Team #320: Isabel Surrey Saylor and Conclusions Shadow (Mister)

I grew up in New York City. I was always athletic but never horse friendly, in fact, no one in my entire family was ever a horse person. I lived my life, went to school, and worked in the city.  

In 1990 I moved to Florida and was working in real estate. One of the men came into work and asked what we thought about a club for people who wanted to ride, or learn to ride, but did not own a horse or want the responsibility of owning one. I responded, "I know nothing about horses, but I will help you set up an office!" He bought two horses and rented two stalls at a horse community in Davie County.

At the age of 50, I sat on one of those horses and fell in love! I asked to be his partner and from there we created "The Florida Fun In One Club." People, families and children joined and learned to ride from the ground up. We bought horses only if they were safe, sound, and on the condition that I could ride the horse knowing nothing about riding. The club ultimately grew to 40 horses!

By 1994, I had my first Quarter Horse and a Quarter Horse trainer. I showed through the novice level making the Horsemanship Finals at Congress in 2000. At that point, I had my second horse, Conclusions Shadow, known as Mister to everyone, and we went on to show the amateur select classes (for riders over 50 years old) at Quarter Horse shows through 2012. 

After having moved to Ocala in 2008, I started working with Palm Partnership Training in 2013. I fell in love with Western Dressage. With Lynn Palm and Cyril Pittion-Rossillon, it has been a wonderful experience learning the dressage tests. It has kept us both the most physically fit ever. We have managed to go through Intro Level, Basic Level and are now competing First Level Tests 1 through 4.

In 2017, we hit the Century mark as a team and hope to continue for some years in the future. We competed at the Palm Partnership Training Spring Dressage Show at First Level Test 2, scoring a 66.96%!