Unbridled Wings was never something I sat down and planned. It grew from a lifetime of horses, unexpected turns, heartbreak, second chances, and a little horse named Vlad who taught me more about trust, freedom, and listening than I ever could have imagined.

This is the story of how we got here.... 

Where It All Began

If you had told the little girl I once was where horses would eventually take me, I am not sure she would have believed you. I grew up in a small Eastern Shore town in Maryland called Chestertown. Horses were not something my family was deeply involved in, and I certainly was not born into the horse world. There was no beautiful barn waiting for me, no string of ponies to ride, and no trainers mapping out my future. There was simply a little girl who fell completely in love with horses and somehow knew, even then, that she needed them in her life.

It all started when a childhood friend took riding lessons and I tagged along. I was only five years old when I spent that first summer learning to ride, and somewhere along the way, horses took hold of my heart. My parents could not afford to keep me in lessons, but that did not stop me. If there was a horse somewhere that I could ride, I found a way to get on it. I became the definition of a barn rat. I cleaned stalls, did chores, worked long hours, got dirty, fell off, climbed back on, and traded whatever work I could for time in the saddle.

I did not grow up riding with top trainers or traveling from one prestigious show to another. My education came mostly from the horses themselves. Some were easy, but many were not, and looking back now, I think those difficult horses may have taught me the most. They taught me how to listen, how to be patient, and how to look beyond the behavior standing in front of me. I began to understand that sometimes a horse is not being difficult just to be difficult. Sometimes there is a story behind the behavior. Sometimes there is fear, confusion, pain, or simply a horse that has never felt truly heard. I did not fully understand it then, but those lessons would eventually shape almost everything I believe about horses today.

As I got older, I discovered jumping, and I loved it. I played around with lower-level show jumping and eventing whenever I could find a way to make it happen. There was never an abundance of money or opportunity, but there was determination. If there was a way forward, I was going to find it.

Years later, another chapter in my horsemanship began when I met my husband at the time. He had a background in Natural Horsemanship, ranch, cow, and reining horses, and eventually developed a deep love for Classical Dressage. Being exposed to different ways of working with horses opened another door in my own horsemanship. I did not know it then, but many of the things I was learning during that season of my life would become important pieces of the journey ahead.

The Horse Who Taught Me to Listen

Around that same season came a horse named Boyd. Boyd was given to me by a friend, and at first I had no idea just how much that horse was going to change me. He had a troubled past and a complicated personality. Most of the time he could be an absolute teddy bear, but there was another side to him, one that could become aggressive and even dangerous. He struggled with motivation, learning, and trust, and building a relationship with him was anything but easy. Somewhere underneath all of those layers, though, Boyd and I found each other.

Bridleless riding was something I had been exposed to during that time, and eventually I started wondering if Boyd and I could find our own version of that connection. What followed were countless hours of work. There was frustration, there were setbacks, and there were plenty of moments when I questioned everything. There were also tears, but mixed in with all of that were little breakthroughs that felt enormous. Slowly, the anxious, angry, complicated horse began to soften. He became more relaxed, more confident, and more willing to trust me. Somewhere during that process, we stopped simply working together and became partners.

Eventually, Boyd and I were jumping together bareback and bridleless, with nothing more than a soft dressage whip in each hand. That became our dance. There is something incredibly powerful about removing the equipment you normally depend on and realizing that what remains between you and your horse is communication and trust. Boyd gave me my first real taste of that feeling, and once you have felt something like that, you never forget it.

Saying Goodbye to My Best Friend

On December 29, 2015, I had to say goodbye to Boyd. I lost my horse, but more than that, I lost my best friend. I was devastated. There are some horses that leave hoofprints on your life so deeply that you cannot imagine another horse ever filling that space. Boyd was that horse for me. I truly believed I would never have that kind of relationship again.

What I did not know was that another horse was already waiting in the wings.

Literally.

And Then There Was Vlad

About a year before losing Boyd, we had been given a horse whose original name was Wings. At the time, the name seemed almost comical because there was nothing particularly angelic about him. We renamed him Vladimir. Vlad, for short. As in Vladimir the Impaler. That should probably tell you everything you need to know about our first impressions of him.

Vlad had been imported from the Netherlands to the Dominican Republic as a young stallion with enormous expectations placed on him. He was talented, athletic, and beautiful, but he was also incredibly difficult. His early training was rigorous, and from everything we knew about his past, Vlad had developed some very strong opinions about people and about being ridden. Eventually he was imported into the United States as a dressage prospect, but things still did not go as planned. He struggled on the ground, he struggled socially with other horses, he paced the pastures, and under saddle, refusals and rearing made progress increasingly difficult.

By the time Vlad came into my life, he was also dealing with significant lameness and had spent months on stall rest. He arrived like a little ball of fire and vinegar, and the plan was never for him to stay. The goal sounded simple enough. Get him sound, help him mentally and physically, get him going comfortably under saddle, and then find him a good forever home.

Vlad apparently never received that memo.

Hitting the Reset Button

It became clear that the first thing Vlad needed was not more pressure or more training. He needed time. More than anything, he needed the opportunity to learn how to simply be a horse again. So we hit the reset button. We worked on his feet, gave him turnout, and allowed him to start figuring out how to interact with other horses, something he was surprisingly terrible at after spending so much of his early life as a stallion.

Eventually, Vlad was sent to live at my in-laws' farm, where he spent an entire winter in a large pasture with cows and one older mare. There was no show ring, no training schedule, and no expectations. It was simply Vlad learning how to be Vlad.

When we visited over the holidays, he came running toward the fence, and to our surprise, he was sound. I can still remember watching him happily show off that beautiful extended trot of his. After everything we had watched him struggle through, there he was, moving freely. It felt like the first little glimpse of the horse hiding underneath everything else.

Eventually Vlad came back into work, and I wish I could tell you this is where the beautiful fairy tale began, but it was not. A sound Vlad was considerably more exciting than a lame Vlad. He was tense, anxious, sensitive, and always seemed to be trying a hundred times harder than necessary. He was an overachiever in every possible sense of the word.

The Horse I Didn't Want

Then I lost Boyd. Suddenly, I did not really have a horse to ride. I had a two-year-old who was not ready yet, and I had Vlad. So one day I decided to take him on a trail ride.

It was horrible.

I got off four different times because he was rearing, spinning, and trying to run away from things he had decided were terrifying. I remember thinking very clearly that this was not my horse.

The truth is, I did not even like riding him. Actually, if I am being completely truthful, I hated it. I had just lost the horse who made me feel safe, understood, and connected. Boyd and I had spent years developing our own language together, and now I was sitting on a horse who felt like the complete opposite. Every ride seemed to remind me of what I had lost. I could not wait for Vlad to get better so we could sell him and he could move on to wherever he was supposed to go.

But something funny happens when you keep showing up. Ride by ride and piece by piece, Vlad and I started figuring each other out. It did not happen quickly, and there was no magical moment when everything suddenly became easy. There was simply a little more trust, a little less tension, and a little more understanding between us each time. Slowly, almost without realizing it, we started becoming a team.

The Day Everything Changed

Then one day, almost by accident, we discovered jumping, and everything changed.

Vlad loved it.

The difficult horse suddenly had a purpose. The horse who could make everything feel complicated seemed to come alive when there was a fence in front of him. Somehow, the horse I could not wait to sell started carrying me toward dreams I had never believed I would actually get to chase.

We went from small local shows to jumping bigger courses, and I was terrified half the time. Vlad, meanwhile, seemed to think he had finally found the job he had been waiting for. At one show, I needed encouragement from my grandmother just to get myself into the ring for my first three-foot course. Vlad packed me around like it was nothing. Not long after that, we entered a 3'6" division, and I was pretty sure I was hyperventilating walking through the gate. Again, Vlad carried me around. This horse, the horse I had once dreaded riding, was slowly becoming my confidence when I could not find my own.

In May of 2016, Vlad and I walked into our first rated show together, the Blue Rock Classic at Swan Lake in Pennsylvania, and jumped straight into the 1.20m Amateur Owner classes. For a girl who grew up trading barn chores for saddle time, simply being there felt surreal. We made mistakes, and I made plenty of them. At that first rated show, I did not understand some of the cross-entry rules and lost all of our top-five placings because of it. It hurt, but that was part of my education too. We kept going. We won some, we lost some, and we learned.

Somewhere during all of that, something happened that I had never planned for.

I fell in love with Vlad.

The Horse I Couldn't Let Go

At the end of the summer of 2016, we made the painful decision to put Vlad up for sale. That had always been the plan, and financially, we needed to follow through with it. I cried more than I care to admit. The horse I once could not wait to get rid of was suddenly the horse I could not imagine letting go.

Vlad left on trial, and strangely enough, when he stepped off the trailer at the trial home, he was lame again. A veterinary exam found a strange growth in his stifle, and Vlad came home.

What I did not know at the time was that my husband had seen how heartbroken I was when Vlad left. He quietly decided that if Vlad came home unsold, we would find a way to keep him. We certainly did not have the money to go out and buy some beautifully trained show horse that could carry me toward my dreams. We were young, working hard, and earning every inch of progress we made in an expensive and difficult industry.

When Vlad came home, I learned that he was staying.

The horse I once could not wait to get rid of was finally mine to keep.

Chasing a Childhood Dream

Not long after Vlad came home, I received an acceptance letter as a wild-card rider for the Washington International Horse Show. I cried. As a little girl, I had watched that show and dreamed about what it might feel like to ride into that ring. Now somehow, against all odds, I was going there with Vlad.

Our first trip to WIHS was not the storybook ending I had imagined. Just days before, we had received our first elimination at Zone Finals, and suddenly all of the confidence I thought I had disappeared. Then we walked into that intimidating WIHS ring and tried our best. Our best that night was messy. The atmosphere got to us, the emotion got to me, and our round was rough. I left that ring knowing I wanted another chance.

I spent much of the following year with WIHS in the back of my mind. I wanted to go back. I wanted another opportunity, not because I needed a ribbon, but because I knew there was more in us than what we had shown that night.

What I could never have known was that getting there again would require me to rethink almost everything about how Vlad and I communicated.

Learning a New Language

Not long after WIHS, Vlad and I started playing around with riding bridleless. At first, it was exactly that, playing. Nothing formal and certainly nothing polished. Vlad was fast, fiery, and at times completely confused. Without the bridle, the holes in our communication became painfully obvious. I could not simply rely on my hands anymore. If he did not understand me, I had to find another way to explain myself.

In a strange way, removing the bridle forced me to become a better listener.

In January of 2017, I took Vlad to the Maryland Horse World Expo and decided to try some bridleless jumping. Calling the warm-up interesting would probably be generous. Vlad was running off after fences, rearing again, and I had far less control than I would have liked in an already overwhelming environment. I was nervous, but I went into that arena with the horse I had underneath me that day and did the best I could with him.

Then something happened that Vlad has done again and again throughout his life. He rose to the occasion. Vlad loved a crowd. Somehow, with all of that energy around him, he seemed to understand that it was time to show off. That day we jumped five feet bridleless, higher than I had ever jumped before, even with a bridle.

It was an incredible moment, but our bridleless work was still far from finished. Over the summer we continued playing with it here and there between shows. We still struggled with him running off after fences, and I slowly began to realize something important. With a bit in his mouth, I could eventually create a response through pressure. Without it, there was nowhere for the holes in our communication to hide.

Vlad was showing me exactly what we did not understand about each other.

There is no universal language for riding bridleless. There is not a perfect rule book telling you exactly what cue means what. You and your horse have to create that language together. Slowly, Vlad and I began creating ours.

Sometime around September of 2017, something clicked.

He softened, and I softened.

The horse who had once felt like he was going a hundred miles an hour began to feel almost like a school horse beneath me. He was relaxed. He was listening, and I was listening. For perhaps the first time, we were not arguing about how things should be done. We were having a conversation.

When Vlad Started Giving Me the Answer

When I began preparing for the Pennsylvania National Horse Show, I put the bridle back on, and the difference surprised me. The tension returned almost immediately. I found myself micromanaging him again, trying to contain all of that fire instead of trusting him to carry it. The more I tried to control every piece, the more difficult everything seemed to become.

Our round at Pennsylvania National was difficult, and I left the ring feeling defeated. I was not disappointed in Vlad. I was disappointed in myself. I could not stop wondering what would have happened if I had simply trusted him and let him do his job.

The very next day, I rode him bridleless just to let both of us relax.

And there was my horse again.

He was relaxed, happy, and listening.

I could no longer ignore the difference. Vlad had been trying to tell me something, and maybe I had finally become quiet enough to hear him.

What If I Just Trusted Him?

That was when a completely crazy thought entered my mind.

What if I rode at the Washington International Horse Show without a bridle?

Even thinking it sounded crazy. This was the biggest show of my year. It was the place where, only a year before, I had walked out of the ring knowing I desperately wanted another chance. Now I was considering going back and taking away the very piece of equipment most riders would consider essential.

I talked with a few people I trusted who knew Vlad and me as a team. To my surprise, they supported the idea. I slept on it, but when I woke up the next morning, the thought had not gone away. If anything, I felt more certain.

Vlad had spent all this time trying to tell me what made him feel comfortable, confident, and free. Maybe my job was not to convince him to do things my way. Maybe my job was finally to listen to what he had been trying to tell me all along.

For years, I had been trying to become a better rider by learning how to do more.

Vlad was teaching me that sometimes becoming a better horsewoman meant having the courage to do less.

To let go.

To listen.

And most of all, to trust.

So I did.