Welcome to a new training series on Eventing Nation; we’re going to follow Allie Slusher diary style, as she develops two five year old mares in her barn, currently at training level, and prepares them for hopefully long and successful eventing careers. First of all, let’s meet Allie:
Allie is in her mid-twenties and has been based in Paris, Kentucky for a year since transplanting from California, “I miss my extended family at home the most; it’s going to take time to go to an event and feel like I know every person there – I’d been in California so long it was like always having an extended family so that’s definitely been a little bit more of a lonely feeling here, but I know that will just take time – everyone has been very welcoming here. I do miss the California events because I was on the circuit so long and I knew what to expect all the time, but again, that’s just time based here. What do I like most about Kentucky….? The space, the room, the accessibility to things, to have the training tools that we want right at our fingertips. There’s more of a horse community obviously, more than anything I’ve ever experienced in my life, it seems like there isn’t anyone that’s not involved with horses in some way, and having said that I really appreciate the connection I feel to people. We all share these ties to horses, whether it’s in the TB industry or standardbred, eventing or dressage…”
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Although the one hundred acre farm in the middle of the Bluegrass is undoubtedly a fantastic opportunity, it also comes hand in hand with enormous responsibility and massive commitment; Allie admitted that if circumstances had been different she might have loved to have been able to consider other options when she left home but hasn’t given up hope! “I do think that going to England and training with William for a year, or anything like that would be such a great learning experience but the fact of the matter is I personally own too many horses, it just was not a feasible decision for me. I had already committed my life to running a business, I was already too into that in California to be able to go back to being a working student. I’m learning just as much doing this, I’m just learning different things. Hopefully one day I’ll be able to spend some time in Europe and do some training there.”
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You may recognize Allie’s name from the 2011 Pan Am Games Short List, or from the USEF High Performance Training Grants. Allie has been a consistent presence on the West Coast eventing scene for many years and ridden through the three star level with a burning ambition to achieve much more. A Certified Level Three ICP Instructor, Allie rides about a dozen horses out of her barn, Dashaway Farm, and teaches, as well as breaking and rehabbing babies on a thoroughbred farm near Lexington during her lunch hours. As she faces her second winter in Kentucky Allie is pondering a short trip south to Ocala, but hopes to stay at home for most of it, “We’ll probably start at Pine Top in January, then maybe go down to Ocala and get some lessons from Buck (Davidson) in February. Obviously I’ll still be on a budget so I’ll have to watch how far I travel and for how long I go, and to not abandon the students I have here, and it will be a learning curve as to how I manage all that because in California we never had to leave for such an extended amount of time, but we’re tough girls here, we have no problem weathering the storm that we have. Hopefully we’ll be breaking ground on the indoor this week, so if the weather holds that will be done before the worst of the winter and we’ll be able to ride all the way through here.
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Komik
Komik is a five year old 16.3 hh Trakehner mare bred by Tim and Cheryl Holekamp. She’s by their famous stallion Windfall and out of a four star Trakehner mare Kokett that they also owned. Allie describes her as ” very brave, very opinionated, very much like her dad! She’s very talented and I’m very excited about her. She’s pretty straight forward on the jumping, and on the flat she’s going to be very fancy; she has a beautiful canter and a lovely disposition, she’s just working out where all her legs are right now. She thinks she’s the queen bee. She’s definitely feminine but she doesn’t really like to be loved on, she’s cool with or without you but she definitely likes her friends and she does sometimes get a little bit too attached to them. She’s very opinionated – you know where she is all the time, always! She’s not typical for a mare in the sense that I don’t feel like she goes into heat and I don’t feel like I deal with that very often, but she is typical in that she gets a bit herd-bound and she is opinionated and you need to compromise with her, you can’t just bully her around, but she’s definitely not prissy; you can treat her like one of the boys in the sense that she’s not weak, she’s very bold, very brave, and very happy to come out and do her job every day.”
Komik started eventing this year, and Allie tentatively feels she’ll be ready to move up to preliminary sometime next spring, “As soon as I feel like I have the rideability and we’re always working together, because she’s very talented and sometimes she feels like her opinion should trump mine, which is fine because I actually really appreciate that she is opinionated and tough, I think that will work for me in the long run, it’s just a matter of working out everybody’s roles right now. Once I feel like I really have that I’ll have no qualms about moving up.”
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The day I visited Allie at her farm Komik was enjoying a well-deserved day off in the field after strutting her stuff at the American Trakehner Association’s Annual Meeting the evening before in Ohio. Not only did she clear the 4″6′ joker fence in the Calcutta class with ease, but it was also a great opportunity for Allie to catch up with some of her owners who are members of the Syndicate,” that was fun for them to see her because it’s been a few months and she’s changed so much in the last year.” This is the first time Allie has been involved with syndication, and she told me it’s been beneficial for everyone, “I think it’s fun because other people get to be involved and it’s like a community rooting for one horse. Certainly there’s a little more work for me as far as communication goes but that’s probably something I needed to work on anyway. It’s been a nice opportunity for me to meet a whole lot of people associated with a great group that I would otherwise have not known had it not have been for the Holekamps. I really enjoy it, and once you get into the rhythm of communication that gets easier, and it’s all so cut and clear with who is responsible for what, that there isn’t that challenge or any awkwardness. I’ll certainly talk to Tim and Cheryl (Holekamp) about what is normal for certain bloodlines, and talk to the group and get their opinion on certain things, but I definitely feel as if I have their wholehearted support whenever I make any major decisions and that they’re all on board with what I think is the best plan.”
Komik has just completed her third training level event and I’ll be back at Allie’s farm next weekend to record her participation in the Sinead Halpin clinic.
On the Rocks (Roxy)
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A five year old Hanoverian Thoroughbred, Roxy came to Allie almost by accident; slightly too hot to be a hunter, her owner asked Allie to look at her to see if she knew anyone who might like to buy her. Allie remembers that she saw a chestnut mare in the cross ties and didn’t get her hopes up, but, “I hopped on her and picked up the trot and immediately I was like, ‘I want her!’ It was instant, it didn’t take longer than a second! I jumped her and nearly fell off because she jumped me out of the tack!” Luckily a week later her owner called Allie up and arranged for Roxy to stay with her a year, “Eventually she will be for sale but I hope it will be a fun experience for the owner to see the eventing world, and I get to ride and develop a nice horse for a while along the way. This is a fun situation because I get to put my stamp on a really talented horse and see it through, and see that it has the training that I want it to have and hopefully make somebody else very happy in the long run.”
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Although this is something of an ideal situation Allie will take most horses for sale, “as long as it’s a safe horse and I click with the owners,” but she’s obviously very fond of this mare. “She’s very talented but she was very green and she’s different. She’s very careful and very looky – you could tell she just hadn’t had all that much experience over different looking things and at different places. She’s a good girl though, very quiet wherever she goes but she has a lot more spunk to her once you get on her, it’s a very controlled hot, it’s not like she’s your typical chestnut mare that you would see running sideways or this and that, she just has so much power to every step that it takes a lot of muscling and training on her part to control it all, so she feels stronger than she is. When I first started riding her it felt like it was just power shooting out the front!”
Despite being the same age, and at roughly the same stage in their careers, what we hope will make this series interesting is how different these two mares are. We’ll be bringing you periodic reports of their progress via video, audio and written reports both of training at home, schooling and at competitions. If you have any questions about them in particular, or training young horses in general for Allie please address them in the comments section. I’d like to thank Allie for sharing her time and expertise in agreeing to embark upon this journey with us, and hope you’ll enjoy it as well as find it useful. Go Eventing!
