Growing up in Blandford, NS, Cheryl had the horse bug from the start. “My uncles in New Brunswick had draught horses. We used to go up and visit in the summer and I was always asking if I could ride them and brush them. They never let me on them, but I was constantly in the barn while I was there.”
The keen youngster started taking lessons at a local stable; the same year, her grandmother bought her Choice, the Thoroughbred lesson horse she had been riding. She was 13, he was three. “A green rider and a green horse. Looking back on it now, it was insane,” said Cheryl. It got a bit crazier when they began entering low-level horse trials. “He did all right, but sometimes on the cross-country I would end up on the ground. Later we found out that he was blind – he had uveal cysts and depending on the size of his pupils and the amount of light, they would block his vision.”
Not surprisingly, Cheryl became less enthused about the thrill of eventing and began to find dressage a bit more appealing. “To be honest, I had fallen off so many times due to my horse’s eye problem that I started disliking the “adrenaline” part!”
Following a one-year stint at Kemptville College in Ontario in the Equine Studies program, Cheryl returned to her native province and was hired as stable manager at Lobster Point Farm in Chester, owned by John Risley, who would later own all her top horses. “I started riding their horses – they had two Friesians and two Quarter Horses, and I took my horse with me.” She got Chimon, her “first really competitive horse,” at age 21. “Chimon was the small tour champion for the United States with Michelle Gibson and Yvonne Barteau, who both rode him. He was a fantastic little schoolmaster. In my very first prix St. Georges down in Florida, where I was training with Shannon Dueck, Shannon finished first and I finished second out of a field of almost fifty horses.”
Later came Kafka, “the love of my life.” This 18.2-hand mammoth was purchased from Bert Rutten in Holland on a horsebuying trip with Dueck. “Shannon and I looked at every horse in Bert’s stable that day. Kafka was the very last to come out. My jaw hit the floor when I saw him. Shannon said “you don’t want that one,” because she remembered him from when he was younger. Bert assured me that he was safe now. I watched the guy ride him around and he was very impressive. I got on and I didn’t have a clue what half the stuff was he could do – I could ride every grand prix movement on that horse.”
Her excitement was short-lived, however. “I only got to show him one time. He ruptured his stifles; he was so big and he was getting up in the stall on those special rubber mats – I think it was because he was used to being on straw. I only had him six months and had to retire him.” Now 19, the old boy is enjoying pasture life at Lobster Point, but Cheryl admitted that his memory will live on in one particularly indelible way long after he is gone: “Two weeks before his injury, I had the Dutch Warmblood symbol and his name tattooed on my back.”
Other top horses Cheryl had the privilege to ride in her early career both here in North America and Europe with great success include Hesperos, a German Trakehner gelding she found in Spain; Vivaldi, a Dutch Warmblood gelding; and Lucky Strike, another KWPN gelding who was recently retired at the age of 18.
Cheryl became a regular student of Bert Rutten nearly a decade ago, and routinely spends months at a time at his facility at Hunsel in the south of Holland, training and showing on the rivalrous European dressage circuit.
“Now I have a daughter, so it makes it more difficult to keep travelling back and forth,” said Cheryl. “I am going to try to stay based in Canada, and only go to train in Europe to compete before team events or when I need qualifying scores for team events.” And does two-and-a-half-year-old Scarlet share her mother’s early love of life in the saddle? “Oh yes! She’s been on all my horses.”
Currently, the 29-year-old is competing primarily with Tango (“Tangy”) and Paganini (“Pagi”), both of which she acquired through Rutten. Cheryl describes what she loves best about Paginini, a 14-year-old bay Crown Predicate KWPN stallion.
“His character. He was absolutely drop-dead gorgeous when I rode him in Holland as a youngster. I was still pretty green then, and he was a young breeding stallion! He was so powerful, so much horse, that I thought, “okay, I’m not ready for this horse,” but I always had it in the back of my mind that when I was ready, he was the one I wanted.”
Paginini had previously sired a large number of foals in Holland during his breeding career there, and here in Canada, Risley is hoping to once again have semen available for mare owners this spring. “Bert bought every single male offspring he has produced in Holland,” says Cheryl of the quality of Pagi’s foals. “They are all really, really nice. We have a three-and-ahalf-year-old from him that we have just started, and she is an exact cookie-cutter replica of him.”
Cheryl also credits the stallion for the occasion she has earmarked as her greatest achievement to date, when he was named top grand prix stallion at the prestigious Zwolle International show. “When Pagi won Best Stallion of Holland in 2008, it was pretty shocking for me, as a Canadian riding in Holland, to win that international competition.” Here in Canada, she was also thrilled when Paginini won grand prix classes at Blainville and Beaulieu in 2009. “It was really nice to have such good results in my home country.”
In 2010, Risley purchased Liebling II from Donald McTaggart, a horse formerly ridden by Carl Hester of Great Britain. When Meisner failed to “click” with the horse in the short time frame leading up to the World Equestrian Games, a selfless decision was made to temporarily return the horse to Hester so that he could have a shot at qualifying for WEG. The pair made the British squad, and subsequently contributed to their team silver medal-winning effort. “Carl has such a bond, such a connection with him, that it seemed like the right decision to let him take him to the WEG, because I hadn’t qualified,” explained Cheryl, adding that the immediate future of the 14-year-old Holstein gelding is still up in the air. “I’m not certain what exactly is going to take place. I would obviously love to have the opportunity to keep riding the horse, but that will be up to the owner.”
Considering the progress she has made in only 10 short years – a mere nanosecond in a sport where riders often hone their craft for most of their competitive lives – it is not surprising that Cheryl’s training and sales company is called Future View Dressage (www.futureviewdressage.com). The Dressage Canada short-listed rider is currently teaching, buying, selling and training top dressage prospects and hosting clinics at Lobster Point and around the Maritimes.
Looking ahead to what the next couple of years might bring, Cheryl predicted, “I plan to show this summer throughout Canada and the States – it’s such a long distance for us to travel, so I’m not sure how many competitions I will end up doing.” Cheryl is especially excited about a new Applause Dressage-designed grand prix freestyle which was created for Tango. “I hope to show it off this summer.”
But London is looming. “Towards the 2012 Olympics, I will start to ramp it up and travel again. I’ll probably do a three month European tour leading up to the Olympics if I feel I’m strong enough to make the team at that point,” she said, “providing all goes well.”
