Congratulations to Tamara Turgeon with her Moriesian Nanne’s Brandia Dancer (Tristan) for their performance and placement in 2020 Western Dressage Association of America – World Championship Show. Due t COVID the WDAA held the World Chanpionship online. Tamara’s grit and determination, combiner with level of team work she shares with her Moriesian Tristan, are to be commended!

Here is Tamara’s story:

Since the first time I rode a dressage test with Tristan, I knew we were destined for this discipline. I have always loved the foundational horsemanship of the traditional bridle horse, and this discipline brought everything together for me. I always dreamed that one day I would ride at a world championship show. I just didn’t know what show that would be.

Since that first test was ridden, 5 years ago, I headed towards the Western Dressage Association of America’s World Championship Show! 2018 was the first year I figured we were ready, however living in Canada, and having the show in Oklahoma, it just was not financially feasible for us to go, no matter how ready we were. In 2019 we crossed the border for a show in Washington to make sure we were ready for a border crossing, we trained hard, we were in shape and ready for the show.

Two months before the World Championship Show, right before entries were due, Oklahoma got a case of VS and the surrounding states were facing an outbreak. We made the tough decision to stay home, as the Canadian border has strict rules against VS and there was a chance of needing to quarantine state side for 28 days before getting back into Canada. I flew down to the show, watched, volunteered, took in as much as possible and fell more in love with the environment!

Cue 2020!! We were absolutely, 100% ready to train for the summer and make our trek down to Oklahoma!! Savings were there, horse was ready…. Rider was ready… and a global pandemic shut down the entire world!!! Tristan had been diagnosed with Heaves in the winter and had gone thru a couple of courses of steroid treatments so I took this as a sign to lighten his work load and let his lungs heal.

WDAA announced at the end of August that they were going to do the ‘Pandemic Pivot’ and host the World Championship Online! One could not pass up that opportunity to show from our own backyard. It was the HARDEST thing I have done! Both Tristan and I had gained some serious quarantine weight. We gave it our best shot! Having to video my rides, analyze them and chose to submit them knowing that there were errors took a lot of strength for me to not just scratch!

We did it! We primped, primed, videoed and submitted! I am so glad that we did. My Moriesian wonder boy pulled off a TOP 5, TOP 10 and two TOP 25 placings in his four classes with no less than 40 people per class. Our biggest class was 75 people of which he came in 7th! I am so very proud of him. But placings were icing on the cake, my pride beamed the most when one of the judges left the remark “A beautiful team to watch, the essence of Western Dressage”

This whole experience has just lit a fire on my butt to come back even stronger next year… as we will be making our way down to Oklahoma. In the meantime, we will continue to be ambassadors of the Moriesian breed, and of true horsemanship! XOXO Team TNT