About Catherine
Horse crazy I grew up in Liechtenstein in the centre of Europe in a non horsey family. Starting riding with the traditional riding school group lessons as a kid. As a teenager I had the opportunity to exercise other peoples horses in exchange for barn chores. That was a time of trail riding, being more or less in control of the various horses I was allowed to ride, having several runaways and an assortment of other issues I didn’t have answers to at the time. It was however a fun time exploring the country on horseback with friends. After high school the desire to learn more about horses led me to Arizona and Oklahoma for horseshoeing school and a course on starting young horses. Eventually at 21 I moved to BC Canada and experienced Guide-Outfitting with horses for a few seasons throughout BC and the Yukon, spending weeks on end together with a string of horses in the bush and mountains, having to rely on them for transportation really showed me how close the relationship can become with horses and how essential it is to recognize each horses strengths and weaknesses. Feeling the need to learn more about finer riding and training technique, I enrolled at Fairview College’s Horsemanship program in Alberta Canada and became a EquineCanada Level 1 Western coach. Following college was a working practicum with Yvonne LaBounty in Rock Creek BC who breeds and trains Quarterhorses after the principles of the late Roy Yates. I would have considered him a western dressage rider, he had learned a great deal from reading James Fillis one of the old French riding masters coming out of Baucher’s time. This is where my quest for dressage started. After taking a variety of lessons from competitive dressage trainers for several years and spending 4 months learning about jumping and eventing from Robin Hahn in Lumby BC to a few years of low level eventing I was more or less stuck at 2nd level Dressage with my QH gelding AJ. The desire to learn the higher level collected Dressage movements was big and not wanting to sell my good old friend for the sake of a more talented dressage horse it all had to be somehow possible with my downhill built QH. I was starting to doubt that the competitive style of dressage training would get me there and I was really missing lightness with my aids. That was when a poster of Philippe Karl, offering his teachers course only 2 hours away caught my eye. I had read his books previously and I was fascinated by his philosophies and so I applied and the rest is history. I truly believe I have found the missing pieces to my puzzle (although there is still a lot of assembling to do). I found lightness, balance, self-carriage and a lot more knowledge about how to train different types of horses adjusting to what their conformation and temperaments require. Since 2012 I have attended clinics with Philippe Karl himself and his licensed teachers Bertrand Ravoux, Melanie Buhlman and Veronika Buehn and becoming a licensed instructor of the school of Legerete myself in 2016. In 2024 I mostly focused on starting your horses under saddle, giving them a good foundation of trust in having a rider on their backs, understanding of the basic aids, softness, responsiveness, balance and learning how to learn and focus on us. The importance of really seeing each horses mental and physical struggles along the training process and giving them the time they need has been one of my biggest lessons lately. There is still so much to learn and every new horse as something new to figure out, it really is true that the more I know the more I realize I don’t know. |