Professional photos by Rachel Stringfellow Photography.
Peter and Debbie have been involved with Dressage for over 20 years and also breed and produce their own horses. They shared a little about life and horses with us:
We live just south of Rotorua at Rainbow Mountain. Life is keeps us busy coaching, producing horses, breeding horses, raising beef and running a small BnB.
We have worked with Chris from Balanced Saddle Fitting for many years as he is simply a genius at fitting the horses, and us. He has an amazing insight to fittting for both horse and rider and we value his input hugely.
This season the two key competition horses are RM Donatella and half sister RM Freedom; Dee and Fi. Both Dee (9 years old) and Fi (7 years old) are out of a mare we imported from Australia named Ruby, by Fugato SW, who produced 7 foals for us. Dee is By Don Frederico. These girls are competing at levels Advanced L6 and Advanced Medium L5 this season. At some stage the next two will come out - they are both 5 year olds; RM Floki a full brother to Fi and RM Fern another Fugato SW out of a lovely holsteiner mare, RM Prickle.
It is very satisfying to breed and produce the horses - we pride ourselves in raising and producing the horses as individuals. Each horse is raised and trained to help develop them at their pace, in a way that allows then to understand and thrive in their work so they can enjoy what they do with us.
We love this quote:
Consistency over Intensity,
Progress over Perfection,
Fundamentals over Facts,
Over and over again."
This is again why Balanced Saddle Fitting is so helpful, as Chris comes down every six months and runs a clinic for others and we go through and fit the horses - as we produce young horses there are always growth and shape changes that need to be accommodated.
