When Allison Zarembowicz entered Happy Khan into his first Prix St. Georges test three months ago, she knew it was an ambitious call. 

“I’ve never had any horses that level, so it was me learning and him learning, which is always a bit rough. When we did our first PSG this September, it was seriously like 10 days before the show that we had our first time doing clean threes,” said Zarembowicz 

But her boldness has and continues to pay off. After only three national attempts at the level, Zarembowicz and Happy Khan made their international dressage debut at the World Equestrian Center-Ocala’s November CDI1* (Florida) and won with a 64.79% in the Prix St. Georges class.

“Everyone said to me, ‘Why are you doing a CDI? You’ve just barely done your first PSG.’ But I was like, ‘If you can do it, why not just do it?’ ” Zarembowicz said. “Plus, I liked the idea of five judges because I’d get more feedback.” 

“Happy” (Zjengis Khan–Abfab, Jazz) initially came into Zarembowicz’s orbit in April of last year as a driving horse to be resold with the help of her husband, Thorsten Zarembowicz, a decorated combined driving competitor and former USEF combined driving coach. As the Summerfield, Florida-based pair started to work with him, it quickly became apparent that Happy would better live up to his name in a different job. 

“We drove him, and he was very talented but very hot,” Allison recalled. “He would have had to be a professional’s driving horse. He still needed work, and there aren’t many professional drivers in the United States.” 

The 11-year-old gelding had been lightly shown in dressage by his past owners in the Netherlands. “So we were like, well, let’s hop on him and see what he does,” said Allison. 

When Allison rode him for the first time, the Dutch Warmblood was “fine,” though he wasn’t without his challenges. Getting from the barn to the arena, across a field, was particularly difficult for the gelding, who used to demonstrate his athleticism en route by running backward and into fences. 

“At first I [thought], maybe he just needs a little more firm aid, but that just made him way crazier,” she said. “I was like, OK, this is not going to work. So I would seriously just get on and do nothing with my reins or leg. Because he would panic otherwise. I just wouldn’t react and be like, hey, it’s going to be fine. We’re just going to chill.”

Patience ultimately was key to their partnership’s success. 

“I couldn’t fight with him—there was no fighting. That was not an option. We had to take our time. and just calm down,” said Allison. 

Happy’s story is not unusual at Zarembowicz Sport Horses, which she runs with her husband. Though she has done some driving at smaller shows in the past, Allison generally sits on the riding horses in their program while Thorsten focuses on the driving. 

“We can find anything a horse likes to do or that they’re suited for, rather than, ‘Oh, all our horses have to jump’ or, ‘All our horses have to dressage.’ That’s really how we’ve made it work with our horses,” Allison said. “We try to stick with our strengths, as professionals.” 

Allison’s strengths come from a wealth of experience outside of 60- by 20-meter arenas, combined with a scrappy attitude that she developed from a young age. 

Originally from Utah, Allison grew up in a family with seven kids, which meant that she had to figure things out from herself from the very beginning.

“My parents were like, ‘Look, if you want to do the horses, you are going to have to pay for this yourself. We can’t just spend all this money on one kid,’ ” she recalled. 

“So from there, I ended up getting a loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a 12-year-old for $4,000 to start a pony business,” she continued. “I would buy ponies from the auction—there was a local auction we’d go to every Saturday, and I would find ponies there. I’d break them to ride, ride them for the summer, and then sell them in the fall.” 

The profit from her pony business enabled her to buy and keep an off-the-track Thoroughbred. She signed up for Pony Club with him, because she wanted to learn how to ride English rather than western—“probably from watching Black Beauty.”

Despite her early success buying and selling ponies, the financial reality of horses almost pushed Allison out of the industry. She sold all her ponies and her horse to study for a year at Brigham Young University (Utah), where she got heavily into rock climbing before she realized that she couldn’t shake the horse bug. 

“I thought to myself, I can’t keep going to school because I have to pay for this myself. And what is the point of getting a job where all I’m doing is working to pay for my one hour at night to ride my horse? That was my whole point of getting a job,” Allison recalled. “So I was like, why don’t I try to do the horse thing for my life? Because that’s really what I want to do.”

Though she knew she wanted to pursue horses for a living, her path to becoming a dressage professional was circuitous. Allison first accepted a working student position in Chesterfield, Idaho, after ending her college studies, but after two years, the freezing temperatures motivated her to look elsewhere. 

One day, she overheard an NPR interview with a horse packing guide in Escalante, Utah, near one of her favorite climbing spots. 

“I was like, woah, I’ve got to find out who this guy is. So I looked him up online, and all I could find was a P.O. box. They had no website, no email, nothing,” Allison said. “So I wrote them a letter from my little cabin in Idaho, and I was like, ‘Hey, I like horses, and I like the desert. Do you want to teach me how to do the pack horse thing?’ And I left my phone number. They called me back and said yes.”

Working with pack horses was unlike anything she had experienced before. Her job was to break horses to ride and help with the pack trips, where she and the pack guide would bring supplies down to wilderness crews who were eradicating invasive species by the Escalante River. 

“It would just be me, him, and six horses. We’d sometimes go 10 miles per day, but you can go 100 miles out there and not see one telephone pole, road or house,” she said. “It’s unbelievable out there. I loved that. My little hippie self was in love with the place.” 

Nevertheless, something was still missing for Allison in Utah.

“While I was there, in the back of my mind, I was still dreaming about dressage and show horses,” Allison said. “I thought, this is so fun, and I love this, but I still just really want to learn how to do dressage. It’s just so beautiful.”

Her passion for dressage took her to Florida, where she has lived for 10 years. Over the past decade, Allison has worked as a vet tech, galloped Thoroughbreds, worked at a therapeutic riding school, led pony camps and groomed for a four-in-hand team at the 2014 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games (France).

“Pretty much anything and everything related to horses I’ve been able to do to make it work, I’ve probably tried it,” she said.

Dressage, however, is here to stay for both Allison and Happy.  

“My husband always threatens that he’s going to drive [Happy] again,” she said. “Whenever I’m out of town, he’s like, ‘I’m going to do it!’ To which I say, ‘No! You cannot drive my horse; we’re a dressage team now.’ ”

Looking to the future, Allison has high hopes for their partnership. 

“We’re aiming to do WEC-Ocala’s February CDI with the [Intermediaire 1]. I want to do the whole small tour,” she said. “From there, we’ll just see. He’s surprised me so far, so we’ll see if he keeps surprising me. But I want to go as far as we can.”