Monday Video from Tredstep Ireland: In the Arena & the Feed Room with Elisa Wallace

Tredstep Ireland rider Elisa Wallace continually inspires me with her organic approach to horse training. Her latest vlog starts out with a session with Henri, her 2016 Retired Racehorse Project horse who finished second in the Eventing division, and the rapport between the two is apparent. I appreciate the way she uses play to engage the horse’s brain — both Elisa and Henri are clearly having fun.

“I think sometimes in working with these guys it’s kind of optimizing the things they’re good at instead of focusing on their weaknesses so much,” she says. “I find that if I focus on the things they enjoy doing I can kind of go around to the back door and get the weaknesses stronger that way.”

We then follow her to the feed room, where she discusses her well thought-out, individually based program based on feeds from Buckeye Nutrition. She explains that she doesn’t typically “I like to keep things pretty simple,” she says, noting that she doesn’t typically use a lot of supplements, but that she’s recently started using Hypona MagVet to address a magnesium deficiency discovered in Simply Priceless after Badminton.

Always neat to get a behind-the-scenes look at a top-class operation. Check out more of Elisa’s vlogs here.

Elisa was out and about at Jump Start H.T. over the weekend, using the event as a final outing with her current Thoroughbred Makeover horses, Vindicated and Fly With Me and winning an Open Prelim division with Riot Gear, a 2009 Oldenburg gelding owned by Steve and Vicki Sukup. Congrats!