Professionial trainer, Jec Ballou found her perfect horse in a horse that isn’t perfect.

What is the perfect horse? We trainers should have the experience to define one, to measure challenges versus desirables. After years of hands-on work and education, envy over other trainers’ successes, and hours flipping through trade journals or watching YouTube videos, we can pick the perfect horse from a crowd. Or can we?

A few years ago, a friend of mine bought a promising weanling that we hoped would become my horse for the future, a prospect with gobs more talent than some of my clients’ horses I’d been wrangling the past several years. “Paris” had the pedigree for dressage excellence, and a trainable temperament to make good on all that promise. During her first two years, sport horse judges confirmed our dreamy impression that Paris was exactly the horse I wanted and needed– capable of high performance, beautiful, athletic, and sane.

Finally, I could lay to rest the what-of and if-only thoughts that had nagged me professionally, in which I fantasized about the trainer I could become with the right horse. Really great rider-horse combinations need talent on both sides. For years as a professional, I gave so much sweat and effort and reputation to horses that were difficult, un-sound, or just plain untalented. At the end of every day, I always felt like the other side of the rider-horse combination was a dead-end.

Now, with Paris, I began to imagine myself alongside other trainers in glossy magazine photos atop enviable mounts. Here was a horse I could pour my skills in to and watch them take shape, bloom. I watched her as a two-year old float across the ground on the end of my longe line and began mapping out our future show career with a tingle of excitement. Her long agile legs, three of them splashed with high stockings, swung effortlessly each stride. Her natural rhythm propelled her around the arena with strides of perfectly suspended arcs. I began indulging daydreams about future schooling sessions that included canter pirouettes and tempi changes.

Paris spent the winter before turning three at home growing up more before I planned to break her to ride. In the spring, my friend called to say something was wrong with the young mare, but she couldn’t quite explain it. Overnight, our young superstar had developed an erratic goose-stepping movement in her left hind that sometimes froze the leg in a lifted position. After a full year she had not matured out of it as the vets hoped she might. The left hind still snapped and jerked and swung sideways every step. Eventually diagnosed as the generic neurological condition of stringhalt, vets suggested surgery while adding that it most often minimally corrected the problem.

Since the vets agreed she was not lame nor in any kind of pain, we opted to skip surgery and break her to ride anyway even though her dressage career looked hopeless. Except for her snapping left hind leg, Paris proved straightforward and easy to train. She took to riding with ease, progressed quickly through her fundamentals and introduction to trail rides. She was the kind of horse that gave me energy as a trainer—the sort that never feels like a job– rather than draining me. I looked forward to working with her every day.

As I write this, I reflect on a student I met in a clinic recently. She started by telling me how much she enjoyed her brown gelding, but then began listing, almost apologetically, his shortcomings. He could be pretty stiff on the left lead; he was clumsy over cavalletti, sometimes he twisted his poll to resist the contact. I could tell these things frustrated her, but I could also see in her eyes the gleam of pure affection for this horse. In light of how solid their bond appeared, I thought her complaints were trivial. I urged her to not think of them as failures or shortcomings of a less-than-perfect horse. Trust me, I said, every horse has something that needs work. There always exists something to fix: a trailering aversion, fear of trail-riding, a bone-rattling canter, a soundness issue.

There are perfect horses, yes. But there are not flawless ones.

It would be false or me to pretend that there have not been times when I wished Paris were less complex physically, or fantasized what I might have accomplished by now if we did not have to contend with a neurological condition. Sometimes that old familiar sliver of self-pity pokes me, imagining that other trainers have all the un-complicated horses. But then just as quickly it fades. My thinking clears up.

Were I the type of rider to fixate on dressage levels and awards and notoriety, then, yes, Paris’ career took a disappointing turn a few years ago. But I’m not that kind of rider, which my wise friend knew when she bought Paris as a weanling with me in mind to be her rider. She bought exactly the horse that suited me: beautiful and curious, kind and sane, willing and athletic. She bought me the kind of horse I could create and show harmonious, classically correct dressage movements on, as well as fly down the trail and ford creeks. Paris is still that horse, random stringhalt moments be damned. She was, still is, and will continue to be the perfect horse for me.

Age and experience do not bring more preferences to be added to the description of a perfect horse. They land you at the acceptance that a perfect horse, as with any partnership, is one that is not only enjoyable but that leads you to a better version of all your capacities as a trainer. So. What is the perfect horse? It’s the one that suites you, individually.

Feature Photography Courtesy Jec Ballou; Jec and Paris.

Jec Ballou utilizes foundational dressage movements to enhance your riding experience across any riding discipline. She is a proponent for understanding proper movement through an environment that prioritizes kindness to the horse. www.jecballou.com.