer, its not like being a client, and it’s not like being a friend. It’s a very particular combination of all of those. For me, Heidi was my mentor, my manager, my instructor, as well as my friend. We worked and rode side-by-side nearly every day for years. She became like family to me. I watched her kids grow up, ate holiday meals with her family, and every year she baked me a gorgeous birthday cake. Together we worked with exceptional horses, average horses, and a few difficult horses. However, we did far more than that. Together we organized, cleaned, managed, painted, fed, groomed, showed, and strategized for a farm. I didn’t just learn to ride from her, I learned how to be a professional.

I learned so many things from Heidi, things I never would have learned if I had started with her as an assistant trainer. I came in knowing I had a lot to learn, which meant I got to ask a lot of questions, questions I maybe would have been too embarrassed to ask if I had come in as “someone who was suppose to know something”. As a working student I took advantage of the fact that I didn’t know the answers, and used that opportunity to ask someone who did. I drank in the answers. And slowly, so slowly I didn’t realize it was happening, my understanding changed.

I was client or a student of several trainers before I became Heidi’s working student, and the dynamics when you are a client are different. Being a paying client meant that I always got my allotted 45 minute lesson twice a week, maybe watched another lesson or two and hung around the barn, but that was it. I had my lesson, got my notes, and went home. As a working student, my learning was not allotted to 45 minutes twice a week. It was a part of almost every long day, six days a week, 51 weeks a year, for years and years. Sometimes that education was on the back of a horse, sometimes it was ringside watching and asking questions while Heidi began the half-steps of passage, and sometimes it was wrapping and re-wrapping my polo wraps until they were perfect. The learning of specific skills or training techniques was just the half of it. You see, Heidi was honest and open with me about what its like to climb the ladder in this industry, an industry that can be incredibly petty, cronyistic, and hard to break in to. And when I was talking to Heidi, she didn’t sugar-coating anything. You don’t get that kind of access or honesty as a client, it’s a different dynamic. She told me about her mistakes and failures, her triumphs, her good horses, and her bad horses. We would talk for hours while we did barn chores, went to pick up a horse, waited for a client to arrive, or finished out the last ride of the day. Our conversations ranged from how she became a Grand Prix rider, to the horse who took her to the U.S. League World Cup, to her time training at the German Olympic Center (DOKR) in Warendorf. I asked her questions I could ask no one else: how she dealt with difficult situations, difficult people, and how she managed things when they went very wrong. All of those conversations shaped how I view and the navigate the industry to this day, and they helped me understand her and her view of the world.

Society throws around the word “inspiring” a lot, but it took on a new meaning to me. To watch Heidi ride, to watch the progress of the horses under her care, and to see what riding and teaching can look like, drove me to learn as much as I could. I saw virtually every one of her rides, for years. No other person had that privilege. I spent years watching mastery in action, and when you spend that many hours soaking in what riding is supposed to look like, it changes you. It changed me.

I’m not going to romanticize it, however, there are parts of being a working student that are incredibly hard. The very physical part of it is enough to break some people. For me, the physicality of it was exhausting, but the mental and emotional aspect was even more difficult. I was awed and incredibly intimidated working for Heidi. It was intimidating to ride, struggle and fail in front of her. By the same token, seeing that kind of talent also caused me to question my own ability. Every. Single. Day. However, it was my awe of Heidi and my belief that this re-education would be worth it that kept me coming back to struggle some more, day after day after day. And struggle I did. I had to re-learn how to ride a horse, and I mean from the ground up. After I had been riding, showing, and jumping for 15 years, I had to relearn it all over again. This time it was correct, however, so it was infinitely more difficult. I don’t think I can tell you how painful that was. Believe me when I tell you it wasn’t because my ego was bruised, that’s not it at all. I had been riding for so long, it had become so much a part of my identity, how I knew myself as myself, that undoing how I fundamentally understood it felt like breaking a significant portion of myself. And that, more than any other single aspect, almost broke me.

The key word is there is “almost”. I survived, and part of the reason was my relationship with Heidi. In my darkest hour, when I felt that my riding was only getting worse, I was unable to pay my bills by myself, and the horse who was my entire world had just been diagnosed with a rare and fatal form of cancer, I told Heidi I didn’t think I was good enough to do this. I told her I didn’t know if the pain of this life was worth continuing on. In her understated and truthful way she told me this was hard, this was how it went sometimes, but that she saw my own unique abilities and thought I had a chance at this. She didn’t say I could definitely do this, she didn’t tell me I was a phenomenal rider, she just told me I had a chance. That was all I needed. It gave me enough breathing room to realize I could keep going. So I did.

—— Epiloge——

I was a part-time working student for Heidi for 3 years and I was her full-time assistant for almost 5 years. Those 7 years I spent with Heidi impressed her method, her thought process, and her teaching style on me. Now as I navigate the equine world as a freelance trainer/rider, I feel I carry her wisdom with me. I teach a lot like she did. I explain things the same way, I structure my lessons the same way, I even use the same words and metaphors. I ride with her in my mind. When I encounter an issue, I stop and think “What would Heidi tell me right now?”, and her advice always comes back to me. Everything I learned from her make it possible for me to be the professional I am today. So take note, you generations of working students that will come after me, being a working student is not how you learn to ride. You can do that in lessons. Working at a barn to make money, make a name, and climb the ladder is what you do as an assistant trainer. Being a working student is what you do when you want to learn how to do it right. How to ride, how to run a barn, how to turn out to a high standard, how to teach, how to wrap a horse, and how to be a professional; thats why I became a working student.