Lighten Up Dressage

About Leslie Lytton - Founder of "Lighten Up Dressage"

I hope to co-host a fun schooling show where everyone can just lighten up. Riders and their horses can come and have fun in a low key schooling show environment. You don't have to be perfect and you are always welcome. No need for a dressage saddle, bridle or formal dressage riding attire. I wanted to co-organize a schooling show where riders can come and compete dressage tests in front of a judge with out all the dressage formalities and fees that USDF/USEF shows require. I can't imagine doing this with anyone else except my friend, Tracy Walling.

I started riding ponies and horses at 12. My love for jumping was picnic tables and a fallen log on any trail. After a few bad jumping shows, my confidence was blown. I found dressage at 24. My little 15.3 hand TB gelding was a great teacher. Dressage was his talent until I jumped him one day. My love of jumping came back. He was a natural at both. The only way to combine dressage and jumping was eventing. My little TB re-instated my confidence in jumping and he took me to the Preliminary 3-Day level.

We competed to the Preliminary level and completed a 3-day at the KY Horse Park placing second. I sold him to a lower level competitor and lost track of him. Since then I have re-trained a Four-In-Hand combined driving horse and a Hanoverian/TB cross. My “wagon horse” Houston had not been ridden in 4 years and was not willing to canter. The canter is heavily penalized in the combined driving. In a year and a half Houston helped me qualify for Regionals at the training & first level and the BLM Championships at Training & First Level.

While I was pregnant with my daughter, he placed 4th at the Training Level Regional Championships and 2nd at First Level at the BLMs. I sold him to a great lady in VA. My Hanoverian/TB cross was a re-sale project. I purchased him as a 3 y.o. and he was under saddle 25 days. He blossomed into a beautiful horse. Dressage was not his calling, it was the hunters. After a year and a half I took him to a hunter show and didn’t bring him home. I now have an Oldenburg gelding who I adore. Diligent or “Dillon” was imported as a six month old. He and my daughter get along very well. He gets to see all her toys and follows the electric Gator like a dog. He’s becoming bomb proof or should I say childproof. My goals with Dillon are to compete in dressage as far as Dillon and I can go.

About Tracy Walling - Co-Founder of "Lighten Up Dressage"

I began riding when I was nine years old. The start of my career was not a glamorous one. My parents were perplexed by my obsession with horses and sincerely hoped I would outgrow it.

I spent my first few years riding my bike to a local trail horse barn and cleaned stalls and tack on cold Connecticut mornings to earn a few hours on horseback. My mother returned to work when I was 14 and in exchange for help with cooking, cleaning and babysitting she agreed to finance my riding. I was extremely fortunate to have Stillmeadow Farm nearby in North Stonington, CT.

For the next several years I shared the arena with a young Greg Best and Melanie Smith. Stillmeadow was an elite barn and it was made clear to me early on I didn’t have the money or horses to be competing with the A list people. But what the B list lacked in dazzle was made up for tenfold in good people. Working students were devoted instructors; grooms were always happy for some help and were glad to pass on skills to someone who wanted to learn them. And many owners were glad to let a horse hungry kid show in a class or two. Forty years later I still stay in touch with some of the people who generously lent me my first good horses to show.

During my years at the University of Connecticut I played polo briefly and competed on the Intercollegiate Equestrian Team. I was in college in the very early years of Intercollegiate competion and found again, all was not equal in the horse world. Many of the older New England colleges like Smith and Dartmouth had very well established, heavily funded riding programs. Schools with younger programs like ours had strings of over used and marginally sound school horses. Still it was a wonderful experience. I’ve been delighted to watch Intercollegiate teams grow and prosper over the years.

When I graduated from UCONN and began my career I was finally able to buy my first horse. Before I even owned a reliable car or had an apartment I bought an 18 month old appaloosa without a single spot on him. He was barely halter broke and still a stud colt. It was probably the most foolish thing I’ve ever done. With all the arrogance of youth and a lot of help from very good people I raised and trained him. I showed my horse Great Pumpkin on the CT hunter circuit for 15 years.
During the winter months Beth Baumert leased an aisle in our barn and arena time in our indoor. She gave me lessons in exchange for feeding her horses in the evenings. Dressage was much more interesting than I’d expected and was strangely addicting. But I was moving up to jumper divisions and got teased a lot for my interest in flatwork. I put dressage in the back of my mind as something to explore later. I still can’t believe I didn’t appreciate the opportunity I had at that time !
Career and family took up many years and showing was reduced to trail riding and an occasional hunter pace. Sadly, Great Pumpkin developed Cushing’s in his late teens. Soon after moving to North Carolina in 2001 I lost my beloved horse of 19 years.

I was all set to retire from riding at that point but we all know how that goes. In 2002 I bought a quarter horse gelding who just simply appealed to me. My kids named him Fox In Sox after their favorite Dr.Suess book. My plan was to just have a pleasure horse but that dressage thing kept coming back to me. In 2003 I finally trotted down the centerline at one of Fiona McAllister’s wonderful Summer Nights shows. Soon after that I met my good friend Leslie Lytton and moved to Lisa Gorsuch’s farm in Huntersville. For the next three years I had the great pleasure of working with Brooke Doss and learning volumes about dressage from Lisa and Leslie. Recently Fox, my family and I moved to Fort Mill, SC. My daughter Madelyn is riding Fox most of the time now, trying to find her way into dressage.

The Lighten Up Dressage idea came from the meeting of two great minds. My very good friend Leslie Lytton and I spoke often of how much we missed the Summer Nights shows. We also discussed the question, where do you start a young horse or a child without spending a ton of money and having no chance of winning anything? I feel Dressage is still a very young sport in the US and it’s still very much in its formative years. We have a brief opportunity not to repeat the same mistakes that the hunter world and other disciplines have made. It’s a sport the appeals to and benefits a very diverse group of people and horses. Yet when I began showing at the USDF level I was struck by how expensive and limited the classes were. I was also troubled by the lack of kids showing in dressage and the complete absence of any of any kind of a lower level show circuit. The more elite a sport becomes, the larger the gap gets between those who want to ride and those who can afford to ride. Showing should be about skill and talent not disposable income. For the past 40 years I’ve continued riding while balancing high school and college sports, my 20 year career in the pharmaceutical industry, raising two kids, and a long and happy marriage. Still I’m not considered a “serious rider” because I’m not riding a five figure horse on the elite show circuit. There are thousands of other people out there like me, who climb on the best horse they can afford several times a week, take lessons and work hard. They deserve a place and a chance to show, competing with a group of their peers. Any one of us who rides is a steward of the sport. Leslie and I felt the need to create what we felt was missing in our area. A series of fun, achievable, affordable, yet good quality dressage shows. I hope you enjoy the Lighten Up series as much as I enjoy putting them on with Leslie. There is no one in the world more fun to work with than she is!