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past. In the stall, she’s more emotional. She gets attached to other horses. Fergie and she are best friends. I have to sell her because we’re going to buy a house and start a family. I will be heart broken, but now it’s time for my family. Fergie is more emotional and sensitive where Ellie is bolder


and less worried. All three of us, my dog and my husband when he isn’t working travel together. We’re very close. I can ride one and pony the other. I like that it’s not just all business. I ride 12 horses a day. I get on. I get off. But it’s totally different with Fergie and Ellie. ■ JAN: Rafalca wants to be in your lap. We have funny things


we do with her. In the morning I walk in the barn and she gets her carrot and apple. Then she has this one spot on her neck she wants you to scratch for hours while she closes her eyes and stretches out her neck. She is a worker who every day comes out and wants to


please. She is seasoned and has really improved over the last few years in her piaffe and passage, and in just the way she looks. Her muscling and tone has gotten so great. I think there is a whole other level in her with much more expression. I’ve been getting great things at home and only partially at shows. You never really have a finished Grand Prix horse. They know the movements, but they get better. Their muscle tone and ridability improves. As for Sandrina, my other Grand Prix mare, she likes her space. If you look at another horse, Sandrina bangs on the stall.


Then when you go to her she puts her ears back. Rafalca gets her treats first and Sandrina bangs on the stall. You give her the apple and one pet, but that’s it. ‘Don’t touch me.’ Sandrina is very trainable, very smart, and a hard worker. She


is still green at Grand Prix with a lot to learn. She is very talented for passage; piaffe is harder. She knows all the movements, but mostly she needs work on submission and self-carriage and engagement that makes the piaffe.


WT: Jan, you say that neither Rafalca nor Sandrina are “marish.” Did Rafalca being a mare have something to do with her performance at the 2009 World Cup Final when her tension seemed to spoil her performance?


■ JAN: In 2007, we debuted at Grand Prix at the World Cup


when I was asked to demonstrate the Grand Prix test for a full house before the competition began. We got a standing ovation and she was great. For the 2009 World Cup test, when we were on the team, her performance was extremely uncharacteristic. She can look at stuff, but she never refuses to go there. It certainly caught me by surprised. Maybe it was a bit of being a mare. She was scared and she was determined not to go there. End of story. We looked at videos; discussed it with my coach. We suspect it was the smoke from fireworks which went off right before my test. I was too busy to notice, but you can see smoke on the video. It was definitely a very dark hour or ten minutes in my riding career. But that is horses, and horses do that. I’m sure there’s a reason those things happen. Maybe to make us humble.


WT: Does it take a certain personality to work with mares?


■ JOHN: Some people want all horses to mold into their


way of riding or training. I don’t think you can do that with a mare. They want to go their own way to some extent and you have to figure that out. I must say if I was looking for a horse for an amateur novice client, I would only buy a mare if I knew she had been doing the job and had experience. That way I have an idea of the mare’s personality. When you get a novice client that wants to buy a green horse, a gelding would be more what I would be looking for because I wouldn’t know how the green mare would react to mistakes or how sensitive the mare was. But there are awesome mares that have great attitudes that you could buy for a novice rider. ■ ALLIE: I wrote mares off because I thought it took a certain


Allie Slusher and Juicy Couture at the Woodside Horse Trials in August. Photo © Amy E. Riley


56 November/December 2010


personality to ride them. Now I don’t think so. I don’t think I do anything special to get along with them. I’m lucky to have two very good mares that I click with and we try hard together. For


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