Busy Season Hits Full Gallop for Moorpark Horse Trainer

In the equestrian world, the waiting is almost over. Soon, Karen Healey will find out what her latest crop of four-legged athletes can do.

On Thursday afternoon, the 48-year-old trainer put a horse named Prince through its paces at the Southern California Riding Club. On command, Prince jumped fences, ponds, and kicked up clouds of dirt responding to Healey’s firm guidance.

Next week, Healey will lead more than 35 horses and riders from the Moorpark club into competition at the Indio Desert Circuit, a seven-week marathon of horse shows that herald the beginning of the equestrian season. At the Indio event, the largest of its kind in Southern California, top riders can win between $75,000 and $150,000 in timed events called grand prix. Standout horses can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars to eager buyers.

This competition is not for Sunday afternoon trotters, and that’s fine with Healey, who is serious about horses and has no time for others who don’t share her passion and commitment to excellence.

“I’m not a baby-sitting service,” she said. “Not everybody is headed to the Olympic Games, but I approach it as though they might someday be.”

After only 10 years in existence, the club has already compiled an impressive record. One of Healey’s riders, Meredith Michaels Beerbaum, recently became a German citizen and is the first woman to compete on the country’s national equestrian team. Michaels Beerbaum will very likely compete in the Olympics.

Also under Healey’s tutelage is 19-year-old Jill Prieto, who was named the American Horse Shows Assn. Junior Equestrian of the Year in 1998, an honor Prieto still calls “the ultimate victory.”

Those successes and others have given the club a growing reputation it is doing its best to burnish, Healey said. The club boasts an indoor riding arena, which is rare for the area, manager Mary Jane Watson said. The mild weather, the variety of training equipment and rural-yet-close-to-Los Angeles location are a combination that can’t be beat, she said.

All this expertise doesn’t come cheap. Healey charges $85 for a private lesson, $70 for training at horse shows, not including grooming and living expenses. Some of her 40 students are determined teenagers, others are in their 50s.

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In Indio, riders will be judged on their skills and their mounts will be judged for their grace, movement and ability. Riders enter different classes called hunters, jumpers and equitation, that require them to maneuver through jumps. Some events are timed, others are not. But whatever the event, the competition is fierce, Healey said.

“What these kids do, it’s the same as figure skating and gymnastics,” Healey said. “There’s hours and hours put into it. These kids are very dedicated. It’s high profile, high pressure.”

On Thursday, the Moorpark club’s three outdoor arenas attracted a few dedicated trainers and other equestrians. Despite the atmosphere, the city’s influence still intruded at times.

Two riders astride horses paused to raise mobile phones to their ears.

The 11-acre facility, situated on Moorpark Road off Tierra Rejada Road, has lighted arenas and clean horse stalls. One horse is covered with an electric blanket. A 2-foot-tall bag of carrots droops against a wall. Dogs flop over anywhere they please for a quick nap.

Trainer Archie Cox, 32, has always had a passion for riding. The grandson of Watergate-era special prosecutor Archibald Cox, he will work from 5:30 a.m. to 7 or 8 p.m. in Indio, making sure horses under his care are ready to show.

But the long hours are worthwhile when he sees the riders and horses grow and learn, he says.

Watching a horse in the arena, that’s when it gets really fun, he said. In a timed competition, when a horse hears the tone that signals a rider has 60 seconds to reach the first jump, “suddenly they come alive,” Cox said. “They’re a little taller, a little bigger.”

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On a wooden deck that overlooks an arena, Cox pauses to give Prieto some encouragement. “He looks good, Jill,” he says as Prieto rides past.

“He feels good!” Prieto manages to shout.

For Prieto, the upcoming Indio shows will be a proving ground. Her earlier accomplishments have left her facing a major life decision: stick with her college work at UC San Diego and become a doctor like her father, or follow her ambition to train, ride and show horses professionally.

For now, the 19-year-old has dropped out of school to spend her days atop graceful, muscular steeds at the riding club.

Money aside, she has already paid dearly for the opportunity. Her parents have tightened the purse strings, leaving her all but financially cut off. In Indio--and during the upcoming season--she hopes to find out if she can make it in the high-profile world of horse shows.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said. “[Equestrianism] defines who I am. You dedicate your whole life to it.”