It’s hard to imagine that the 16.3-hand gelding standing barefoot in a field with a long muddy coat, unclipped fetlocks and leaves in his tail is the same horse that cantered around the Dixon Oval at Devon (Pa.) last spring to tricolor honors, his gray coat gleaming and donning a snow-white tail and perfect braids. But it’s true. Gray Slipper spends his time off from the horse shows with his best pal, an Appaloosa pony named Tic Toc, like a retiree in a field at Louise Serio’s Derbydown in Kennett Square, Pa.

“One of the nice things about having a horse like him is that he can have significant breaks and still come back and perform well,” said Serio of the horse who was virtually unbeatable in the regular working and amateur-owner hunter divisions in 2006.

“He really lacks a strong personality and doesn’t want a lot of petting or fussing–but he loves to play with and torture his buddy in the paddock,” said owner and rider Bridget Hallman.

Nonetheless, she admittedly has to restrain herself from hugging and kissing on “Slipper” after a great round. “I know he’s all business at the ring, and when I do try to show him affection he just gives me this bored look that says, ‘Please stop touching me.’ So, I appreciate those opportune moments when he sticks his head out of his stall and wants to be played with,” she said.

When asked about Slipper’s seemingly non-chalant and dull personality, Serio said, “I think if he were a person he’d be that intelligent guy who doesn’t say much and is just pretty boring.”

For a horse that doesn’t like to be doted on, Slipper drew quite a bit of attention to himself at the Capital Challenge Horse Show (Md.). Aside from being amateur-owner hunter, 18-35 champion, regular working hunter champion, grand hunter champion and recipient of the China Blue Working Hunter Challenge trophy, he was also on the cover of the prize list and this year’s poster horse. As a joke, the riders at Derbydown plastered the posters up all over the inside of Slipper’s stall so he could admire himself.

“We just wanted him to see how beautiful he is,” said Serio with an innocent chuckle.

Slipper’s groom, 24-year-old Luis Colin, was also in on the fun. “I think Slipper liked them, because we caught him looking at himself sometimes,” he said. After caring for the champion hunter for the past two years, Colin knows the ins and outs of the meticulous preparation that goes into getting Slipper to the ring.

“I give him an easy longe in the morning or a few hours before he shows and then a bath because Slipper likes to get real dirty in his stall at night. After that, I let him relax in his stall,” said Colin of his favorite horse in Serio’s string of hunters and jumpers.

People who see Slipper at the ring waiting to show or standing for the jog always comment to his groom how sleepy his horse looks. “He’s not tired all the time, just relaxed. He likes his routine and gets worried when I try doing something different, so I try to do everything the same each time I take him to the ring,” said Colin.


Destiny Unbound
On a horse that’s already difficult to stay with in the air, when Slipper spooks at the jumps, like he did the first time Hallman sat on him, he’s next to impossible to stay on.

“When I first sat on him and picked up the trot, I lost both of my stirrups and reins! After that, I should have known it was coming, but when I went over the first jump he looked at it a little and jumped so high and hard that he jumped me right off. I landed in the dirt with him looking down at me,” recalled Hallman.

Not looking to purchase a horse when she first spotted Slipper trotting in the paddock at The Barracks (Charlottesville, Va.) seven years ago, Hallman was drawn to him immediately and knew that she’d do whatever was necessary to make the 4-year-old gray hers.

“I called my mother and told her that he was the one, and she laughed because not only were we not looking to buy a horse at the time, but we were also trying to sell a few,” said Hallman. “I don’t know what got into me, but I disobeyed my mother and went to my grandfather and asked his help in purchasing the horse!”

Anxious that the horse of her dreams was going to be sold before she could get the money together, Hallman called her new trainer, Serio, whom she hadn’t even had a lesson with yet, and asked her to travel to Virginia and look at the horse.

“I wish I could say that when I saw him I knew he was going to be a great horse, but no one ever really knows that for sure,” said Serio humbly. “He has an amazing trot and canter with excellent animation, but when I first sat on him he had quite the spook, and I didn’t know if that was going to hurt him in the long run or make him a better jumper.”

Like Hallman, “R” judge and horsewoman Meredith McLaughlin was immediately drawn to the big gray with soft eyes, but she shared Serio’s cautious reserve about the extent of his abilities. On McLaughlin’s buying trip to Europe, Slipper was the only horse that she imported back to the United States.

“My eye wasn’t trained to look for warmbloods because I’d done Thoroughbreds my entire life,” said McLaughlin. “He was the very first horse I saw in Europe, and I knew instantly that he would be an excellent investment–dead quiet, a beautiful mover and a fantastic jumper–but, to be honest, I never knew that he would become what he is today.

“I give Bridget a lot of credit because she knew from the very beginning that he was going to be an amazing horse,” McLaughlin added. “I think he went to the exact right place to turn him into the freak horse that he is today.”

Perhaps only Hallman and her family initially looked at Slipper with star-struck eyes. The first and only time Hallman’s grandfather, Seymour Cohn, saw the newly imported pre-green horse he told his granddaughter that he thought Slipper was “going to be a great horse.”

“I’ll never forget that conversation,” said Hallman as she fought back tears. “He told me Slipper was ‘going to take me places’ and hearing that from my grandfather, also a horseman, gave me confidence that I’d done the right thing.”


Training Wheels
Despite his flashy ring demeanor, Gray Slipper’s spooking problem demanded patience from Serio in her training program. “On the whole, I believe he’s lasted longer because he cares about the jumps. The spook is still there, but we try to ignore it rather than get after him about it.”

Like ignoring a young child throwing a temper tantrum, Serio told Hallman never to reprimand Slipper for shying away from things when she rode him. Realizing that he wasn’t going to get in trouble, the horse slowly curtailed the bad habit on his own.

“He can still be a little spooky, but he knows his job now and doesn’t really look anymore,” said Serio.

Just to be on the safe side, he’s always ridden in the ring in the morning at the big indoor finals and the first time at new horse show grounds.

What’s a simple concept of non-reaction for Serio is a little more difficult for Hallman. “It’s hard not to react when he reacts to things. But I’ve learned a lot from him, and one of the most important things I’ve learned is self-control,” she said. “Learning how to keep my cool and ride through problems has helped me become a better rider and that’s carried over to my other horses as well.”

Serio credited Slipper for giving Hallman an enormous confidence boost too. “She’s always been a great rider, just lacking in self-assurance. And it’s tough–I can testify to it–as a competitor when a horse like Slipper starts to do well people expect it. So each time you go in the ring, if you let your nerves get to you, it can get more stressful. But Bridget’s pretty good about handling herself, and Slipper has helped bring out her strengths as an equestrian.”

Hallman waited a few years before she started riding and showing Slipper, thus granting him the chance to do most of his maturing with Serio.

“He’s more horse than I can ever imagine having, and it’s been a long time in the making,” said Hallman. “I just have so much confidence in Louise as a trainer. She’s instilled tremendous amounts of confidence in me as a rider because she tells me and makes me believe that I can do it–I can be champion or I can beat that other round–it makes me feel good when I walk in the ring.”

Aside from building Slipper’s confidence, his riders, Serio, Hallman and assistant trainer Amanda Lyerly, also concentrate on collection work to curb his enormous stride.

“He’s never been difficult to train, and so we don’t do a lot with him at home except work on keeping him supple and maintaining his muscles,” said Serio.

Thinking back to her maiden voyage on Slipper, Lyerly recalled, “I remember the first time because I’m reminded of that feeling every time I get on and jump the initial few jumps with him. He jumps so hard that I wonder if I’ll be able to stay on, but it’s that effort that he puts in that makes him such a spectacular horse.”

Lyerly showed Slipper as a first year horse, a few times after the Winter Equestrian Festival (Fla.) while Serio was in Tampa, to assure that he qualified for Devon. Since then, Lyerly has also shown him when Serio was out with a broken ankle and a back injury.

“I showed him before he was a superstar, so when I do him in the workings I’m not too worried because I know the horse and because Bridget is so cool about things,” said Lyerly. “It’s a little nerve wracking because you know you’re on one that you can win on, and [Slipper] and Louise are such a pair that it’s a bit of a shock for people to hear my name with his.”

And while his jockeys enjoy the time they spend on his back, Slipper has also developed a fan club. Even McLaughlin cheers for her prodigy whenever possible.

“Everyone at the barn always tries to watch one another, but I do think that the grooms make a special effort to watch Slipper. You just don’t come across horses like him very often,” said Lyerly.

In an effort to preserve his career and soundness, trainer and rider decided not to show the horse at all between his double championship honors at Devon in May and the Middleburg Classic Horse Show (Va.) in September.

“I have to admit that I was pretty nervous that first day at Middleburg because we hadn’t shown since Devon, and I’d only jumped him a few times in the previous weeks, so my wheels were a little rusty,” confessed Hallman. “More than anything, I was worried about being able to stay with him in the air.”

Spending nights out with 30-year-old Tic Toc and an hour or so on the hot walker during the sizzling summer days kept the Slipper fit, limber and happy.

“It was nice to be able to give him time off in the middle of the show season because I could concentrate on showing my other horses, but I missed him,” said Hallman. “The most gratifying part of his success is that we’ve had him pretty much since the beginning so I’ve been able to watch him come along as a young horse and then ride him through the later stages of his career.”


In The Mood
While Gray Slipper’s groom, Luis Colin, is always careful to remember the ingredients in his pre-show regimen, Bridget Hallman also has a few rituals of her own.

On days that trainer Louise Serio shows the horse in the regular working division, Hallman wears a mood ring (a gas station purchase a few years ago) on the ring finger of her left hand. Depending on the color, she attests that she knows whether her horse will have a good day or an off day.

“I guess you could say I’m pretty superstitious,” she said. “Blue is supposed to be good, and I noticed that when he did well the ring was always bright blue, so I started carrying it every time Louise showed him.”
But does she have enough faith in the ring to use it to monitor her performance on the days she shows in the amateurs? “I usually carry it in my pocket when I show but never look at it until after I’ve competed,” she admitted.

In addition to always wearing the mood ring on show days, the riders at Derbydown all pretty much agree that it’s good luck when assistant trainer Amanda Lyerly rides Slipper in the ring in the morning.

When Slipper was a first year green horse, Lyerly typically exercised him in the ring while Serio rode Rachel Geiger’s horse, Dream Date. “It sort of just became routine, but for no particular reason,” said Lyerly. At Devon in 2001, Dream Date was first year green hunter champion and Gray Slipper was reserve.

After that show, the routine morphed into a combination of tradition and superstition. “What can I say except that when Amanda rides him in the ring, she does a great job and Slipper goes fantastic,” said Hallman, who confessed that the one time she rode him in the ring before her class at Devon (Pa.) he spooked during competition later that day.


Personal Profile
Description: Gray, 16.3-hand, gelding, 11, Belgian Warmblood (Amaretto I–Mineola Van Het Berkenhof).

Nicknames: Slipper, The Slip.

Residence: Derbydown, Kennett Square, Pa.

Connections: Bridget Hallman, owner and rider; Louise Serio, rider and trainer.

Tack: Sharp twisted wing snaffle.

Favorite Treats: “He’ll eat almost anything,” said Hallman. “He’s such an easy keeper he could live on air, but he’s spoiled and prefers carrots or the sugar cubes my mom feeds him.”

Favorite Horse Show: Devon (Pa.) and the Capital Challenge (Md.).

Least Favorite Show: “Sometimes he just picks things or places he doesn’t like, and he hates the Pennsylvania National Horse Show,” said Hallman.


2006 Competitive highlights
WCHR China Blue Working Hunter Challenge Award
Winter Equestrian Festival (Fla.)–amateur-owner, 18-35, circuit champion
Devon (Pa.)–regular working hunter champion, amateur-owner, 18-35, champion, grand hunter champion (tie)
Middleburg Classic (Va.)–regular working hunter champion, amateur-owner, 18-35, champion
Capital Challenge (Md.)–regular working hunter champion, grand hunter champion, Derbydown trophy for best hunter performance (professional), amateur-owner, 18-35, champion, grand amateur-owner hunter champion
Pennsylvania National–regular working hunter champion, amateur-owner, 18-35, reserve champion
Washington International (D.C.)–regular working reserve champion, amateur-owner, 18-35, champion, grand amateur-owner hunter champion, leading amateur rider award, Protocol Award recipient