Jeanne's love of horses began when she recieved riding lessons for her birthday at age 6 from her parents, by age 8 she had her first pony and by age 14 she had already started a successful teaching career.  Having ridden with only one stable in her youth after leaving school Jeanne felt a yearning to learn more so started a self proclaimed 6 year apprenticship spanning across the country, into Canada and back again, believing this was the core strength and her foundation of learning and working in the equestrian field.  Which found her working with and riding race horses at Momouth race track in NJ, breaking and learning ground work from the Cowboys in Arizona, learing the show horse buisness all up and down the east coast  and working for many of the best professioals at the time including learning their vetrainary skills and knowlege about nutirition.  As she was starting to gravitate back to the area Jeanne had the wonderful opportunity of working for Mr and Mrs Able Smith at Hickory House Farm in Middlburg.  To finish of her full complment of the equestrian field by working the the farms steeplechase horses and field hunters.

 

In 1981 Jeanne decided to set down roots in the Plains VA.  Having grown up in Northern Virgina and working in the Middleburg area she know where she wanted to be.  

 

"It was the logical next step" says Jeanne "it was time to take all that I had learned and put it into practice for myself".  Being on the road was a wonderful experince but during my apprenticeship period I was with each operation for about a year to learn what I felt I needed to and had no control of the horses or clients I worked with.  I wanted to begin taking a longer term appoach and instead of just breaking a horse and sending on I wanted to work with clients where I could work with their horses longe and really make them into something.  Same thing for the riders I worked with.  I love all kinds of students most Pros at my level don't want to work with beginners but I don't mind becasue you get to start them right instead of only accepting them after years of experience to have to battle through the bad habits they have established along the way.  With this approach you start them out right from the beginning and they know it's right becasue it's working.