MANITOULIN—So what does a riding stable owner and instructor do in the depths of winter when it is too cold to properly work her horses and people are nestled too deep into their blankets in front of the fireplace to venture out on the riding trails? Why head south to Texas to ride in some of the most prestigious riding events to be found on the North American continent, of course!
It didn’t hurt that the weather on a cold day in Texas was a lot balmier than anything to be found north of the Mason Dixon Line this winter. “It was lovely,” laughed Ms. Jansen. “It got down to 10 degrees or so, and people down there were shivering in their heavy coats and sweaters complaining about the cold. I was fine in my jacket and jeans.”
Fine indeed. Ms. Jansen took the competitive circuit in the heart of American horse country by storm. “This year I competed in Alvarado, west of Fort Worth, and also took part in clinics, training with the top trainers in the US.” In the horse show following the clinics Ms. Jansen put what she had learned (and teaches herself) to the test to come in fourth out of a highly competitive field of 17. “It was my first time and I had placed in every single category,” she beamed. “It was really great. You can’t get any better than that.”
In a six-day show in San Antonio, where the World’s Open and Paint Show was another boost, “I competed in the show and placed in every class again,” she said. It was a secret guilty pleasure that one of her best friends, with whom she was staying and a world-class rider who competes regularly at the professional level, did not.
Ms. Jansen had a bit of an advantage. Although she regards herself as primarily a western rider, she spends a lot of time teaching English style riding. Although she places in the top five in every class, she topped the English riding classes at first and second in each. “They don’t do a lot of English riding down there,” she laughed. “I thought of myself as a better western rider, but when you are putting on a show at that level you have to include English riding.”
Ms. Jansen scored her victories in front of a team of two judges for each class in which she competed. That would be against 20-30 riders in each class. “That I got something in every single class really had me pumped,” she admitted.
Texas is true horse country, in ways of which an equine afficionado from the Great White North could only dream. “There are parks all along the highways with water and bales there and there is no cost, unless you are using power,” she said. It was not unusual to see horses fully saddled and tacked standing in the back of a 1/2 ton truck or on a trailer that would normally bear snowmobiles on Manitoulin. “Down there it is just a normal thing, nobody even bats an eye.”
Ms. Jansen also saw her very first armadillo and a very speedy bird. “I saw this ball of feathers streaking across the horse paddock one day and I asked Jennifer (Damours, her Texas friend) ‘what was that?’ It was a road runner, of course,” she said. “They really exist and they really are very fast.”
It was Ms. Damours, an American school teacher whose family first met Ms. Jansen’s parents through church events in Alaska and whose families developed a lifelong bond, that first invited Ms. Jansen to visit Texas. “She had come to visit Manitoulin and stayed with me for a while, then she said ‘next time you have to come visit me.’”
Ms. Damours provided Ms. Jansen with the perfect partner for the horse show circuit, a registered paint officially named Skip’s Sonny Angel (barn name Harley). “The horse is half the team and I was so honoured to be able to ride a horse like that,” said Ms. Jansen. “It was a real privilege.”
Her departure from Texas was a tad tough due to more than the prospect of a return to Canada’s frigid clime. An unexpected job offer from one of the horse show regulars knocked her off her stride. “It was a dream job, the job of a lifetime,” she said.
But in the end it was her stable of horses, her babies, and 12 years of hard won success with her Honora Bay Riding Stable that drew her back from the siren call of managing a major horse ranch deep in the heart of Texas.
“I have worked too long and too hard here to just walk away. Besides, what would I do with my horses? They are great northern horses but they are not the kind of horses for down there,” said Ms. Jansen. “My heart is on Manitoulin.”
