My daughter Tammi is one of the young riders pictured in the “ Champions in the Making” section of the “Lessons” page; a few of the pictures of her are at shows, where she won Blue Ribbons on a regular basis, out-performing many nationally-ranked riders in her age group in the various Midwestern horse association shows. Her success serves as a testimonial to Joy Weber’s philosophy of “non-assembly line training”.

My daughter came to Joy with some good basics and training from another stable in the area, but there came a point where she just wasn’t progressing there because of the “one size fits all” style of training. The philosophy there was to push the rider through whatever the instructor felt they should be doing at that point; regardless of if the rider had enough confidence to try. Some riders may benefit from this philosophy, but my daughter wasn’t one of them. Though she was working at an intermediate level and she had friends at the stable the training itself was no longer of much benefit. In fact it seemed to be doing more harm than good. She discontinued there, and when Joy took over Meadow Grove Farms my daughter started training with her.

Under Joy’s thoughtfully intuitive training my daughter became known as “the Equitation Queen”. She was soon consistently ‘in the ribbons’ in both English and Western classes, be they Equitation/Horsemanship or Pleasure. We had a great victory when she and some of Joy’s other students went to a show at the previous training barn and won or placed well in pretty much every class they participated in, “beating out” the students at the host barn for the ribbons.

Joy takes each student as that student and works with them in the way each individual student learns, cognitively, emotionally, and physically, much as she does with the horses she trains. The result is a much more confident and self-assured rider, and a calmer, more responsive horse.

Anna Simmons
Winona, Minnisota