Inside Equine Minds by EqPI
Get to know the personalities of the most successful horses of different disciplines. Learn how their personalities influence the way they are managed, trained, and their overall success.
Inside Equine Minds by EqPI
So Enchanted: Pony Hunter Extraordinaire
So Enchanted, known as Lex around the barn, has too many tricolors to list! In addition to a clean sweep at Pony Finals in 2016, Lex was 2022 USEF/Smartpak Grand Champion Pony Hunter of the Year. When you think of such a successful pony hunter - especially a small such as Lex - you likely think that the pony will just pack around anybody, but you'd be wrong in this case! While she won't do anything bad, Lex needs the right team of trainer, rider and groom to truly bring out her best. Listen to this episode where I meet with Patricia Griffith and Caroline Passarelli to learn how the team behind her makes sure she is happy and ready to strut her stuff in the show ring.
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[Music] Welcome to Inside Equine Minds, a podcast where I, Kaitlin Hendry, meet with trainers, riders and grooms to dive deep inside the minds of the most successful horses in various disciplines. We'll take you behind the scenes from the horses perspective to learn about how these horses are trained and managed in a way that strengthens their mental game and fuels their success. This podcast is brought to you by EqPI, or Equine Performance Identities, which is a personality profiling tool to help you understand your horse at an individual level. An EqPI profile provides information about your horses individual needs and motivations so you can manage and work with them in a way that brings out their best. An EqPI profile can also inform breeding and sales by providing information about temperament to ensure the best match possible between either horse and rider, or stallion and mare. In today's episode, we'll be learning all about a pony hunter extraordinaire. She is a 2009 Welsh pony cross known as Lex around the barn, but if you have seen her in the show ring, you know her as So Enchanted. She is owned by the Zandri family of Sprucedale Inc. She has so many tricolors, there's no way I'm going to be able to mention them, but if you want even a glimpse of how amazing this pony is, she has earned tricolors at venues such as Upperville, Washington International, Devon, WEF, Penn National and Pony Finals. In fact, one of her first big championships was the 2016 Pony Finals. She went as a green pony. She had only shown a few times before, and she ended up sweeping the small green pony division with Caroline Passarelli, who is one of my guests today. In addition to winning Pony Finals in 2016, she was also 2022 USEF/Smartpak grand champion pony hunter of the year with Ella Tarumianz. As I mentioned before, I'm really excited to have Caroline Passarelli as one of my guests since she was one of Lex's first riders and rode her when she was a green pony. And in addition to Caroline, we have Patricia Griffith joining us who is Lex's trainer out of Heritage Farm. But before we speak with Caroline and Patricia, let's do a quick overview of Lex's EqPI personality profile. In order to develop this profile for Lex,, Patricia went online and took the EqPI personality assessment which is available on the EqPI website www.equineperformanceidentities.com. Using Patricia's inputs, I evaluated Lex's personality across four behavioral spectrums of behavior which are also called traits. These four spectrums are Independence, which is the horse's preference to control or comply, extraversion which is the horse's preference to interact or isolate, stability which is the horse's preference for predictability or variety, and lastly, the structure spectrum, which is the horse's preference for clarity or flexibility. For the independence spectrum, Lex is on the high side, meaning that she will likely prefer to have more autonomy and control in what she does day-to-day, and in order to get her to be motivated, you have to really think about what's in it for Lex? Because if there's not something in it for her or she's not enjoying the job, you'll likely encounter more resistance and challenging behavior, because she doesn't want to perform. For the extraversion spectrum, she is considered situational so she doesn't have a strong preference one way or another. For situational spectrums, in order to figure out how they actually show up, we have to look at how the spectrum relates to other spectrums in the horse's profile. So for example, Lex's extraversion spectrum is lower than her independence spectrum which means that she is going to be more task-oriented. She's not going to be super motivated by pleasing you or by getting attention. She's going to be more focused on just getting the job done. Her extraversion is also lower than her stability spectrum which is on the slightly high side. When extraversion is lower than the stability spectrum, then that means that it takes them a little bit more time to warm up to new horses or new people. Speaking of high stability, high stability horses tend to be more methodical, more rhythmic. They're more consistent day in and day out. If they've had a couple days off, they don't tend to build up energy as much. They might take a little bit more time to get going and get motivated. And then Lex is also high on the structure spectrum which means that she likely prefers things to be very black and white, very clear. There's a right answer and a wrong answer. High structure horses get confidence from depth of expertise, so sometimes training them can be a little tricky when they don't know what the right answer is. And trust is a big factor for high structure horses, as well, because they want to mitigate risk, and so developing that trust so that way they know that you are going to tell them exactly what to do and mitigate that risk for them and make the answer very clear, they will really really appreciate that when you're building a relationship with them. If you want to see Lex's EqPI profile in more depth, it is available on the Patreon account for this podcast. If you are a member, you get access to all of the horse's profiles that are on this podcast for free, or if you don't want to become a member, you can also purchase the profiles one off depending on which horse you're interested in. Patreon members also get discount codes for EqPI services and early access to the podcast content. Now that we have done a quick overview of Lex's profile, let's go ahead and talk to Caroline and Patricia. Welcome and thank you both so much for joining me. I'm really excited to talk about Lex because I feel like I've seen posts in the past on social media about how she's kind of a tricky pony to work with, and it kind of like took a little bit of time to get to know her, so I'm curious from both of your perspectives, what's your favorite thing about Lex and her personality. (Patricia) I think she's unique and that if she does like you, she's on your side and she really tries to win every class. And it's one of those where if you sort of win her over then you feel like she is really fighting for you, whereas if you didn't know her and you just treated her like, you know... I would say probably the hardest thing and the thing I like most about her is that she's not sort of cookie cutter. It's not, "okay today we're going to ride, we're going to ride her for 20 minutes, we're going to lunge her for 15 minutes, and then we're going to go and she's going to be perfect." There are days you need to ride her for 20 minutes and lunge her for two minutes or not lunge her at all. You really have to read her um which I think is maybe hard for some people, but I find it kind of easy. Like once you sort of know her, she really does tell you, "Hey I'm fresh. Hey I'm not. Hey I can go right to the ring. I can't." So that's hard for some people, but I find it interesting, because I think if you read her, and you know how to listen to her, then she kind of tells you what she needs. (Kaitlin) Yeah. How... what does she do? Like, what are those signs that tell you what she needs? (Patricia) You know, she's quiet naturally so that's tricky to pick up on whether or not she's quiet enough to show, so she could fool you like 'cause if you're riding her around, she feels quiet, and then if you didn't do quite enough and she walks in, she looks maybe a touch too bright, um and then you'll kind of know because she'll kind of you know, ring her head around after the first jump or look a little bit too interested on what in what's going on on the sides of the ring. And then when you have it just right, and you... because if you could do too much. Then for me, she looks annoyed. She's like, "yeah, you worked me too much. Now I'm tired and now I really don't want to put my best foot forward." So I think it's just that fine line of sort of knowing her, and Caroline rides her a lot in the morning so it's a constant, "How does she feel?" Sometimes we'll just check her on the lunge line to see and she'll sort of tell you if she... I think if you had a groom that didn't want to listen or watch how she's reacting, you could easily do too much. (Kaitlin) So Caroline, what do you think from a rider's perspective? (Caroline) Yeah, you know, I would agree with Patricia. You've got to take a minute to kind of get her on your side. You know even when I rode her, it wasn't "get on and this is exactly how it's going to go and it's going to feel the same every day." It was a little bit some days you're only on her for 15 minutes, and you're doing a little bit of light flat work and other days you're like, "hey she feels really good we're going to jump the whole course." And that's a little day-to-day with her. Like you're reading her. You're kind of seeing how she feels and it's a little bit on her time but when she's in it, she's in it all the way, and that's a very rewarding feeling as her rider. Especially now being ridden by a lot of younger kids, she's kind of gotten that feeling where they get to know her and you understand when she's ready to kind of go into a big stage and win the class. (Kaitlin) Yeah, with that high independence, it's definitely like her head needs to be in it, I think. You know for those high independence horses, when they're not in it, that's when you start to get some resistance. And what I'm hearing you say also, is sometimes it takes a little bit more time for her to maybe warm up to new people or to trust new people people, and when she does, then she's kind of bought in. And that's pretty typical. Her extroversion is situational, right? So one of the ways that we know how that actually shows up is by looking at the other spectrums, and when the extraversion spectrum is lower than the stability spectrum, it takes them more time to warm up to new horses or new people. And with her high structure, as well, trust is really important to high structure horses because they want to know that they're gonna know what the right answer is, things are going to be black and white. And so in addition to taking more time to warm up to new people, it takes a little bit more time for her to trust people as well, or new horses. How has that shown up? How does that resonate? (Patricia) I mean, I think she knows her people for sure. Like I know when we're at the ring and we get to the gate, like she looks for me to like, "hey, I did it well. Now she's going to give me a treat." Like she kind of knows the deal, yeah, and I think that if the wrong... we've seen it like kind of if the wrong groom is taking care of her and you're trying to move too quickly around her, she doesn't stand on the cross ties well, or we've gotten a few different times where she's been leased out and come back to us, and we've told them, "hey, you know, be careful with the grooms." Like if a guy approaches her very quickly on the cross ties, she can kind of lean back against them. She's broken a pair. She doesn't love the vets. Like even before they've even done anything to her, she's suspicious of the vets. And we've gotten around that a lot by just you know giving her treats and stuff and then all of a sudden, oh you can flex her, but when the vet goes to let's say examine her or do you know, she's right away got her guard up, like, "I don't know who you are and now you're doing all sorts of things to me." And then now she's sort of gotten you know used to our vet and that if you're nice to her then she's like, "oh okay, this isn't that bad." (Kaitlin) Yeah, you have to win her over. (Patricia) Yeah for sure, like for sure if a vet just like ran goes up to her even just to pull blood, she's very weary of that. (Kaitlin) So what about you, Caroline? What's the most uh challenging thing about her personality? (Caroline) I would say a little like Patricia was saying earlier, it's challenging in that it could go both ways. You can kind of use it to your advantage or you could see it as a disadvantage, but it's really that you have to be on her side all the time. If you pick a day to take her out and she's kind of telling you like, "Hey, I'm not up for it today." You listen to her a little bit. And she's got this way about her. We've seen her now at a lot of big championships with so many different riders, I think she kind of knows the difference between those two. She knows when she's at a regular horse show, and she knows when it means a little bit more, and I think that as long as she's on your side, she knows that difference and she's going to fight for you even a little bit harder. And I think that's kind of how you have to play it with you. If you take her out one day and you're like, hey she's not up for it, just take a minute, just another day at home, but she's going to kind of put it all on the line when it really counts. (Kaitlin) Are there specific things that you do taking her personality into account to prepare her for those big shows? (Caroline) I would say for her there's not a lot of buildup. You're not jumping her a ton of days in a row. She's not a spooky pony at all. You're not practicing a million fences. You're more making sure that she feels good day-to-day. Maybe a little bit of flat work here and there, but you're not drilling her. And then I would say as the event gets closer, you're kind of building up in if you give her a jump school, maybe if it was for a different kid, you would put someone smaller like me on, who could kind of show her the way once, but it's not complicated. It's kind of every show is a little bit the same for her in that you don't need a huge buildup if the venue is a little bigger. (Patricia) Yeah, I would say that anyone that it hasn't maybe gone as well for, it's because they've complicated it where it didn't need to be. It's very hard sometimes to... to really do "less is more" when you're planning on going to Devon, they're like, "that's not possible." But really you can overdo her and then she looks annoyed, I would say, in her expression... not try her hardest if you just were like, "oh we're going to Devon. We need to do double what we normally do." Which I would say for most horses is probably the case, but I think with her, you have to really just... she'll tell you if she's fresh. Give her an opportunity to lunge a little, and she'll do what she needs. But I don't think you can change your program or your feel just because the show is maybe a little bigger venue which is difficult to do. It's difficult to just be like, "she's fine." But you have to read her and she kind of will tell you if she's wild or she's not, and if she's not, that's a hard thing to just be like, "I barely rode her and now we're at Harrisburg." But she'll tell you. (Kaitlin) Yeah, I feel like in the hunter world, especially, the inclination is to just lunge them a lot and get them really tired so they go around nice and pokey a bit. (Patricia) Yeah, but she gets annoyed at you, like she's like, "ugh leave me alone," you know? (Kaitlin) yeah, well, I mean you want them to enjoy their job, you know? That's the ultimate goal, and I think that's when you have the most success, as well, is when they're happy doing what they're doing so it sounds like you both have really figured out how to create that sort of environment for her where she is happy and excited to go in the ring without too much excitement. (Patricia) Yeah, exactly. (Kaitlin) Are there other ways that her personality influences the way that she's managed around the barn related to maybe turnout or feeding or blanketing or anything like that? (Patricia) No she's easy to work around for us. I would say that we would tack up in the stalls with the grooms, not on a cross ties situation like out, because I have seen her with a few guys, and I know Sam Schaefer mentioned it. I've seen her sort of lean back and break the cross ties or um, but we groom a lot in the stalls. And I think she likes that setup better. (Kaitlin) Does she ever go out with other horses? (Patricia) No, I wouldn't say she loves other horses. I would say she is very independent and doesn't really... she's not like herd bound like some of the other ponies can be. She's happy to be alone, too, and she goes out maybe near other horses, but never in the paddock with other horses, for us anyway. (Kaitlin) yeah, no, I mean I think that makes sense especially with her extraversion being lower than that independence spectrum. She's really not super relationship-oriented, you know? Yeah you know, like it takes her a bit of time to build up the relationship and a bit of time to build trust, and that's when you start to see you know more of the uh, I guess the more of the "try" as you said, um but yeah, with her independence being higher than her extraversion, I wouldn't picture her as being a herd bound horse. Like I wouldn't look at her profile and go, "she needs a buddy all the time" (Patricia) yeah no, I think she'd be fine without a buddy ever. (Kaitlin) Some horses are like that. (Patricia) If you gave her a nice big grass field she would be just fine. (Caroline) Yeah, fiercely independent. (Kaitlin) Yeah, I love that. So how about um any specific training tips that you might give to somebody? Either... well, I know you lease her a lot, so are there anything that you tell people um for training her when you lease her, or if somebody else had a horse that was very similar to Lex, what are kind of the top tips that you would give them to bring out the best in the that horse? (Patricia) Probably just try to educate them on you know, just trying to keep her happy and then I would say she's the type you know, if you want to practice, it's not an hour lesson. Like get on, jump and then get off. Don't drill her and do it again and again and again and again, because it's probably not going to get better as you go. So that's why I think for her, she doesn't really have a lot of kids that need to learn the ropes, so you know so to speak. I think she has a lot of advanced kids that have multiple ponies where they're just practicing but they're not practicing, you know, how to find the jumps and going again and again and again and again. They're just practicing to put in a smooth round, and they're not practicing endlessly, because I don't think she would work for somebody that was learning to you know ride a pony or learning to do the small pony division. So we've never leased her to someone, let's say, who it's their first time in the division. She's not going to tolerate those lessons where they have to keep drilling it and doing it over and do it over and do it over until they get it right. She wants you to do it right the first time and she's happy to do it a bunch of times, but then be done. She, you know... just a normal, you know... even a good rider when they're learning, they have to do the drills and do it over and do the pattern, so as a teacher, I would just, when people call me about her the first thing I ask is, you know, "Which kid is it? Are they in the division? How many ponies do they have?" Because she's not going to be a practice type pony. (Kaitlin) Is it then trickier to find people who will lease her? Because especially being a small pony, I feel like you probably have a lot of people that want to lease like... you know she's of the top small ponies so I would imagine people want like the best for their kid, and maybe they just started riding or yeah... how does that factor in? (Patricia) It's not easy because they call and they ask about her and then as soon as I find out that, "Oh we're just learning to do the division." And I know I just say, "hey, like her owner is at the point where you know, wants her to... even if she doesn't you know have a lease person for a minute, that's okay because we'd rather have the right person." Right? But it is, it does get more challenging, because like you said, they're small ponies so most of the kids are just learning you know or learning to ride ponies so that is a little bit tricky. We've gotten very lucky, like she had Ella Tarumianz who is just such an awesome match with her. You know she's had a few of those you know in Kenzie and she's had those riders that don't need to practice a lot, and you know, then more often than not, she's champion or reserve. (Kaitlin) Yeah, I mean she was uh Pony Grand Champion Pony the year with Ella, right? (Patricia) Yeah and she didn't even show that much, if you look at the number of shows she did. (Kaitlin) Yeah, but she like tricolored in every single one. (Patricia) Yeah, exactly. (Kaitlin) How does she tolerate... like if you do have somebody who's learning a bit, does she tolerate the learning aspect? Like if somebody makes a mistake? (Patricia) Yeah, she's not gonna stop or do anything but for sure her expression. You could just see it on her face. She'll land, pin her ears back, like, "oh man, you missed it!" And like ring her head and she's like, "come on, let's go!" You know, like she... right away you know or she'll... what she'll do is I've seen a couple of, you know, maybe not as advanced kids try her, she'll just take over and start taking them around. She doesn't stay as relaxed. She's like, "Hey kid, you're doing this all wrong. Let's just, let's just go." And she'll kind of take over just a little bit. (Kaitlin) Yeah, I can definitely see that with her high structure, wanting to do it right, and then her high independence. Like if you're, if you're... "if you don't got it, I got it. Like, I'll take you around." (Patricia) yeah yeah and then she'll, if anything that'd be the worst thing that would happen. She would just take you like too quickly down the line or something. She'll be like, "we're going! Just... I'm taking you. We're going." (Kaitlin) Did you train her as a as a young horse as wel? (Patricia) When what was the year you rode her? (Caroline) So I showed her in 2016 and she came to us and I think that that year prior, same year, but in the winter, she had done a little bit of showing in the greens, and she had spent some time in Ocala, and then had a little bit of time off like a little break after that and that's when she came to Patricia and I. (Patricia) She had to have come out of the field. She looked pregnant. (Caroline) she did, yeah. she did. so I think they gave her a real break after she initially started greens. (Patricia) Like, I actually questioned like is she? Can we check? She is too heavy. (Caroline) She was. She was ginormous. (Patricia) And I would say when she rode her, she really was green. Like very green. Like we basically because she was so brave on the jumps, we never had to really practice the jumps. We had to practice her weight coming and going, like her forward and back, and we would literally just do cavaletti: six and five and six and five and six and five. (Kaitlin) the adjustability (Patricia) Basically her rideability was the hardest part about her. She was always brave so we knew that that part, we knew at least if we just got the rideability down, that the pony finals thing would be easy because she wasn't going to spook at the jumps. (Kaitlin) yeah, what was she like to train when she was greener? (Caroline) I would say kind of how she stayed throughout the years. a little bit day-to-day. Like Patricia said, we didn't practice a lot of jumps. Other days, I would say learning all that flat work for her and kind of giving her those gears was more frustrating on her part, I would say. I think we only showed her two or three times before she won every phase at pony finals. I would say the first time I showed her in the greens, it was a little bit like, "hey you're telling me what to do too much." And like Patricia said, like, "hey I'm gonna take over a little." And then kind of as we went day by day, you just saw that go away a little and I kind of learned the softer ride as she got better at it, and then by the time we got to that horse show, we were like, "hey, we have it. Like, she's on it." And that's still a little how she is now, like you know when you have it, because I would say Brianne Beerbaum was a good rider, but had never done hunters. And she had her one circuit at WEF, and that was a real match too. And she learned it, the pony liked her, and she learned to ride hunters beautifully. And she, I think she was circuit champion, and we really didn't train her. Like, she'd ride her and trail ride her all week, and then we'd set her up for Brianne on Friday and Meredith would do it, and she would make her kind of canter away from the gate up the line and then add on the lines going home to sort of in preparation for that getting a little quick maybe by the end of the course, and Brianne won so many classes. I mean class after class, and that was a kid that didn't really ever have a hunter background, you know. She wasn't a beginner. Like, she had done you know some showing in Europe, but she was definitely not some ringer from the states that had grown up in hunters, right? (Kaitlin) So speaking of the hunters, how do you feel Lex's personality lends itself to the hunter world and how has her personality influenced her success as a pony hunter? (Caroline) I think it's helped her that she is a little bit unflappable. The venue doesn't change her. She's not a spooky pony. Whatever jumps they want to throw in the ring are not going to affect her, and if you get to know her a little, she's going to teach you how to be a very soft rider which is a little bit what you're looking for in the hunters. You have to be effective but it's got to look very invisible and very soft as you do it, and she's very good at teaching those younger kids... you know some of the ponies, even if you're doing it well, maybe it looks a little rapid or a little rushed or there's places on course where it could look smoother, and it might not translate over to a winning junior hunter round or when you're a professional and trying to do the hunters. And she's going to really teach you that kind of soft, more advanced ride whereas some of the small ponies, I feel like it could be a little more like, "hey, I'm just fine in the jumps and going around." But she'll teach you how to really ride them. (Patricia) And I would say she likes the more impressive venues expression-wise. Like I would say day-to-day if you went to a local horse show, she might look kind of uninterested cantering around, and she seems to definitely know when it's a bigger venue um the expression. You know, her ears are different and she's jumping a little higher and she does seem to know like, "hey this is more important." (Kaitlin) How much do you know about her breeding? (Patricia) I don't know a ton about it. (Caroline) I don't know much, not much. I mean I know that she was bred in Lexington. The Lexington breeding was how she got Lex, right? And that's kind of my extent. (Kaitlin) Gotcha. I just feel like when you're talking about personality, I feel like inevitably, at some point, the question around nature versus nurture comes up and I wanted to get both of your opinions. If you don't know much about Lex's breeding, maybe just in general... What are your thoughts on nature versus nurture when it comes to personality? (Caroline) Um well, I feel like, you know obviously when you have a horse bred a certain way there's a few things that you're kind of looking to expect, but like you said, I also think it's a lot about the way they're started and the venue that they're started in, and I think for her especially, kind of starting at a place like Heritage and being in this program and having Patricia kind of overseeing all of that, it definitely lended itself to her kind of making the path she has, because I think very easily in the wrong hands, it could have gone a very different way and you needed someone to kind of understand her and know her and be able to kind of work through a few of the bumps you might have seen otherwise. You could have very easily I think backtracked way far as a young pony. (Patricia) Yeah you know the nature versus nurture thing is come up a lot with especially with the cloning and for whatever reason that maybe made me think more that it is the way they're brought up, because if you looked at all the Sapphire clones, for example, who were bred here and not there, and none of them really were anything close to Sapphire, and the same with the Gem Twist ones. So I think a lot of it is the way they're brought up and the way they're started. You know if you give them a positive start, um they're not going to be as apprehensive or you know maybe as standoffish or spooky. I think it is I guess relating it more to how humans would be, you know if you had a mother that was always like "oh my God, watch out!" You know it's super dramatic and that that would be instilled in you, where if you had sort of the "Yep, this is how we do it. It's all fine." And then the, I mean, I would think that that would affect the horse in a lot of ways, the way same way it would a person. (Kaitlin) yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Um and definitely, I mean, I always say with EqPI, there's no good or bad profiles, no good or bad personalities. There's challenges and strengths to every single one, and depending on how you work with them, you can either strengthen the challenges or you can strengthen the strengths, and you can kind of bring out or reinforce you know through learning theory or training, um those behaviors either inadvertently or intentionally. (Patricia) And I would say she, unlike most children's ponies, is more similar probably to the FEI horses in that the match is really important. You know just like it would be in jumping a Grand Prix, the match would be you know, way more important especially with a horse with a certain profile, and for sure the match or the kid that's on her is going to make or break sort of how it goes. (Kaitlin) Yeah, where I would imagine some ponies can will just pack around anybody. (Patricia) Anybody, yeah, they're literally you know would just take anybody. It doesn't matter. It does really matter with her. (Kaitlin) I could imagine probably some of the high structure and high Independence have some influence on that, as well, as far as like having a very clear picture of what's right versus wrong. Yeah and then um you know needing to have a little bit more finesse to get her buy-in and get her uh head wrapped around what she's doing and wanting her to want to participate. (Patricia) Yeah totally. (Kaitlin)Well that brings us to the end of our discussion today about Lex. I really appreciate you both taking the time to speak with me about Lex's personality a bit, and how that has influenced her success as a hunter. (Caroline) Thank you so much for having us! (Patricia) Yeah, thanks for having us. (Kaitlin) If you want to know your horse's profile, you can get a profile at the EqPI website which is www.equineperformanceidentities.com. If you like this podcast, we'd really appreciate if you showed us some love by giving us a rating on whatever listening platform you use, and if you know anyone who would like this particular episode, please share this episode with them, as well. Thanks for listening and we hope you tune in next time![Music]