2024 Evie Tumlin Grant Recipient: Danielle Aymond
Breaking Out the Box with the Evie Tumlin Memorial Fund for Region 9 Adult Amateurs
As an Adult Amateur I find myself constantly second guessing myself. I’ve only JUST (like two weekends ago) showed Third Level and that was on my should-be pasture ornament of a 20-year-old former eventer. My confidence in training my young super-star horse, Max, is often wanting. He’s actually such a saint that I found myself in the last few months in a bit of a First Level rut. We were killing it at First Level, but Second Level lateral work caused us to lose our harmony and therefore as the true amateur I am, I stayed away from it but yet questioned where to go from here?
I started 2024 with a clear vision for us. I was going to seek every and all opportunities to expand my dressage knowledge. As part of that journey I applied and was awarded the Evie Tumlin grant and I was jumpstarted in my quest. Unfortunately, just shortly after this fabulous news, I found out two major setbacks.
First, my plan was to go train with Martin Arnold in Texas. He has a medical emergency that prevented his ability to host us. Then, I got surprising news that I had breast cancer and required a double mastectomy. I was devastated and felt hopeless in my ability to keep my promise to Max and I.
Luckily, I surround myself with the best community and support system and was motivated to keep going. I found strength in JJ Tate’s story and knew that the right answer was to take TDF’s grant opportunity despite this setback. The dressage community is absolutely amazing.
My trainer, Reginia Milliken (Cuvee Dressage), quickly sprung into action and scheduled a trip down to Florida for a week at KYB Dressage with her trainer Yvonne Barteau. We started the journey from Louisiana on an early Monday morning loading up Max and her two horses. We arrived at the KYB Farm around 4:30pm Monday afternoon and settled in the horses. I really enjoyed walking around the farm and taking in the beautiful rolling hills with Max. It was such a nice opportunity to break and breathe with Max knowing the journey I would be taking with a double mastectomy just the following week. In our busy lives, its hard to find the time to spend hours on end grazing with your horse.
Tuesday morning we started our training week. We started out the day auditing a KYB working student on her Grand Prix mount. Yvonne walked the student through some suppling exercises at the walk that immediately lit up light bulbs for me. It’s always the walk.
I sat and watched several more lessons throughout the morning including watching Regina work on her own Grand Prix mount, learning more and more from every lesson. Yvonne has an innate ability to see balance on the horse that I had never quite seen. She could see where the horses’ weight was by percentage on all four feet. Often encouraging the riders to help adjust that weight distribution to help the horses with the different movements which always showed a lovely result after doing so.
In the afternoon, I got Max ready and brought him out to the arena and started our normal warm-up. He really surprised me how well he relaxed into the atmosphere. We were able to show Yvonne exactly where we were, and she was able to evaluate both of us. She was pleased with Max and was incredibly encouraging to what Max and I’s future could be. We started introducing some real collection at the walk, feeling Max even offer the glimpse of what would one day be a piaffe. We worked a bit adjusting the trot and finally worked on real collection at the canter. I felt new buttons on my horse and left the lesson bubbly with excitement.
Wednesday morning Yvonne met up with us early and we discussed the training plan for the week, the month and next few months for Max. Max and I love homework and as we train most days alone at my house, this long term training plan was very exciting. We started really working to help me understand Max’s weight bearing and balance shifting. We isolated the back legs and found some new places on Max’s back. Max surprised himself several times offering some minor objections. I also worked on my position and using my own seat to help Max shift his weight. We found that Max was carrying himself about 60% on his right side all the time. We talked about how I needed to get Max 50/50 all the time and then develop the ability to help him shift his weight to help with the upper level movements one day like flying changes.
On Thursday morning, I started the day again getting to watch the young student on the Grand Prix horse followed by several more Adult Amateur riders and their horses, picking up more and more with each lesson. By the time Max and I got ready again, Yvonne was ready to really dig deep into Max. She even jumped on a few minutes to really feel Max to better help me understand where he is and where our boxes are. A huge takeaway from this lesson was that I had done an excellent job developing this young horse to work in the box (he started out like a grumpy horse at three with legs everywhere), but now we need to break out of the box. We need to find flexibility and full body bend in order to move into Second and Third Level movements. We left with homework to focus first on getting into his poll for big releases first and then move that flexibility and relaxation throughout his body.
On Friday, my trainer and I enjoyed a long trip home together both buzzing with excitement on new exercises and enthusiasm on all the horses.
Although I am now on rest after the mastectomy, I have a whole Army of horse friends coming and riding Max. It’s been such a gift from The Dressage Foundation to take the lessons I learned in my training experience and share them with all my friends as they come and ride Max for me while I’m recovering! Thank you The Dressage Foundation a million times over!
