Recovering from the death of a horse, especially when that horse is your competition partner, is rough on any rider. When that rider is a 13-year-old girl, and that horse is not only an athlete but also her pet and dies in a sudden tragedy, it’s a real blow.

That was all a reality for Jamie Buis—now 14, the young rider lost her equitation horse, Uno, to monensin poisoning from contaminated feed in January of 2015.

But the loss has only hardened Buis’ resolve. She bounced back with an even more steadfast determination to succeed at the sport, and it showed when she pulled off a blue ribbon finish with her new horse in the low junior jumper classic at Week 8 of the Winter Equestrian Festival, Wellington, Fla., on March 4-6.

Jamie Buis and VDL d’Inzeo on their way to a win in the $10,000 Maria Mendelsohn Low Junior Jumper Classic. Photo by Sportfot. 

Buis comes across in conversation as very mature for her age, but ask her about VDL d’Inzeo, her new horse, and it’s clear you’re talking to a teen in love.

“Oh my gosh, he’s the most amazing horse,” Buis said of “Zeo.” “He has the biggest heart. He will jump anything because he tries so hard for me. The second the buzzer goes off for the jump-off, he just takes off. He so knows that he won. He was so happy. 

“He’s the sweetest. You can just go in his stall and love on him,” Buis continued. “And he will just sit there and lick and rub on you; he’s the sweetest horse.”

Jamie Buis and Zeo. Photo by Carissa Lynn. 

It’s hard to believe that just more than a year ago, the Chronicle was calling Jamie and her mother, Debra, for a very different conversation. Grain produced for horses was accidently contaminated with monensin, a chemical used in medicated feed for cows and poultry but deadly to horses, and it was slowly but surely killing off the horses who had eaten it at Masterpiece Equestrian Center in Davie, Fla. 

Jamie was two years younger then but not any less serious about her goals in the show ring. Before the monensin issues surfaced, the family purchased her Uno in February 2014. He was a tried and true equitation horse for Jamie to start moving up the levels and making a name for herself in the 3’6″ equitation classes.

Once the farm discovered what they were facing, working or riding the horses was a non-starter. Monensin causes damage to the heart tissue in horses, eventually causing heart failure. Essentially, all the horses who had ingested the feed suffered damage to their hearts that would eventually prove fatal. Jamie’s horse, Uno, was able to live comfortably without working until January of 2015, when the family decided to put him down.

During the months when Uno was still alive but unable to be ridden (the initial poisoning occurred in late November of 2014), Jamie said many of the girls at the stable decided to quit riding altogether. But giving up horses and riding never crossed Jamie’s mind. She was serious about the sport from Day 1, and that sentiment was unshakable. 

“This is a kid who I would go into her room to check if she was sleeping, and she would be under the covers reading horse books,” Jamie’s mother, Debra, said. “She would be watching videos for hours, of her short-stirrup rounds, to see what she was doing wrong, and she still does that.” 

“I told my trainer, ‘I do not want to stop. I do not want to stop showing. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life,’ ” Jamie said. “So she actually found a barn for me where I was able to ride and show [while Uno was sick], so I knew I didn’t want to stop. I obviously wanted to be able to ride my horse, but the motivation to ride didn’t stop at all.”

But Jamie is the first to tell you it was not smooth sailing back into the show ring. “It was really difficult—I would get off a lot of the days, most of the days actually, and just bawl,” Jamie said. “It was super difficult, and even Zeo reminds me a lot of Uno.”

Uno is buried at the farm of his previous owner of six years, Christi Israel. On the day he died, Jamie posted a long heartfelt message for her horse.

“For Jamie, Uno was her dream horse. I have a video of her crying when Christi showed up with him. It was a surprise, and he was her dream,” Debra said. “So for her, she felt like she wasn’t just losing her best friend, but the dream of what she thought she could do with him.” 

Coincidentally, the first class Jamie showed Zeo was in the same ring where her last class on Uno had been. “I came out of that ring and lost it,” she said.

“It was definitely the hardest point I had the entire time, because I remember walking out of that ring on Uno and the feeling of how amazing it was,” Jamie continued. “I had a flashback when I was walking out of the ring [on Zeo] of being on Uno, and I felt bad for a few minutes, and it was really hard. There were a few moments like that along the way that were really difficult.”

Luckily, Jamie had her trainer Danica Pryce of Masterpiece Equestrian Center to help her through both Uno’s death and getting back into riding with Zeo—Pryce also lost both personal horses and customer horses to the monesin poisoning.

Jamie was still riding with Pryce when Israel called in May of 2015 and asked if Jamie would have any interest in showing a horse for Israel at the Tryon International Equestrian Center (N.C.). Israel needed a junior rider for the horse, but Pryce couldn’t leave the rest of her clients and her training operation in Davie to accompany Jamie to the show. Israel asked professional Kristen Vanderveen to help Jamie at Tryon, and introduced the Buis family to Vanderveen’s Bull Run team.

What started as a temporary trainer-student fix proved a perfect fit, and Vanderveen (who has a farm in Loxahatchee, Fla.) had a year-long show schedule that worked perfectly for Jamie’s goals. The family made the decision to sell their home in Weston, Fla., and move to Wellington, Fla., and work with Vanderveen full-time.  

“Jamie looked at me after about four days up there and said, ‘Mom, I can’t leave her,’ ” Debra said. “She is just everything you could possibly look for in a trainer for your daughter. She’s just a great example—she has morals and values, she’s just a great person, and I also don’t think that Jamie could possibly be with someone better training her.”

Kristen Vanderveen poses for a picture with her student, Jamie Buis and VDL d’Inzeo, after their classic win in the low junior jumper division at WEF Week 8. Photo by Sportfot.   

“Even as a professional it would be traumatic to have that happen and see all of that,” Vanderveen said of Jamie’s loss of Uno. “And especially to know that this was a 13-year-old kid, and that was her pet, her love, everything like that, you do wonder is that something that’s going to be hard to move on from.

“But I didn’t really want to dwell on it,” Vanderveen continued. “I just wanted to kind of start as fresh as possible, and let it be a new experience. [I wanted to] open her eyes to something new and different and really focus on the new horse and her development as a rider, and where she could go and try to get her focused on that, and not stuck on what had happened.”

Jamie has big goals—she rattled a few of them off over the phone: North American Junior and Young Rider Championships, Young Rider Nations Cup teams, grand prix classes, and eventually to be a professional rider like Vanderveen. With that in mind, Vanderveen said she takes extra time to explain to Buis in detail why she does what she does, why certain exercises work and when to use them.

“I definitely think that she’ll be very capable,” Vanderveen said. “She has a great drive; she’s very dedicated; she definitely has a strong passion and love for it but then has the work ethic to go with it, which is how she’s been able to be successful with it. She doesn’t take for granted that she’s talented at it, she still works hard and she wants to learn. She doesn’t let ego get in the way of anything.” 

Jamie’s older sister, Rachel, rides as well, but even with two kids dedicated to the sport, picking up and moving to a new city just for horses may seem like a lot to some parents. Not to Debra.

“When you see your child have a passion the way that Jamie does, I think at my age I don’t even know that I have found that, so to see someone so passionate and so motivated and work so hard at something,” Debra said, pausing. “My husband was the one who actually said, ‘You go find her the best damn horse we can find her, and we are going to help her in any way continue.’

“I think her strong attitude and her heart through this really convinced us that I think she’s serious,” Debra continued. “If that didn’t take her out, then I can’t imagine what would.” 

Jamie Buis spending a quiet moment with VDL d’Inzeo.