Featured Rider: Wendy and Knight

How Wendy found Better Dressage Scores:

With the Covid-19 pandemic and all shows being cancelled I heard that there were virtual shows. I then looked up on the internet and your program seemed so professional and the information on your website seemed like an amazing opportunity for us to continue with our testing. Working 7 days a week at my therapeutic riding center it is hard getting to shows. This helps us to show and progress.

I love the judges’ extra feedback option and I have been putting it right to work. This is a huge plus to a show and I wish all shows had it. It’s such a great way to learn!

Wendy and Knight’s story:

Knight is an OTTB that went to 2 homes before I found him. They just could not handle him or figure him out, but when I met him, my heart raced. My heart horse for years was Romeo, another OTTB who did it all: 4ft jumper, cross country, endurance and then special Olympian (I have a therapeutic center). He was retired and I was looking for my next jumper cross country partner.

When I found Knight, I knew he was mine. We could not get him on the trailer, and it took over a week to get him to me. Once we got him home, he was the most amazing horse and I fell in love. Once I started trotting poles on the ground, he jumped them like they were 10 feet tall, ditched them, and dumped me all the time, but once he knew the poles were there, he was amazing. The next day when we started it over again, it was as if we were starting from scratch. One day I was just had a gut feeling, (I have worked with enough horses) something is wrong physically. I thought what can it be? His vision! I went back to the barn and took photos of his eyes. He was blind. 75% one eye 50% the other.

I contacted the eye specialist and he said they were the biggest corpus nigra cysts he had seen. Not only did they affect his vision, the cysts moved. Every time I came to a pole, it looked like it moved to him. How scary this is for a horse!

I explained the trailer situation to the vet and he said he can’t gauge it. He came to us to perform laser surgery. After he did the surgery Knight could see for the first time probably in many years. The problem is his brain is imprinted with fear of poles and jumps, and I got dumped and broke my hip. We decided no more jumping and I love him so much we switched to dressage.

If you met him in one minute you would feel how special he is. How loving he is. He is mine. He is learning, he is anxious at times, but he tries so hard to please. He is my heart, my love, my partner. I will go on this journey at his pace and together we are succeeding. Slowly. But heck I’m 54 so I have no rush! I love our journey. He works in our veterans program and changes lives everyday. And that is the very short story of my partner, Imperial Knight.