ACCORDING TO CHRISTINE Headley “family are friends and friends become family” at the Heron Pond Farm Equestrian Center in Port Townsend.
The United States Dressage Federation (USDF)-certified instructor opened up the center on her mother’s, Kim McGuire, 10-acre farm almost six years ago.
“Working together is a dream come true for us,” she said.
Working the dream
It’s something they dreamt about when she was a little girl growing up in Quilcene on a farm, now known as Serendipity Farm, with her horse-training mother.
“What’s important to my mom and [me] is there’s a family-feeling environment here,” she said.
“So instead of referring to students as our clients we call them our barn family.
“Not only do we love and care for everyone’s horses as if they’re our own, but we want people to have fun, like we do, while learning to be confident riders.”
When her mother bought the farm 18 years ago, Headley, 38, said it came with a “wonderfully built sand arena” in which everything was “done right, including good drainage, and it gives us a good outdoor riding year-round.”
Her great-uncle, Neal Black, lives on the farm, as does her grandmother, Barbara Morgan, who jokingly shares with guests she lives in the barn in the first stall on the left.
Both help out on the farm, and during the summer horse camps, “my grandma always makes cookies, lemonade and hosts a barbecue.”
Ideally located just a few minutes from Port Townsend, all she needs to do is ride to the other side of her driveway to enter the Larry Scott Trail.
Trains horses, too
At HPF, as she calls it, she trains horses along with teaching students dressage, jumping and eventing, with an emphasis on solid flat work through the various levels of dressage.
Her training techniques are based on proven Natural Horsemanship methods, as well as United States Pony Club (USPC) methods.
USPC certifications test on horse management knowledge and riding skills.
The 12 levels of certification get progressively more difficulty.
While, for one reason or another, I’ve yet to pursue it myself from what I’ve learned about dressage methods of training it should be basic training for both horse and rider pursuing any type of riding discipline, including the sport I enjoy the most — barrel racing.
As she’s done since she was young, Headley works closely with local 4-H horse club members and is the team coach of Jefferson County’s Equitese Pony Club, a division of USPC.
Largest organization
The USPC is the largest equestrian educational organization in the world that teaches horsemanship skills to youth and adults, including riding skills and proper horse care or horse management.
Visit www.Ponyclub.org for more information.
Headley was the first in Jefferson County to get the USPC H-A and is still the only to get an A certification — the highest in Pony Club certifications.
The “H” stands for Horse Management and is knowledge-only based. The A is the highest level. The A certification test focuses on the candidate’s riding skills only.
“At that level you’re thought of as a trainer who is ready to go out into the professional world,” Headley said.
After high school, she went to college in Seattle while giving riding lessons part-time at Cedar Valley Stables — her father, Greg Headley’s farm — on Vashon Island.
After earning her Associate of Arts degree, Headley decided to go full throttle into the horse world rather than pursuing a higher education, reasoning she loved horses and had a great business going on Vashon Island.
All the while she continued to return to Jefferson County to work with the Pony Club and 4-H youths, and to help with the annual summer 4-H camp.
She became a United States Dressage Federation (USDF) certified instructor in 2008. During her certification test session she was the only one in attendance who passed and the youngest by eight years.
Headley credits her success in attaining certification on her first try to her background in Pony Club, training with her mother and lots of diligent work.
Hot bed
Deciding she wanted to take her horse education and showing to a higher level, Headley moved to Wellington, Fla., a city, she said, that is the “mecca of the dressage and show jumping world.”
For 12 weeks during the winter, equestrians of all ages and abilities from around the world converge — from beginners to Olympians — to compete in the 12 show rings for 12 fervent weeks.
There, Headley trained under a Danish trainer and Olympian.
Her two years there, she said, were a “totally life changing experience for me and one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.”
She said the atmosphere was “intense and super charged up,” with the richest of the rich as well as the best of the highest level competitors from around the world taking part.
“An average Joe horse that was considered cheap started at $60,000, but the majority of horses cost between $150,000 and $250,000,” she said.
“Keeping in mind these horses, while top of the line and expensive, are still animals who can be quite reactive. Handling them was intense. If something went wrong you definitely didn’t want it to be your fault.
“So, there was lots of constant pressure to keep those horses and riders performing at the highest level out there.”
From there she decided to chill out by backpacking in Australia, Southeast Asia and New Zealand.
When she was ready to come home her mom helped her get her own business up and running at HPF.
“I came back to the area about six years ago not real sure of what I wanted to do. Then I got back into horses,” she said.
“And now I kinda joke I’m squatting at my mom’s and she can’t get rid of me.”
Headley also found love when her mother’s friend and fellow equestrian Kim Hunt decided to set her up on a blind date with her son, Paul Hunt.
Now the two are engaged and the entire family dotes on their beloved son, Owen, who turned 2 this month.
“She set us up on a blind date and the rest is history,” Headley shared with a smile.
Now in her fifth year at HPF, she’s seeing her business grow by leaps and bounds, and she said she couldn’t be happier.
She has “some wonderful horses I train” and is busy giving lessons to students of all levels. For students who don’t own their own horses she has four lesson horses well versed in dressage and jumping.
Some students take lessons for fun, others have their own riding goals and then there are those who are serious competitors.
She has a handful of Pony Club students who compete as a team.
“I know there are a lot of people who want to ride but can’t really afford lessons,” Headley said. “So I do some bartering and trade work as much as I can.”
After school and on weekends you’ll find such youths doing chores and grooming horses in exchange for lessons. Two have become her valued assistants.
And now everyone in her family gets free haircuts because one of her student’s mother is a hair stylist.
Another one babysits Headley’s son in exchange for lessons.
She furthers her clients’ knowledge by occasionally hosting outside clinicians. Last summer, the farm hosted a Natural Horsemen clinic with Greg Eliel.
Clinic
From March 9 to 12, HPF will host a Claes Gerrit Dressage Clinic and riding lessons. From Holland, Gerrit started his career as an event rider, competing in the European Junior Championships.
At 24, he was awarded the Leo van de Kar Award for most promising trainer in the Netherlands.
He trains riders of all levels, from entry to grand prix, in the U.S., Denmark, Belgium and China.
For more information, contact Headley at 360-286-9256.
“I’ve got a great group of core people here, wonderful horses I get to train and more and more people coming and knocking on the door,” she said. “I’m really excited and happy for the direction it’s heading. It’s a dream come true.”
Heron Pond Farm Equestrian Center is on Green Way in Port Townsend. Call 360-286-9256 for more information.
Events
• Feb. 8 at 7 p.m. hear “Pack Saddles & Gunpower” author Susie Drougas speak at the Buckhorn Range Chapter of Back Country Horsemen’s monthly meeting at the Tri Area Center, 10 West Valley Road in Chimacum.
A BCH member since 1985, her novels are based on her own adventures riding and camping in the high country, as well as weaving in the tenants of Leave No Trace.
“Pack Saddles & Gunpower” is a mystery novel that puts readers in the saddle to experience a rugged backcountry trip in the Pasayten Wilderness.
• May 18 at 6 p.m. is the Help a Horse Hoedown fundraiser for Olympic Peninsula Equine Network (OPEN), our local horse rescue, rehabilitation and adoption center.
The event offers dinner, a silent auction and dancing to the music of local favorite, The Jim Hoffman Band.
Fox Bell Farms Wedding & Celebrations is hosting the event, at 137 N. Barr Road in the Agnew area of Port Angeles.
For more information, contact Mike Vaillancourt at 714-222-0755 or golden mikedj@gmail.com.
Learn more about OPEN at olypenequinenet.org.
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Karen Griffiths’ column, Peninsula Horseplay, appears the second and fourth Sunday of each month.
If you have a horse event, clinic or seminar you would like listed, please email Griffiths at kbg@olympus.net at least two weeks in advance. You can also call her at 360-460-6299.
