When Emily Donaldson went to look at Beaujolais 75 as an unbroke 3-year-old, she tried not to like him. She brought her mom along, hoping she’d call her crazy for even considering him. Instead, Donaldson’s mom told her she loved him. 

“I thought, ‘Well, shoot. That’s not the answer I wanted,’ ” Donaldson recalled. 

In the 12 years since she bought the chestnut gelding, Donaldson, Parkesburg, Pennsylvania, has changed her tune—for good reason. She and “Bunny” (Bugatti Hilltop—Conflora, Contucci) earned top honors in the Intermediaire II at the WEC-Ocala (Florida) January CDI3* with a 61.23%.  

Though she saw room for improvement in their score, Donaldson thought it was a positive learning experience for them both. 

“My big goal in the arena is to be able to show his talents for piaffe and passage, which he does have, but we’re both green at it in the show ring,” she said. “That’s why I’m out there doing it, to learn how to pull it off when the pressure is on. Always, when you come out of the ring, you’re like, ‘Can I just go in there, and do it one more time?’ Hopefully, next time, I will be able to have him more in front of my leg.” 

Encouraging Bunny’s forward energy has always been a top priority for Donaldson, who grew up foxhunting. Long before they were international dressage competitors, she and Bunny were regulars on the cross-country course. Their eventing journey was jump-started by a change in life circumstances. 

“I got married and moved to eastern Pennsylvania in 2014,” she said. “I was new to the area, I was starting my business, and so I had the time. And I thought, why not? I’m in the heart of horse country with the best trainers around, whom I’d never been exposed to. And I thought, ‘Geez, this is an opportunity to take advantage of.’ ” 

Her interdisciplinary approach to Bunny’s training also gave Donaldson a leg up in getting her business off the ground. 

“When I moved to the area, I was insecure about myself professionally, because I had to start from scratch,” she said. “I thought that eventing was something I could do to get myself out there, around the horse crowd, become part of the community, and earn a little respect.”

With instruction from Boyd Martin and the occasional clinic with Jimmy Wofford, they qualified for the 2015 USEA American Eventing Championships at the novice level. 

“Typical eventers, when we won, they were like, ‘Oh, you won. When are you going to move up?’ And I thought, ‘Move up? I’m winning. Why would I move up?’ ” she recalled. 

Eventing Bunny was largely an exercise in cross-training for Donaldson, whose ultimate goals for the gelding were always squarely within the white boards of a dressage arena. The pair stopped eventing after they reached training level, as the height of the fences posed a challenge for the dressage-bred Hanoverian, but Donaldson still takes Bunny out for long hacks in which they pop the occasional log or ditch. 

The variety in his training has been great for Bunny’s brain development, Donaldson said. Though their foray into eventing helped make him a reliable partner, Bunny still sometimes needs his rider to help him stay relaxed through his test. 

“He’s a ‘steady Eddie’ type. I could probably get on him bareback and ride around backward if I wanted to, and he’d be fine. He’s that kind of horse. He’s sensible,” Donaldson said. “But he’s also emotional, even though it doesn’t manifest itself in an outward way. He internalizes. I’ve had to learn not to yell at him with my hands because he gets offended. He’s like, ‘Well, I’m not gonna play with you if you’re gonna yell at me like that.’ I need the finesse as a rider to keep him listening, because he always tries. But if I get insecure as a rider and I get a little too strong, or I hold a little too long, he tells me.” 

While Bunny has now firmly established himself in the sandbox, Donaldson hasn’t lost her love of jumping in the slightest. 

“I’m a little bit of an adrenaline junkie,” she said. “I like to drive fast. I like to push myself outside of my comfort zone. I like getting up in two-point, galloping across the field. I like thinking, ‘Well, that’s a big jump, I’m not so sure,’ and then going over it and having the thrill that you got to the other side. It’s like being a kid again. I don’t want to lose that side of me, because I think that’s just who I am. Of course I’m very careful about the situations I put myself in, but I also don’t want to lose that edge.”

With Bunny working toward the Grand Prix, Donaldson knows his three-phase days are over. But she’s not ready to put away her jump saddle just yet, so when she stumbled on an advertisement for 10-year-old off-the-track Thoroughbred Mr. Bridger last November, she did the only reasonable thing. 

“I thought, ‘He’s stunning,’ and so I went down and tried him the next day, and I was like, ‘I have to have him,’ ” she said. “It was kind of meant to be.” 

Though he’d been used as a staff horse on fox hunts in Virginia, Mr. Bridger never had any formal dressage training. But once his dressage skills match his game attitude toward jumping, Donaldson looks forward to making her triumphant return to the beginner novice eventing world with him. 

In the meantime, Donaldson plans to keep developing Bunny. The Grand Prix tests are in their sights, but she wants to make sure she strikes the right balance between advancing and enjoying their partnership. 

“Bunny would be the first horse that I’ve trained to Grand Prix,” she said. “The Grand Prix pattern is going to be hard for him, but I think he can do it. Ultimately, his quality of life and happiness is the most important thing to me.”