Blogger Catherine Haddad Staller

Dear Rita,

Austria is not normally on my showing tour, but I seem drawn to it this summer! We drove through the Austrian Alps to get to Lipica two weeks ago, and this weekend finds all of us (Danielle, myself, Gizmo and W) back on the road. This time we landed at Schloss Achleiten, the home of Victoria Max-Theurer in Austria.

Dear Rita,

I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun at a horse show! Good times with good people and a bit of success as frosting on the cake!

Winyamaro was wunderbar in the Grand Prix. I was able to ride him with a much better frame and more self-carriage throughout the test this weekend even though I know we still have a long way to go. Be patient, W fans, he is only 10 years old!

Dear Rita,

Lipica is a wonderful horse show. I have heard a lot about this place over the years, and I always wanted to show at the home of the Lipizzaner Stud in Slovenia. This year I was able to check it off my list of “Shows to Do.” It took two days to drive the 750 miles to Slovenia, which is bordered by Austria, Italy, Hungary, Croatia and the Adriatic Sea.

Dear Rita,

At last, the long awaited blog about my saddle. My saddle is actually Willi Schultheis' saddle—the Stübben Tristan Extra with a 31 tree and 18” seat. If specifically ordered as a “Schultheis saddle,” it arrives with these dimensions in light brown, full grain cow leather, four short girth straps for use with a long, cord girth and absolutely no knee rolls. A patch of brown suede marks the flap where the knee roll-that-isn't would be constructed on any other saddle.

Dear Rita,

Carola Koppelmann is one of Germany’s most talented and well-trained riders. She’s made her way to the top of international dressage sport with hard work, dedication and commitment to good riding.

Carola was born in 1978 in Stade, a city located near Hamburg in northern Germany. She grew up not far from there in a small town called Freiburg. The family business—a training and sales stable run by her parents Willi and Barbara Kopplemann—was also Carola’s playground in her younger years.

Dear Rita,

I got home late last night from a fun and successful weekend at the Hamburg Dressage and Jumping Derby. It was an unseasonably cold, blustery weekend in Hamburg—the coldest Derby weekend in 30 years according to the bartender at my hotel!

Always famous as a jumping show, the first horses negotiated the renowned Derby Wall in 1920. This year, more than 70,000 spectators wandered the Derby Park to watch some of the world’s best in jumping and dressage.

Dear Rita,

My daily routine is really normal for an average stable in Germany. My staff arrives at the stable between 6:30 a.m. and 7 a.m. The horses are fed, the boxes are leveled, the aisle is swept, my first horse is tacked up, and the staff members wander off to breakfast in the kitchen while I start training.

Dear Rita,

My latest victim for the Dressage for Life series happens to be another Swede, Tinne Wilhelmsson-Silfven, 43, of Stockholm, Sweden. Tinne is a mother, manager, professional rider and a mainstay for the Swedish Dressage Team.

Dear Rita,

I just got home from a lovely pair of days in Sweden. Malin Andersson, a Schockmöhle Sports distributor, asked me to teach a clinic at Wallstanäs Gård, Stockholm, Sweden, after listening to a presentation I had given at my own stable in Vechta last year.

Dear Rita,

Michal Rapcewicz, 28, rides for Poland and has managed to work his way from a relative unknown to a household name in Western Europe over the last few years. Coincidentally, I saw him ride for the first time at the Hagen CDI3* in 2007 and was able to interview him at the same show last weekend.

At that show in 2007, Michal was testing gears on Randon who was very young and green at the time. But despite a variety of errors in that test, this pair caught my attention, and I will never forget my first impression of Randon’s piaffe and passage. Wowza!