Understanding the animal

By CAITLIN GRAVESON / North County Correspondent

Jack Burns has been always known that he wanted to work with horses.

He grew up in Kansas and was introduced to riding at his grandparent’s farm when he was 3 years old. He competed in his first horse show when he was 8.

Now training and shoeing horses from his home base in Windsor, Burns says, “I have never had a doubt. I always wanted to work with horses. Horses have always been the most important career choice for me, personally and professionally.”

Burns has more than 20 years of experience, arriving in Sonoma County in 1995.

“Horses were the reason I moved out here,” he says. “There are so many horses here and a lot of good professionals. There is more of everything going on here — Western riding, English riding.

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Last November, after the neck injury,  I moved him to Sonoma Equestrian Center for rehab thinking his show career was over and only hoping that he’d recover enough to be a happy retired horse.  We have had a great rehab team at SEC, a vet who got us through the acute phases of the injury and several followup crises, another vet who does all things to relieve horses in pain such as chiropractic, accupuncture and and whatever else it takes such as scouting out ads on BAEN for a saddle that would fit Equidor,  and Jack Burns (E’s very capable trainer and confidante).

E and Jack had their debut today at Woodbridge Farms schooling show where they got an astounding 78 and 76 in Level 1, Tests 1 and 2.  I always thought E had the potential to get these types of scores, but it took the right combination of confidence in his rider and happiness at home to get him there.  Here are the links to the videos.

Thanks so much to everyone for their support.  Enjoy!!
Love to all,

Margaret W. (Equidor’s adoring owner)

Equidor has been making fantastic progress with her adoring owner, Margaret and he actually made a sensational debut at Ram Tap 3 day eventing last weekend.  Despite some unexpected obstacles, i.e., flapping flags and unforeseen event, dismount in the stadium jumping arena, right before the start line, which he was scared by moving judges in the shaded judging booth, Equidor and Jack completed the 3 phases of event safely and finished in 4th!

So here comes Equidor.  Of course he was fabulous.  He was very relaxed and forward.  He has fantastic movements.  I cannot comment on exactly what Manolo was saying since he was talking to Jack very close and I could not hear, but what I heard was that he was doing very good and every time he rides with him, his riding gets much better, according to Senior Mendez.

So the story of Equidor’s recovery must have inspired Manolo to ask Jack to ride another horse later.  This horse needs some rehab, I believe and Manolo wanted to see him ridden by someone else.

After lounging the horse, very tall, nice looking gelding,  Manolo asked Jack to get on him while he is still on lounge line.

This horse had been ridden very tight, neck high and not able to go forward.  According to Jack, when he puts legs on, he just stops.  But he was able to get him going with lounge line as well as without lounge line.  His contact was minimum in the mouth also in the legs.

Another successful day with master Manolo:)