On a trip to the Netherlands this September for the Longines FEI/WBFSH Dressage World Breeding Championships in Ermelo, where I was grooming for my friend Alice Tarjan, I noticed some interesting horse-and-rider pairs—or rather, pairs that would be uncommon to see in the United States. European Olympians, the very riders I’d just seen cheered on the medals podium at the Paris Games, were there putting in the time to ride and compete their babies. I got to see the best dressage riders in the world on their 4-year-old-stallions. You just don’t see that here.
It brought to mind something that I’ve been wondering about for years as I’ve worked with young horses and young riders, often putting the two together. In the U.S., how can we encourage a generation of up-and-coming dressage professionals to care not just about advancing through the levels, but also about starting and developing young horses? If developing riders prioritize landing rides on bigger, better horses, who will be equipped to train the trainers? Who will carry on the knowledge of producing elite horses from start to finish?
A big-name rider friend of mine recently spoke to an audience of young, aspiring dressage professionals. In the talk she described her incredible journey, working her way from the bottom and eventually making it to the Olympics. When the floor was opened to a question-and-answer session, she told me that there was a worrying theme in their questions along the lines of: “How do I find a rich sponsor?”

I truly don’t blame young people who aren’t made of money to think that sponsorship is the primary path to success in the horse industry. This sport teaches you quickly that having money, or the support of people with money, is a surer way to the top. Sometimes, it seems to be the only way. But that’s where we have our work cut out for us: How can we, as trainers, better model and encourage the harder path?
Working with young horses to produce them into top competitors is certainly the slower and less glamorous route, but I believe it has real merit for young people. Working with young horses is challenging and involves uncertainty and risk, but it also develops horsemanship that simply can’t be taught when a rider is privileged—or should I say limited—to learning the levels on a made horse.
Of course, many young riders are eager for ground-up education. In my program, I end up working with a lot of young people who are hungry—not just to advance but to learn. The scary introductory email I send out to incoming working students, which details the workday at my farm, usually weeds out anyone who doesn’t have a hearty work ethic to begin with. Don’t get me wrong, my program is not a labor camp where I’m forcing students to muck stall after stall. But I do have a lot of horses, and the hours are long.
After years of working with this apprenticeship model, I’ve come to notice some patterns, not just in students’ drive, but in their horsemanship and training skills. When kids send me their resume, I would so much rather see that someone is a B Pony Clubber than that they’ve been to the FEI North American Youth Dressage Championships three times. The Pony Club credentials tells me that they likely have some real horsemanship skills, but the NAYC record only tells me that they can ride the Prix St. Georges. One tells me what they can do, while the other speaks to the access they had.
Training Is Built-In Security
It might seem like investing in a horse as a foal or yearling is risky. There’s no telling the future of a gangly baby in the field, and in many ways, bringing up young horses involves a lot of uncertainty. But I believe that knowing how to start a baby and produce the mount you want from scratch is its own kind of security. At least, that’s been my personal experience.
My scrappiness has come by necessity. I never had the money for big horses, and I’ve had to go about my competitive aspirations by making the horses I couldn’t buy. But having the skills to develop young horses has made me more resilient in a fickle industry. By buying them young when they’re relatively inexpensive, I’m able to own some of my horses, and that makes it a lot harder to unhorse me. I’m less susceptible to losing a promising ride due to a lost client or a horse-rider shuffle, like the swaps we saw before and after Paris.
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Having the willingness to buy them young, when I am still able to afford them, means that I can have my own horses alongside my client horses in the show barn. I’ve been able to create a more diverse ownership portfolio in my barn because I have my own pipeline of young horses that I am attempting to fund myself.
Let’s also acknowledge the emotional aspect to this industry: My horses are my friends. I hate the idea of the animal that I’ve poured my blood, sweat and tears into being sent away with a single phone call. Bringing them up as babies not only deepens the bond I have with them, it also gives me some level of insurance over their futures. I bought my best horse, Leeloo Dallas, off a video when she was foal wobbling around her dam. Eight years later, I can rest easy knowing that she’ll never be taken from me. I could bomb a class on her next week, and that 62% would be mine alone to worry over. No owner is going to text me, “We need to talk.”
I know that for a young rider, sponsorship on a top horse seems like a gift—and it really is. But if we can also show them that there’s power and resilience in being able to create the horses they want, we can create a generation of trainers with greater autonomy.
The Dollars And Cents Of Horses
There’s also a business lesson here, and young riders with the skills to produce young horses are going to be better equipped to survive the horse industry. Leeloo Dallas has brought in some flattering offers. Of course, she’s not for sale (see above: horses as friends), but I am grateful for the hypothetical safety net.
As my horses move along—and I now have some that are getting to be third and fourth level—that value goes up. I don’t have a college degree, but I could sell a few of the horses I bought as foals and turn a huge profit. And I can do that again and again and again. That opportunity doesn’t exist in a lot of businesses but is something we can make achievable for riders by encouraging them to develop their training skills.
I have young people who call me and want to do what I have done with some of my best horses, buying them young and taking them up the levels. But they worry about taking the leap of faith on purchasing a young horse. They want some kind of insurance that the baby they invest money and time into is going to have the future they want. They ask me, what if the yearling they thought would be their Grand Prix horse in eight years is maxing out at third level? What if they waste years on a horse that isn’t meeting their expectations?
That’s where I think we need to reframe the goal. I tell them that the time they spend training a young horse is never lost. OK, so the filly they thought had a great hind end is now showing little potential for piaffe. They haven’t wasted their time; they’ve learned. We can’t guarantee even the most talented, well-bred horse’s future. But because there’s always a market for nice, well-trained horses at every level, the work they put into developing that horse correctly will always be appreciated.
Using this model has also given me the chance to make some really powerful relationships with breeders. They now call me to tell me when they have a foal or yearling with some promise, and because they’ve seen what I’ve done with other horses, they’re more open to making their prices and payment plans manageable.
Graduating Students ‘Down’
In America, you’ve got people who start young horses, and people who show made horses, and there’s the Grand Canyon in between. I like to take my babies to their first show all the way through Grand Prix. That pathway really isn’t unusual in Europe, and I think we would benefit by embracing the example they set overseas. My coach, Michael Bragdell, also subscribes to this method. Right now, he’s teaching his groom, who is also a rider, his method for backing horses.
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If a young rider’s goal is to compete successfully in U25 Grand Prix, making that goal probably doesn’t do much to help their career. That work typically doesn’t train you in how to be a trainer—it shows that you can ride a test on a horse that someone else made. I’d like to see us reframing our riding milestones. My working students actually are promoted down from my best horses.
I want riders to learn how to connect the puzzle pieces by starting from a made horse and going greener and greener. First, I might put a student who’s new to my program on one of my reliable schoolmasters. When they’ve proven to have a basic set of skills, I’ll try them on some sale horses, or occasionally client horses. On those horses, they can learn to develop a feel. Then, I’ll let them ride a 6-year-old, then a 5-year-old, then a 4-year-old. When they prove themselves worthy, and they “graduate,” they finally get to ride a 3-year-old!
I have a student now, Taiwan Parrish, who’s ridden with me for four years and has worked his way down to the babies. But that doesn’t mean he has to stay there. In all those training rides, he’s developed a feel that makes him one of the only riders capable of working with one of my top horses. He’s now doing FEI on one of my old Grand Prix horses who is super difficult, but this kid has had a lot of success with him. He was able to win the U.S. Dressage Finals (Kentucky) on the horse, not just because the horse is mega-talented, but because the kid put years into learning to ride and train, and now he can handle a horse that even I find to be quite tricky.
Let’s give our aspiring professionals every leg up they can get into succeeding in a hard industry. And by “leg up,” I’m not talking about a shortcut: I mean that we give young riders the challenging horses, we show them how to back the babies, and we reward our strongest students by “promoting” them to our greenest horses.
We do our sport a disservice when we create a chasm between our young riders and our young horses. Aspiring professionals need more places where they can get an education that shows them how to connect the dots.
Lauren Chumley has been involved in dressage for nearly 30 years, since she began riding as a child in Hamilton, Ohio. She is a U.S. Dressage Federation gold medalist and has earned multiple USDF year-end and all-breeds awards at the national level. She began her business, Lauren Chumley Dressage, in 2011, which operates seasonally out of Hunterdon County, New Jersey, and Loxahatchee, Florida. She and her 8-year-old mare Leeloo Dallas, whom she bought as a foal, were the open Intermediaire I freestyle champions at the 2024 U.S. Dressage Finals (Kentucky).
This article originally appeared in the December 2024 issue of The Chronicle of the Horse. You can subscribe and get online access to a digital version and then enjoy a year of The Chronicle of the Horse. If you’re just following COTH online, you’re missing so much great unique content. Each print issue of the Chronicle is full of in-depth competition news, fascinating features, probing looks at issues within the sports of hunter/jumper, eventing and dressage, and stunning photography.