While recovering from a broken scapula in 2017, upper-level eventer Robyn Fisher started browsing the internet and, as she tells it, somehow ended up with three horses out of Europe.

After her impulse buys arrived at her Moorpark, California, base, Fisher realized they were all good dressage quality, and she started to fall more in love with the detailed aspects of the first of eventing’s three phases.

Fisher, 43, was a successful young rider and spent several years in Europe training and competing as she established herself as a professional event rider. She’d jumped around some of the biggest eventing tracks in the country with former mount Le Samurai in the mid-2000s, making it to the Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event, and more recently competed at the FEI eventing levels with horses like Betawave and Lady Calido.

When she set out several years ago to find a Grand Prix schoolmaster who could teach her the ropes, she struggled to find something sound in the age and price range she wanted.

In 2019, she went to Jessica Umansky of Exclusive Dressage Imports in Rancho Santa Fe, California, with a budget.

A year later, Umansky told her she’d found a 13-year-old chestnut Hanoverian gelding who might fit the bill.

“She said, ‘He’s been for sale for seven months; he’s a nutbag. They can’t sell him. He has an old stress fracture, and he’s not a horse you would probably be able to compete because he’s hot, he’s nervous, and all these things,’ ” Fisher recalled.

Even so, she went to see him. She figured if he was a horse she could learn on, she might be interested. Fisher asked to sit on Kingston (Kalserdom—Fablenne, Falkland) right out of the stall so she could feel what he was like from the beginning.

“I look at the girl and said, ‘Does he always start lame on the left hind?’ She goes, ‘Well, we don’t really know, but he’s worked out of it the few days we’ve had him.’ I keep going, and I really enjoy him,” she said. “I can’t get him to one end of the arena—he’s spooking at the sprinklers and the flowers and the trees.”

Despite his antics, Fisher felt a connection and made an offer on Kingston’s already low price. “I vet him, and two of the vets that looked at him told me not to buy him because of the old stress fracture, and he has ringbone in both front pasterns,” she said. “I thought, ‘Well, I’m never going to have an opportunity like this again, even if I have him for a year. If I can just learn how to do ones and piaffe and passage, that’s all I want to do. I’ll be so happy if I can just do that.’ They accepted my offer, and ‘TK’ came home a few days later.”

TK—which stands for “The King”—was, in fact, a “nutbag,” Fisher confirmed with a laugh.

“He was afraid of spray bottles, he was afraid of the feed cart when it came by, he was afraid of the grooms, he was afraid of the tractor,” she said. “If I was in the arena, and the sprinklers would go off, he would run sideways. There were days he would spook at the sprinklers, and I would walk by them for 45 minutes. That would be my work for the day.”

Even so, she never regretted the purchase. 

“Never. There was something about this horse’s soul that I fell in love with,” she said. “I didn’t have any expectations. I was piaffing, I was passaging, I was doing all the things I wanted to do. Just some days he was spookier than others.”

In early 2021, on a whim, Fisher entered a nearby schooling show at Prix St. Georges and scored a 69 percent in her first ever shot at the level. “I was like, ‘Oh, that wasn’t so bad. I think I can do this,’ ” she said.

She entered a rated show the next weekend and earned her U.S. Dressage Federation silver medal.

They competed the rest of the year up to Intermediaire II, but during the winter, TK started having issues with his ringbone and other physical ailments.

“Between my farrier and vet, we had to come up with lots of plans to keep him going,” said Fisher. “I actually retired him twice between 2021 and 2022 thinking that he was done.

“Sandy Phillips was in my life as a judging mentor, but she started helping me when I showed her videos of me and TK, then she started coming over and helping me at home,” she continued. “She taught me how to ride him in a way that’s helped keep him sound the last year and a half. I just kind of kept going and decided, let’s just see if I can. I was like, let’s try for the Grand Prix, and I ended up getting my gold medal on him [in 2022]. That was way more than I ever thought.”

Keeping TK sound and happy has depending on truly riding him in balance. 

“I always thought I knew how to put a horse in balance, but Sandy’s definitely taught me how to do it more from my seat and how I influence the horse’s movement versus trying to put him in a frame, kicking and pulling, and all the things riders learn to do,” she said. “She’s taught me to be a lot softer, and the general philosophy is moving with the horse and making it fun for the horse and being their dance partner.”

At home, TK is treated like an event horse. 

“I asked my vet, ‘So I’ve never had a Grand Prix horse before. How do I keep him going?’ ” said Fisher. “She goes, ‘Do what you would do with an event horse.’ I would cross train him like an event horse. He would hack out on the hills, we do cavalettis, he gets turned out for most of the day, and I let him be a horse.”

Eventers are known for their grit, determination—and often their belief in unconventional horses—and Fisher thinks her experience as an eventer helped her partnership with TK. 

“Had I not evented and had tough horses like Le Samurai or Betawave, I don’t think I would have been able to take him on,” she said. “I remember when he would do weird things, I would just kick him forward and not care and laugh it off and pat him, and after a while he just got braver and braver. The horse just keeps trying for me now. Now if he’s looking at something, I just pat him, and he’s like, ‘Alright mom, I got this.’ I’ll feel him get worried going around the arena, but as soon as we enter, he just clicks in and is really with me. As soon as I leave the arena, he’s spooking at my groom!”

Fisher stepped into the CDI ring at small tour in 2021 and 2022, and by the end of 2023, they were ready for a CDI Grand Prix, according to Phillips.

“My goal last year was to just get him through the end of 2023 since he was 16,” she said. “Sandy was like, ‘Robyn, what are you wasting yourself for with all these nationals? You need to do a CDI.’ I had already done the small tour, so I was like, ‘OK, why not?’ I entered the CDI3* in December [at Desert International Horse Park in Thermal, California].”

The pair performed what Fisher described as their best Grand Prix test ever, but they were eliminated at the second steward’s check for a small amount of blood in TK’s mouth.

“They called it blood, I think it was his pumpkin cookies, but it is what it is,” she said. “It was one of my best tests ever, so it was really disappointing, but in a weird way I think the universe was looking out for me, because I would have had to do the Special, and I didn’t know I needed to!”

As a former eventer, Fisher said she wasn’t uncomfortable being in a CDI with lots of judges because she’d done that during her career, “but it was more of a, ‘Do I belong here? Am I good enough to be here?’ I had to let that go because I was like, you know what? At the end of the day, we’re all just trying to be the best version of ourselves we can be. If I keep waiting to be better, TK’s going to be retired, so I’ve just got to go do the best that I can do with what I have and enjoy it.”

“[I]t was more of a, ‘Do I belong here? Am I good enough to be here?’ I had to let that go because I was like, you know what? At the end of the day, we’re all just trying to be the best version of ourselves we can be.”

Former eventer Robyn Fisher on entering the CDI ring

Fisher and TK kicked off 2024 by competing in the Jan. 5-6 CDI3* at DIHP, where they finished second in both the Grand Prix (62.82%) and the Grand Prix Special (60.87%). While her preparation was lacking due to her own illness, the holidays and rain in California, Fisher had a good time and was proud of TK. She hadn’t had a chance to run through the full Special at home, so it was her first time riding the test.

“I missed all my changes. Every single sequence I overrode because I got too excited,” she said with a laugh. “I need to get that out of me—that’s the eventer in me, like, get it done!”

While the class sizes were small at the Thermal show, Fisher appreciated the opportunity and plans to attend and support the upcoming CDIs at Del Mar (California) and Galway Downs (California) if TK feels up for it.

“It’s great for the West Coast to have these,” she said. “Even though it was a small turnout, what an experience to be able to ride in front of five Olympic dressage judges in one place. I’m very appreciate to the organizers of the Desert Horse Park and Thomas Baur for making it happen. I know we’ve lost a lot of the riders to Florida, but hopefully we’ll get more and more Grand Prix horses out there.”

Fisher hasn’t evented since 2020 because she’s been focusing more on her own dressage goals, but she’s still training eventers like Molly Duda, the U.S. Eventing Association Young Rider of the Year, and helps her friend five-star eventer Tamie Smith. She injured her groin muscle several years ago and is a bit nervous about drops, so she’s unsure if she’ll ever return to serious competing, but she still enjoys cross-country schooling for fun.

She got involved in eventing dressage judging in 2011 after seeing she was qualified to do an associate judge’s license as a five-star rider on the USEA’s website. She attended a seminar and was licensed to judge through training level.

With encouragement from the late Olympic eventer Amy Tryon, she continued through the judging levels and is now a U.S. Equestrian Federation eventing ‘S’ judge and just earned her FEI Level 3 license to allow her to judge and four- and five-stars in eventing. She’s hoping to pursue her FEI Level 4 license so she can serve as the president of the ground jury at five-stars.

She’ll continue to compete TK as long as he’s happy and has one of Phillips’ homebreds, Polaris, a 10-year-old Oldenburg gelding (Polarion—Lara), coming up behind TK at fourth level.

“TK is one of the coolest horses I’ve ever owned,” she said. “I just want to do as much with him as I can, as long as he still wants to, and just have fun doing it. I don’t know when I’ll be competing at the CDI level again at Grand Prix, so I’m just trying to get as much experience with him as I can.”