When Amy Jenne shows up for work at her full-time job as the conference and event manager at the Woodstock Inn and Resort (Vt.), there’s frequently a telltale red line across her forehead. It’s from her helmet, and it’s the badge of honor of so many working amateur riders.

Jenne, 31, keeps her preliminary-level event horse, Tiger, at home on the 10 1/2 –acre farm where she lives with her husband in Reading, Vt., so daily care is tacked on with all the riding and training she has to do to compete. At this point, Jenne is a veritable master at fitting riding in before work.  

“I have no ring; I have to hack 10 minutes to a friend’s ring to use it, otherwise I do all my riding on the trails and on the roads,” Jenne said. “It’s pretty amazing how much nice flatwork you can get done on the dirt roads. We live in a pretty rural area, which makes that possible. To jump I’ll go over to my trainer’s farm—I ride with Sue Berrill.”

“Amy is a poster child for, well honestly for your [Amateurs Like Us] series,” Berrill said. “She doesn’t have an indoor ring or an outdoor ring; she works full-time; she has a husband; she doesn’t have kids yet, but she works out.

“She’s a great example for all the adults who say, ‘Oh I haven’t got time; I can’t do that; I don’t have a ring; woe is me,’” Berrill continued. “Amy could say that about anything, as far as her riding career. She had a young green horse, and she’s always moved forward with it—she never dwells. She’s really a fantastic person.”

Amy Jenne and Just Tiger. Photo courtesy of Amy Jenne. Photo by Abby Rowlee Photography.

That horse, Just Tiger, jolted Jenne out of a bit of a riding slump a few years ago. After she graduated from the University of Massachusetts, Jenne started riding a horse that ended up really shaking her confidence.

“I had leased a horse, and it was a terrible fit, and I ended up having a really bad fall and almost gave up riding,” Jenne said. 

But a friend had a project horse come into the barn, and they asked Jenne if she wanted to take him on. “They knew kind of the situation I was in—I didn’t have any money. I really wasn’t in a good place mentally riding at that time, and I’d told a few people, ‘That’s it, I’m done.’

“But,” Jenne continued (and there is often a ‘but’ in near-quit stories like this when it comes to true horse fanatics), “I started riding this horse, and I started liking him.”

That horse was Tiger, a now 13-year-old Irish Sport Horse gelding by Cradilo. Though, when Jenne started riding him, she never would never have guessed he’d one day be jumping at the preliminary level. 

“He was like riding a 2×4. He would walk into jumps, walk into walls, he had no self-awareness and did whatever—he just didn’t care,” Jenne said. “And time went on, and I really liked him, so I took over the free lease of him and took him home.”

Where, Jenne recalls, Tiger promptly broke out of the stall at the farm in Vermont she was at the time living on and caretaking for. “He broke the cross ties every day. He would squeal when the other horses left. He would spook at cars,” Jenne said.

But Tiger got over his bad baby habits, and Jenne was pleased with the progress they were making. In 2010, she was able to make it to three beginner novice events before fate intervened.

Amy Jenne and Just Tiger. Photo courtesy of Amy Jenne

“He bruised his navicular bone, and he had a spot on his deep digital flexor tendon,” Jenne said. “We didn’t really know what was going to happen.”

Tiger’s injuries meant seven months of stall rest, with nothing but hand-walking and turnout in a stall-sized pen. From his injury to the day she was able to ride him again, Jenne estimates the ordeal lasted 18 months. But instead of groaning about what a drag it was to pay for feed and shoes on a temporary stall ornament, Jenne remembers his recovery with some fondness.

“During the rehab, he grew up. He grew more self-assured; he grew into his body. We really spent a ton of time together—not training time, just long walks and hand-grazing, hoping that with time he would be fine,” Jenne said. “Of course, the day that he got full turnout privileges he promptly bucked and fell down, so that was exciting!”

Tiger made a full recovery, and after getting back into shape with Jenne he has become a real sport horse machine, moving all the way from the novice level in 2013 to completing in four preliminary events in 2015.

Amy Jenne and Just Tiger in action.

It’s not Tiger’s show accomplishments that have Jenne smitten with this chestnut horse, though.

“We could do nothing but trail ride starting tomorrow, and I’d be so thrilled with what we’ve done and what we’ve done together. If it wasn’t for him I do think I would have given up horses, jumping, definitely,” Jenne said. “But he re-trained me as I was training him in a sense. He brought me back down to teaching him the basics, and it did wonders for both of us.”

Jenne’s dedication to Tiger outside the ring reflects the education she was given as a young rider. She had taken riding lessons when she was 5, but her parents’ divorce interrupted her riding. When Jenne was 9, her neighbor, Teta Anderson, offered to let her help care for Anderson’s horses and ride them. “I could just see it in her eyes. She just had a passion for horses and a love for them, as I do,” Anderson said.

In exchange for help with chores, Anderson was more than happy to have Jenne around the barn and ride the family’s horses, at the time a few Quarter Horses. 

“The deal that I had with Amy was—you come over, you help me with the horses, but you have to take a lesson every week, because it’s the lessons that will create a good riding style for you and create good horsemanship skills,” Anderson said.

“I didn’t really know much myself but was anxious and eager to learn because we both shared a passion of wanting to learn as much as we could, so we kind of teamed up I guess you could say,” Anderson continued. “And she came over and rode every day, rain, sleet, hail, whatever.”

The Andersons did not fade from Jenne’s life as she grew up and became more serious about competing. Jenne and Anderson discovered eventing together, and Anderson helped Jenne find some horses to bring along. One of them, a Thoroughbred mare, took Jenne to a one-star as a teenager.

“I was about 17 when we got her, and we did the one-star at Morven Park [Va.] in 2003,” Jenne said. “True to my early years, I fell off but finished and got it done.”

Anderson, who never got the opportunity to ride and compete in her youth, was along for the ride every step of Jenne’s junior career. “To witness that was just a blessing in my own life, and to see her accomplish and grow and learn was just a wonderful, wonderful gift.

“She’s had to learn from ground up,” Anderson continued. “So she wasn’t one of those children who were lucky enough to have a made horse, or unlucky enough to have a made horse,” Anderson said, laughing a bit, “Depending on the way you look at it.”

Anderson doesn’t own any horses for Jenne anymore, but the two have stayed in touch through all of Jenne’s ups and downs in horse sport. Jenne credits Anderson as the cornerstone of her whole riding life, from those first interactions with the family’s Quarter Horses to competing at the FEI level.