The Journey

Katie brings generations worth of horse sense and knowledge to her training - having grown up on a horse boarding and training farm with a mother that's also a Silver Medalist Dressage Trainer; being with horses, training, and riding has always just been a way of life.

Falling in love with Dressage at just 8 years old, Katie is now a USDF Bronze Medalist with Distinction and Silver Medalist that she accomplished on her self-trained horse and currently, training towards her Intermediare 1 Debut in 2024. She is also passionate about teaching, having helped multiple students earn their USDF Bronze Medals.  Continuously investing in higher education, she is currently working towards her USDF Judge License in the USDF L-Program, which is  an “ educational training program that teaches judges to evaluate the correct training of dressage horses.”

Katie firmly believes that in order to be a great teacher and trainer, one must be an eternal student themselves. One must always be open to continuing to learn, study theory, and invest in their own lessons and education.  Some of Katie’s personal studies and interests include furthering her knowledge of Biomechanics, Mindfulness, Meditation, and sports psychology with future plans to become accredited in these fields as well.

Throughout her life and in recent years, Katie has been consistently training and clinicing with many respected Judges, Team Coaches, Olympians, and internationally competitive FEI/Grand Prix Trainers such as:

Adam Lastowka, Roel Theunissen, Sandy Osborn, Lisa Wilcox, Liz Austin, Lyndon Rife, Stacy Hastings, Katie Poag, Shawna Harding, Natalie Lamping, Jayne Ayers, Julio Mendoza, Scott Hasler, Paul Belasik, Jeremy Steinberg, Anne Gribbons, Laura Abner, Christoph Theallet, Jochen Hippenstiel, and Felicitas von Neumann.

Her personal philosophy as a trainer is to incorporate mindfulness in her riding and training, evolving her technique to become as light, harmonious, and “with the horse” as possible.

Clients and students describe Katie as having a soft, creative, intuitive, yet, effective Classical Dressage approach.

With Katie’s diverse and extensive background, she is able to work with all breeds, confirmations, ages, and dispositions. She has been described as a kind trainer and gained the reputation of taking her time, creating a well-rounded program with her training horses to give them an excellent foundation or “re-starting”  that enables them to be developed up the levels.

Katie also values incorporating the art of horsemanship that involves so much more than just learning to ride. It involves how you interact with your horse, the proper handling, nutrition, ground-work, manners, and learning as much as you can from horse behavior to care. The Art Horsemanship should go hand in hand with learning to ride.

Katie has big dreams for her two horses Fjorde do Castanheiro (Fernando) and Levander and is training diligently to pursue her dreams of Grand Prix with aspirations of debuting in the CDI ring on her self-trained horses.

Levander, is a 2016 16.3h KWPN by Special D. Katie purchased him as a 2 year old with the goal of having the entire journey with him, to start him and to train him up to Grand Prix herself. It’s a long journey ahead, though he shows great potential and talent for it. Katie is enjoying every moment of developing this special horse.

Fernando, Fjorde do Castanheiro, is a 2009 Lusitano imported from Brazil. Katie acquired him in October of 2019 under the notion that he was a professional’s project horse. Through patient, deliberate training, Fernando has transformed. A once very reactive and flighty horse, Fernando is now calm, steady, and happy in his work, even acting as a schoolmaster for Katie’s students. Katie has developed and shown him from First Level to debuting Prix St George in Summer of 2023 with multiple scores in the 60’s at FEI, and earning her Silver on her self-trained horse.  He is now schooling Intermediare 1, and Katie is aiming to debut I1 in the Spring of 2024 with dreams of earning her Gold on with Fernando.

Katie is passionate about learning as well as being a teacher, and is always fine-tuning her teaching techniques to better and more clearly articulate her vast knowledge and lifetime of experience to her students and horses.