Achieving a huge milestone, a former racehorse transformed into a show horse at a Grand Prix dressage test. 15-year-old Cheeky Wee Red named Rosie recently made her dressage debut with rider Alice Pullem at Cabin Equestrian in Aberdeenshire. Initially, Pullem bought the 15 hh (hands high) racer mare for just $750 to retrain and sell in 2014. However, after realizing Rosie’s sports prowess, the rider trained her as a dressage horse. On 26th March, the trotting horse made her proud!

On 1st April, equestrian Alice Pullem shared her experience of training Rosie with Horse and Hound. She also mentioned the mare’s ecstatic dressage prowess that outshined the other mares under her.

How did the former racehorse perform at the dressage event?

Alice Pullem revealed that she was quite jittery before testing herself and Rosie against the highest dressage standards at the Grand Prix. However, her mare “felt fairly confident and answered everything,” on the test.

While performing the passage and piaffe movements at the center line, Pullem was overwhelmed and committed a small yet impactful mistake. She stated in the interview, “However in my line of one-changes I got so carried away I did 17 instead of 15! If it hadn’t been for that we would have broken the 63%.”  They finally settled for a score of 62.83%.

In equestrian sports, a score line above 70% is considered an excellent one whereas between 60 to 70% stands as good. However, considering the characteristics of racehorses, Alice Pullem did a great job at training Rosie for dressage.

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Racehorses generally possess high energy and can be difficult to qualify for dressage event. On the contrary, showhorses are groomed to have high standards ensuring they are on their best behavior. Hence, it is popularly believed in the equestrian world that a rider’s patience and diligence dictate the beautiful transformation of the horse. What Rosie pulled off is nothing short of a rarity.

How did the dressage equestrian train Rosie?

When Rosie first came to Alice, the mare was not equipped to perform the simple dressage movements. Moving forward, Alice and her coach Pammy Hutton decided to slow down and help the mare refine her movements. In fact, Rosie became her first horse to perform in the first two intermediate levels for dressage and then appeared at the Grand Prix.

Talking about Rosie, the rider told, “She is just so smart and works things out very very quickly.” Moreover, Alice revealed she learnt a lot from her beaming mare about horse training.

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Although converting a rocket-fueled racehorse to a composed equestrian event like dressage stands the test of time and patience, rider Pullem made it possible eventually.