Much like the eponymous buckskin protagonist of “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron,” Come Back De Massa has a spirit that cannot be broken, his rider and co-owner Denielle Gallagher says. But as the pair have proven, their previous personal best Grand Prix freestyle record most certainly can be.

Dancing to freestyle music from the hit animation movie, Gallagher and “Come Back,” a 13-year-old Lusitano gelding (Galopin De La Font—Xantilly SM, Quixote SDS) who she owns with Ellen Lazarus, clinched the win for Canada on Saturday with a 72.94% at the World Equestrian Center-Ocala February CDI3* (Florida), besting their previous top score of 71.47% which they set just a few weeks earlier at the venue’s January CDI3*. In fact, the Ocala, Florida-based pair has gone undefeated in all four of their international starts this year. 

“Come Back is really coming into his own and getting better and better,” Gallagher said. “I’m so happy with him and enjoying our journey together.”

Come Back is a buckskin, making the movie’s Hans Zimmer soundtrack an obvious choice for his freestyle. She designed the floorplan with her longtime trainer Ashley Holzer, using music put together by Boy de Winter of Music-Motions.

But Gallagher, whose two kids are also fans of the DreamWorks Animation classic, said her “Spirit” music pick was not merely an aesthetic decision based on Come Back’s coat color. 

“For me, I just love the message it sends, because it’s really about bonding and being friends with your animal as much as it is a partner,” she said of the movie. “Come Back has a lot of personality, he’s a little bit cheeky, and he knows he’s the king in the barn. I feel like his character is a lot like Spirit’s, in that he has let me in. I’m super lucky.”

More broadly, Gallagher believes that her freestyle comes at an important moment for the future of dressage sport. 

“With the way the dressage generally has been going, and all the hate everywhere, and I feel like we need to remember why we’re all doing this,” she said. “We were all once that little kid on a horse or a pony when we were younger. Riding is about that kind of friendship between horse and human. I am connected with him, and I wanted to emphasize that in music.” 

Watch their winning “Spirit”-themed freestyle, courtesy of USEF Network, powered by ClipMyHorse.tv:

From the moment she set her foot in the stirrups, Gallagher felt that connection with the gelding. She found him three years ago in France, while trying horses for clients at breeder Sylvain Massa’s stables. Gallagher agreed to ride him on a whim, even though he was out of her budget. 

“I fell in love with him the first ride,” she said. “I speak a little bit of French, so I literally was going around, like ‘J’adore, j’adore, j’adore!’ ”

Without the support of Lazarus, a longtime client of Gallagher’s, their partnership would not have become reality. Gallagher and the Lusitano spent the first two years of their relationship getting to know each other while campaigning for Olympic team selection. The pair ultimately did not get picked for Paris, but Gallagher has big plans for Come Back in the year ahead. 

After the winter season in Florida ends, Gallagher and her family will relocate to France for the summer, in hopes of competing with Come Back at some of the big-name European venues. Gallagher’s husband, hunter/jumper trainer Bertrand Legriffon, and their two daughters will accompany her across the pond. 

“There’s no timeline,” she said. “We would love to try [CHIO Aachen (Germany)], if we could get in, and I want to do a few shows in France, because my husband is from France. But what we’ll do depends on how he feels. In the end, it’s just about having fun together.”

As such, preparation for their big trip has included lighthearted competition between Gallagher, who began her riding career in eventing and show jumping, and her husband. 

“We were doing poles on the ground the other day, and my husband was on his jumper, and he said to me, ‘OK, how many strides can you do? I can do nine and then four.’ So I said to him, ‘OK, I’m going to try.’ I went and I fit in 10 strides between the poles. So I was like, ‘I beat you!’ ” she recalled, adding, “But then I had to gallop to get the four strides, which was hard.” 

Gallagher and Legriffon run their respective businesses out of the same facility in Ocala. Occasionally, coexisting peacefully with show jumpers is a challenge for the sensitive dressage horses in Gallagher’s program—like the time recently that her husband decided to school a jumpers over a tarp in the arena while she was working her dressage horses. 

“I was in there with him trying to go around the ring, and my dressage horses were all snorting and spooking at this blue tarp,” said Gallagher. “My husband was like, ‘You know, it’s good training for them.’ I was like, ‘I know, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it!’ ” 

Still, channeling her inner jumper during schooling sessions has paid dividends for Gallagher. Exposure to her husband’s jumping competitions has changed the way Gallagher thinks about the cloistered virtue of dressage horses. 

“You go to the dressage shows, and if everything’s not perfectly in place, people complain. Meanwhile, if you go to the jumper shows, they’ve got dirt bikes going up the horses’ rear ends, and the horses don’t care,” she said. “For me, seeing that side of it, I’ve relaxed about a lot of stuff. It’s been very beneficial for me, mentally.” 

Once they get back to home turf, if all goes to plan, Gallagher hopes to contest the inaugural U.S. Equestrian Open of Dressage to be held in Thermal, California, in November. Both the January and February WEC-Ocala CDI3*s were qualifiers for the final, so with those two wins already under their belt, Gallagher and Come Back are well on their way to punching their ticket to the West Coast. 

“I’m always serious about it, because it’s my profession,” Gallagher said. “And I want to always do well, but I’m excited to go this year and just have fun. Everything’s not riding on it, so if I make a mistake, or I have a little less power, or if I feel like I want to just play with it, I can. I’m excited about the future with him.”