PrintKate Gillespie isn’t exactly sure why she excels at her job as barn manager for Steffen and Shannon Peters’ Arroyo Del Mar, but she thinks it might have something to do with her upbringing.
“It comes pretty natural to me, most of it,” she said. “People are like, ‘How did you see that?’ or ‘How did you notice that?’ I don’t know if it’s from growing up in South Africa; I wanted to be a game ranger and live in the bush, and you become very aware of your surroundings out there.”
Whatever it is that makes Gillespie so diligent and uniquely suited to a life around horses, especially valuable ones like Akiko Yamazaki’s Ravel, is also what’s made her an invaluable team member for Steffen and Shannon. Gillespie started working for Shannon in 1999, making the move with her to Arroyo Del Mar in Del Mar, Calif., about five years ago.
“I don’t know that I’ve met another barn manager that can do everything she can do,” said Shannon. “You may find a ranch foreman who can operate the facility and also be a top-notch horseperson, but I’ve never met anyone else who could do both of those things really well. Either one, I think you could probably find someone who would be good at it, but finding the two together is really tough.
“She’s my best friend, first and foremost. But she’s a huge supporter of us, and she knows quite a bit about dressage, and she’s watched us for quite a long time. She is as good an eye on the ground as anyone,” Shannon added.
Cape Town to Colorado to California
Though Gillespie, 42, has spent the last 12 years working for some of the top dressage trainers in the country, she got her own equestrian start in the eventing world. After riding through the advanced level in South Africa and nearly qualifying for the World Equestrian Games with one horse before he was injured, Gillespie found herself in Colorado. It was there she made a fortuitous connection.
“I was running a barn in Cape Town with 60-odd horses, but it wasn’t anything special. In 1999, I just came to visit some friends and got offered a job, and it kind of went from there,” said Gillespie. “Shannon drove in one day and said, ‘I’m looking for someone to run my barn.’ It was good timing, just luck of the draw on my part. So I started working for her, and I’ve been with her ever since.”
Even with her background in eventing, when Gillespie started looking to work in a barn, she found dressage facilities a more natural fit.
“I just like the way they look after their horses,” she said. “Eventers have a bad name on how they look after their horses, and for the most part it’s sort of true. I have a higher standard for horse care. That’s the best part about working for Steffen and Shannon—just the way they treat the horses. They don’t take shortcuts on anything.”
But there was just one minor roadblock when Gillespie started working for Shannon.
“The first month she worked for me, I think I must have said, ‘What did you say?’ about a thousand times because I could not understand her accent,” Shannon said. “That’s been a running joke between us since then.”
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