All about Kyra

 I acquired equine enthusiast disease at the age of 5, headed down the barn rat and working student extraordinaire path shortly thereafter, and became a professional trainer in my early 20’s. I explored multiple sport horse disciplines, worked with horses of all ages, types and histories, and achieved quite a bit of competitive success during that time. 

Unfortunately, as will sometimes happen with horses, I suffered a significant injury in my mid 30’s and had some complications which resulted in a long recovery. Never to be defeated by life events I started an equine video business while laid up. This provided numerous highly educational and intensive auditing hours of international level dressage trainers improving my eye and teaching ability along the way. As I became more physically mobile my first forays back into the world of training was with dogs. My interest in animal learning and behavior, which I had studied in college, was re-ignited as the dogs were trained with positive reinforcement and clicker training. To further my expertise in this fascinating field I did an internship training sea lions and enrolled in professional courses.

Training horses was still front and center though! And even when I was still on crutches I was working hard to get my riding back to it’s previous level. I discovered and quickly became a fan of the new and rapidly growing sport of Working Equitation, heading right to the source to train in Portugal with the best of the best to learn all about it. Now training with my skills from all my academic studies in how animals learn I was loving all the enthusiasm, understanding and connection I was able to achieve with my horses!

With all of the myths and misunderstandings about the science of animal learning and behavior in the horse world it became increasingly important to me to share how fun, effective and more horse-centered training with this knowledge can be. That combined with an increase in the instruction side of my business during covid transitioned my focus more towards teaching rather than training. Of course I still ride/train but my greatest joy is helping my students train their horses and seeing their successes, lightbulb moments and smiles! I love teaching riders of all levels with any type of horse and whatever saddle they and their horse ride best in. It’s all about the partnership!