2015 Equine Comeback Challenge

As many people remember, Grace was my 2014 Equine Comeback Challenge horse, a 20 year old percheron cross mare from Mountain Valley Horse Rescue in the mountains of Colorado.  I trained her and started her under saddle, took her to horse shows and the Rocky Mountain Horse Expo, and then we found her a forever home with a wonderful woman in Eagle, Colorado.  This program was put on by A Home for Every Horse as an opportunity to show just how great horses from rescues can be, and that simply because they ended up in a rescue it doesn't mean they aren't good horses.  In fact, quite a few of my clients' horses were in rescues at some time in their history.  Off the top of my head I can think of twelve that have been with me just in the past year for training.  Of course we also have many horses come through Bit of Honey Training who have never had to go through the rescue situation, and we love them all, regardless of history. 

This year I have the opportunity to do it again, though this time with a tall gorgeous 3 year old dark bay off-the-track thoroughbred gelding named Doit's Cat, or "Dewey" for short. 

He is from CANTER Colorado's aftercare program (the same organization where I found Highboy), and was specially selected for me to train as an exhibition ride at the horse expo in Denver in March.  He and I will be showing just how trainable, versatile, marketable, and useable OTTBs can be!  We will be doing the same obstacle course and competition routine as the other 10 trainers.  However, Dewey and I will be doing it not to compete for a trophy saddle, but to show off an OTTB!  We aim to raise awareness for the CANTER program and get more information out there about retired race horses.  I'm really excited about the whole deal!

Today there was a live broadcast during which they did a live drawing to pair this year's horses with this year's trainers, and made a special announcement about me and Dewey.  It was recorded and can be seen at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40-aae9tfUM  

Here is Dewey's profile
http://ahomeforeveryhorse.com/article/doits-cat-26127

This is my bio on A Home for Every Horse's website
http://ahomeforeveryhorse.com/article/kim-leonard-25973

Here is the page with all the other trainers' information so you can follow along with their rescue horses' transformations as well!
http://ahomeforeveryhorse.com/equine-comeback-challenge/rocky-mountain-horse-expo