Heather has been riding her whole life, and she still finds pure joy each day to be able to be on a horses back. Her love of horses has taken her all over the world. She owns and operates a busy riding school, RER Ponies, where she has been teaching young riders for over 20 years. She has 40 young riders in her program plus a handful of super adult amateurs. Her passion has always been teaching kids! RER Ponies is a United States Pony Club riding center and has been for 16 years. There are 15 horses and ponies at the farm, and Heather lives on the farm with her daughter Emmie and husband Todd. Emmie is very horsey and loves riding. Heather rides multiple horses every day, including client horses along with a super fun German Riding Pony cross Connemara mare, Shadey Hills Golden Dream, of whom she is very proud, and a Lusitano gelding who has such a cool personality and is a joy to train. Heather loves training young horses and watching them process new things. She enjoys teaching proper horse management and helping kids realize they don't have to own a horse to have the joy of them. She also loves to chase cows on horseback and is hoping to get the time to get back into that. Riding along side her daughter is probably one of her most favorite places to be. Heather is also an active Skiier and loves being in the mountains with her family. Winter is her favorite time of the year!
Heather has been involved in Dressage4Kids for 19 years. She attended and volunteered for the Youth Dressage Festival to see what it was all about and the following year she started to bring students to Festival to compete.
Heather continues to take an active part in Dressage4Kids through the Committee, hosting TEAM clinics at her farm, attending the Youth Dressage Festival each summer and attending D4K Unmounted Programs (D4K UP).
When asked what motivates her most about Dressage4Kids, Heather writes, "The kids! Lendon's visions being brought into fruition. This past year at Festival my daughter listened to Lendon talk about the programs. She also heard my share from our behind the scenes trainers meeting about the decline in youth participation. Emmie was very upset about this. She said 'Mama, we need to help Miss. Lendon! We need to make sure other kids can have D4K Festival as the highlight of their summer. It cant go away!!' So here I am supporting a program I love, that my daugher loves and helping maintain it as the highlight of the summer!"
