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Other riders were not experienced with big- moving performance horses and some experienced


contact issues. Several handlers also exacerbated his head shyness through inexperience. “Cello was unfairly earning a bad reputation in the area. I decided to pasture him as I didn’t have time to ride him myself. I wanted to wait and be sure I put him with just the perfect rider. I didn’t want to take any more chances with him,” says Rebecca. One day last year, she received a phone call from a


young woman in her twenties who had moved up to her area. The woman’s name was Jamie Hoare, and she told Rebecca that she had a lot of experience training dressage horses and was eagerly looking for a horse to ride. “I was thrilled to get the call. Jamie sounded like just the right fit for Cello, but when I heard Jamie’s own story and recent history, I was surprised that she would consider inquiring about Cello, or any horse, for that matter.”


Riding Dreams For seven years, from age fourteen to twenty-one,


Jamie Hoare was fortunate to be a working student for international dressage trainer Leslie Reid based at Top Fox Farm in Langley, British Columbia. Jamie was able to frequently ride Leslie’s older Grand Prix Dutch Warmblood stallion Sea Fox which provided a great opportunity for Jamie to learn the upper levels of the sport. (Sea Fox passed away in November of 2011 at age 29.) “Besides working in Canada, I traveled with Leslie to California for the winters to groom and ride with her. It was hard work, but I loved every minute of it,” says Jamie. Jamie’s training career was off to a good start in 2003 when she accepted a training position with one of Leslie’s clients in Phoenix, Arizona. “After about three years of training in Arizona, I was feeling pain in my back, but I kept riding ‘through it.’ By 2008, the pain was too much, and I discovered that I had three herniated discs in my back. I couldn’t ride anymore,” she says. Surgery was Jamie’s only option if she had any hope of riding again. In Phoenix Jamie had her first diskectomy, where the


surgeon worked on two discs in her lumbar area. “The surgery didn’t work. Afterwards I tried to ride and found that I couldn’t,” she sadly reports. Six months later she was back on the operating table only to find out later that her second surgery didn’t fix her problems either. Discouraged and frustrated, Jamie moved back to British Columbia in the winter of 2009. She didn’t sit on


ABOVE: Jamie cooling out Leslie Reid’s horse Mark who competed in the 2004 Olympics. RIGHT: Jamie schooling Cello demonstrating his trot stretch work, which she does frequently to release tension and encourage his back to swing. Photos courtesy Jamie Hoare


62 March/April 2012


a horse for one and half years. She kept herself busy by working at a small animal vet clinic and volunteering at a local therapeutic riding program. But that inner passion to ride again was only temporarily stifled.


Another Setback Itching to sit on a horse again, one day in late 2010, Jamie


visited Leslie’s farm and hopped on a young horse to cool him out. She was walking him around on a long rein, when suddenly the horse spooked and Jamie took a bad spill. Tragically she fractured her thoracic vertebrae T6 in her back and dislocated a shoulder. A third surgery was recommended. This time the surgery was in Canada where they fused the lumbar with a metal mesh, and Jamie was on lots of bed rest and had little mobility for nine weeks. “This was a very difficult, painful time for me,” remarks Jamie,


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