In his inexperience, it didn’t matter that the mare didn’t
have any formal under-saddle training. “She had followed horses on trails,” he continues. “I had no idea what I was doing but I liked her so I bought her.” “The first horse I looked at, a Thoroughbred cross, failed
the vet check,” he continues. “I always wanted a non-tradi- tional dressage horse to prove to myself and to show people that a non-traditional horse could do dressage.” No sooner did Matt bring Gracie home than he realized
she was going to be more than a handful. “I honestly tried to return her. I put her up for sale, I can’t tell you how many times, the first year,” he remembers. But it was as if word had gotten out that Gracie was incorrigible. Matt simply couldn’t sell her. So he rode her, or tried to. That first year he rode Gracie
in a western saddle for a little added security. “You’d get on her and she wouldn’t move, she’d literally stand in place, all four feet planted. I tried someone on the ground with a lunge whip to get her to move but she wouldn’t,” Matt recounts.
Early Success “So I just kept plugging away at it,” Matt says of his determi- nation with the mare. Finally back in an English saddle, he began to show her in open shows in pleasure and equita- tion classes at a local riding club and, to his surprise, they did very well. The next year they won in almost every class their riding club had to offer, winning ribbons and champion- ships, including the one for most competitive horse and rider. Then the pair took on a new challenge of entering dressage schooling shows and became the western Maine dressage champions with an average score of 70%. “I’ve done just about everything with her,” Matt says, “from
show jumping and galloping in snow fields to cross country schooling jumps as high as four feet.” It took, he says, many years of bonding for the pair to succeed. “She’s definitely a mare. It was a long process and took lots of time. Finally things just started to click.” After finding his rhythm with Gracie in the dressage arena,
Matt set a new goal for himself: to participate in Lendon’s Dressage 4 Kids Program. He was able to ride in two clinics on a borrowed horse and all went well. Matt, turning twenty, then set his sights on another goal:
to participate in Lendon’s Winter Intensive Training Program, a three-month program in Florida that is part of Lendon’s larger Emerging Dressage Athlete Program. Initially, Matt did not earn a spot in the WIT. “Then Lendon e-mailed me to ask if I was still interested and I said yes.” At the time, Gracie was only schooling First Level, with no
lateral work, so Matt thought it best to take another horse. The barn manager where he was boarding Gracie at the time had a Holsteiner 17-hand mare that Matt had ridden in one of the D4K clinics. “But unfortunately she wasn’t sound for Florida,” he recounts. “Matt called me and said he couldn’t come because the horse he was going to take wasn’t sound and I said, ‘well what about your own horse?’” Lendon recalls. Matt explained
With bags packed and Gracie ready to go, Matt trailered
Gracie to Florida himself. Almost as soon as they arrived, Gra- cie colicked. “She’d never colicked in her life,” says Matt. It was a very difficult ordeal, but Gracie fortunately recovered. Matt found the WIT program to be just what it says it is—
intensive. Generally there are 10 to 15 kids who make up each session, with no minimum age; selection is based in part on the rider’s level of maturity, so it’s geared for the serious young rider. “They’re busy all day,” says Lendon. “They ride five days a week, do all their own horse care and help around the barn,” she explains. Then there’s a fitness/workout program every day as well, lectures and a field trip. Some of the riders still in school are home schooled, while others have made ar- rangements with their school to work long distance.
All three photos: Young Matt Baillargeon and his PMU mare ‘Gracie’ get their feet wet at the FEI levels showing Prix St. Georges in Maine last year.
Warmbloods Today 27
that Gracie was a Percheron/Quarter Horse mare only at First Level. Lendon encouraged him to bring his mare to Florida anyway. She remembers that at that point his dream was to reach Third Level. “It was a very far-fetched goal to want to show at Third Level,” Matt says now, “but I was determined to do that in Florida.”
Florida Bound Getting to Florida at all was proving to be a challenge for the pair. Matt’s finances were very tight. “I had no clue how I was going to come up with the funds for the trip to Florida,” he says. There would be the monthly fee of $2,600, which did not include housing, another $900 per month. All told, the three-month venture would cost close to $20,000. Lesley Elston, a neighbor who provided a stall for Gracie
for a time and who is also Matt’s dentist, stepped forward and gave him the deposit of $1,000 for the WIT program. “I just gave the deposit to Lendon and kept my fingers crossed,” says Matt. Next Matt’s father stepped forward to fulfill his goal. “I can’t thank my father enough,” he continues. “He put everything on a credit card with the agreement that when I came home I would work to help repay him.”
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