I have always loved horses. When I was young, I had hair down to my waist. I used to pretend I was a horse and jump over things. I had a plastic horse collection to rival anything. I read ”National Velvet” several times, especially after someone accused me of looking like Elizabeth Taylor. I read every other horse book there was. The only reason I ever played with dolls was so they could ride horses. All my friends were like that, too. We played
”Fury” and ”Black Beauty.” Yet I don`t think I ever even touched a horse until my family moved to the Chicago area from California, where I had grown up in the city. One of the things my parents wanted when we moved was to give me a chance to ride horses.
My parents did not ride at all. I have two brothers and a sister. All of us were really swimmers. My older brother started taking riding lessons when I did, but he dropped out for football in high school. My sister pursued diving and even got a scholarship to the University of Illinois. My younger brother took up riding and he was fairly good. But high school sports took up too much of his time.
The first time I ever came to Tempel was over 20 years ago. A friend of mine was in Pony Club, which is like Girl Scouts on horseback. We came up here to help construct fences for the local fox hunt. I can remember standing on the hillside seeing these white horses way, way off in the pasture. There were about five or six of us little girls standing there, and these horses came galloping up to us, and they just wanted to be petted. We fed them grass, and later on I found out I was at Tempel Farms.
I used to doodle (drawing) some of the barns in the margins of my notebooks throughout high school. For me the stable was my base. That was my neighborhood. Even when I didn`t have a horse to ride, we still congregated at the stable. I even pretended my bike was even a horse. It had three speeds:
walk, trot and canter. My high school friends were secondary to my friends at the stable.
At that time the farm wasn`t open to the public. The owner, Tempel Smith, was still alive, and he used to give only private performances. I saw a couple of those when he gave them for the hunt. I think I was in college when a friend of mine brought me to Tempel Farms during a school break. I was going to school in Vienna, and I came to the farm theoretically to practice my German. He showed me this place, and he said, ”It`s too bad you can`t take lessons; they don`t offer lessons, and they really don`t have women here.”
In college I majored in art history, I know that has nothing to do with horses. As a matter of fact I used to walk past the Spanish Riding School (in Vienna) twice a day; once again Lippizans wove their way through my life.
After I graduated from college and realized the world was not going to pick me up and put me as some president of some company, I started in publishing as a secretary and worked my way up to editorial and production. I ended up being a production supervisor for a real-estate and financial-textbook publisher in Chicago. That`s when I met George (Williams, director of Lippizans and dressage training at Tempel Farms). I was going to be CEO of my own company one day and I was never going to get married and I was never going to leave the city and I was never going to change my name and, God forbid, if I would ever have children.
When I first met my husband, it had nothing to do with horses. It was a blind date, and we didn`t talk about horses for the first year. He rode dressage, and I was a hunter jumper, and what I wanted to do more than anything on horseback was jump the biggest jumper in the world. I like that kind of chills and thrills. And then slowly I watched him ride and would watch his clinics and his lessons, and everything he said made sense. I had been struggling with a horse that I had bought and I was getting nowhere with, and I had fancied myself to be a trainer.
So after the first year, I asked him if he could help me with the horse. He did, and that`s when I realized that dressage is more than riding around in circles and looking pretty on a horse. It really is a very intellectual pursuit, and it`s an art form. That`s the reason he`s involved in it, because he feels that in dressage, like ballet, you can take a person`s body, a horse`s body, and really sculpt it and make it more flexible and make it more supple. Then what we do here are like the great leaps that Baryshnikov does, but we do them on horseback.
One day this man approached me; George was training his horses, and he wanted me to run this business he was starting. It was really a crazy business. He was importing frozen semen from horses in Europe to the United States. Stallions over in Europe were just incredibly good horses, nothing like what we have over here. It was just a matter of importing and marketing it.
The man kept after me and kept after me. I quit the publishing company and went to work for him. I had to convince people that it was safe and the offspring wouldn`t have two horns because it was frozen.
So I worked for two years. The man decided to turn his efforts elsewhere and the frozen semen company sort of folded.
In the meantime, I had finally bit the dust, fallen in love with this man who literally rode around on white horses and swept me off my feet. And here I was living in the country, no longer in the city. I got married, I changed my name, and I doubt if I am going to be CEO of any company. And we`re talking about having children.
So everything that I said I was going to do completely changed. Tempel Farms started asking me whether I would be interested in doing some marketing, and I thought, ”This was it.” This was the perfect job because I could use my background in horses and I can take what I really like doing best, which is promotions and that sort of creative thing, and put the two together.
I function as an adviser to people from the outside on what`s correct and incorrect as far as horses and dressage are concerned. There are so many different facets of the horse world, it is like so many different forms of dance. In dressage you have to be patient. It is a special talent; it is more than being athletic or coordinated. You need compassion, you are dealing with an animal. Horses really are a passion.
I look at the quality of all our overall performances. I make sure the uniforms look right, that the music quality is good and people can hear and understand it. I look at what segments are popular with the audience. When we are short-staffed for a performance, I also ride. No one is supposed to stand out; it is more like a chorus line. I am looking at the overall presentation of everything; the actual changes are made by someone else.
Basically the Spanish Riding School is a little male empire. Occasionally they`ll have female riders come in for a short time as a working student or in a student capacity, but never employed there. We worked very much the same way when Mr. Smith was alive. He tried to follow as much as possible the traditions of the Spanish Riding School, so he didn`t allow any women over here in this barn other than as spectators.
Having women involved here now in one way was a big deal and in another it wasn`t, because we`re all professionals and they don`t make a big deal out of me being a part of it. When I get on horseback, I`m a rider. I`m no longer a woman, and they`re no longer really men.
I think when we come to the point where we have a woman in the
”Quadrille” act (the final and most difficult and intricate of the acts, performed by riders on horses they have trained), there`ll be a little bit of resistance, but I don`t think very much. They (the men) do recognize us for our abilities and our talents and not for our sex. It`s nice that way. I never thought I could be gainfully employed in horses. It really does hook you. I know that I`m perfectly miserable when I can`t ride.
