Liz Holtz Messaglia well remembers walking her first off-the-track Thoroughbred along an Arkansas highway at 12 years old, the pockets of her makeshift riding breeches stuffed with wads of dollar bills she’d picked up from braiding manes the weekend before. They would add up, she hoped, to the entry fee at the local hunter show where she was headed. 

“My parents said they’d never buy me a horse,” she recalled. “Our family physician knew I loved horses and he owned racehorses that ran in Arkansas, and every time I went in to see him, he would give me the finish line photos of his horses. 

“One day I went in for my basketball physical in sixth grade and—I can’t imagine someone doing this now; I have three kids and I would just die—he said, ‘Liz, I’m giving you a horse,’ ” she continued with a laugh.

That horse opened the door for a passion that would come to define Messaglia’s life—although her decidedly non-horsey parents immediately regretted giving her five riding lessons for her birthday, sparking it in the first place. Her mother eventually came around, at least offering to drive her tack box to shows while Messaglia made the trip on foot from the farm where she took lessons with a budding grand prix rider, who, at 18, took Messaglia under her wing and helped her find odd jobs.

“I did it because I loved it, and that’s still why I ride,” she said.

Fast forward 34 years, and Messaglia is still practicing unorthodox ways of getting horses to the show ring. She takes care of three horses full-time at her Brownsburg, Ind., farm she shares with her husband, Mike, three children, Zachary, 16, Beth, 14, and Jacob, 11, and a Labrador Retriever puppy.

Liz’s indoor arena has become a local gathering place for the community’s equestrians facing the long winters. Her trainer, Robert Mendoza, a grand prix show jumper and manager at Allyn McCracken’s breeding, training and sales business, Bannockburn Farm in Patricksburg, Ind., comes over every week to teach them all lessons.

“I’m the only employee on the 20-acre farm,” Liz joked. “Robert teaches here a lot and when people haul in, I’m always like, ‘Don’t judge me by the condition of my house or my barn!’ They’re just happy to be inside, and I don’t charge anybody anything to come. When I didn’t have a trailer, I had a lot of people be really nice to me and give me rides to lessons in their trailers. People helped me along. So I let people who don’t have indoors come over to ride all the time. I don’t care, because it’s just me. I’m happy to share it.”

Meeting Apollo

Six years ago, Liz discovered her horse of a lifetime, Apollo Star, although he didn’t look like he had much potential when her trainer, Amy Tilson Ochoa, called her up to say she’d found a gem sitting idle in a field, a pasture mate to a horse another student just bought. Little did Liz know, Apollo would lead her out of the hunter ring and eventually into preliminary-level eventing and the adult amateur jumpers.

But it wasn’t an easy journey to get to that point. In her teenage years, her riding became difficult to support alone, despite efforts to pick up jobs anywhere she could find them. She had to take a break from horses while she attended the University of Notre Dame (Ind.), where she double majored in business and communications and met Mike, now an attorney.

Her job in standard operating procedures after graduation brought her around the world, running new car shows and opening doors to bigger opportunities. But her passion lay with the horses and her family. So, she swapped her briefcase for breeches and showed her horse Pooh Bear in Indiana Hunter Jumper Association hunter and equitation classes—sparingly—while balancing three very busy children.

Her son Zachary took up horse show photography, having picked it up during a weeklong trip to Aiken with Liz two years ago, and is the official photographer at nearby IHJA shows. He also swims competitively and runs track and cross-country, in addition to her younger children’s blooming hobbies.

So when Ochoa originally extended the offer about Apollo, Liz, knowing she already had a full plate, said no. “But she said, ‘No, you have to come try him. But he’s 200 pounds overweight and he can’t canter on his right lead and he’s not really broke and you have to turn him into the wall to stop him, but I think he’s your next horse!’ ” she said with a laugh.

More Than He Seemed 

Come to find out, Apollo, 11 at the time and now 17, had been living in that field since he was 3, when his owners bought him from a Trakehner sale but ended up being too intimidated by him, so after he dabbled in the 2’6” local hunter ring with a professional at age 5, they decided to leave him as a pasture ornament.

He’s a Trakehner by the Olympic individual silver and team gold medalist Abdullah, out of Angelina vom Castell. 

“When I body clip him, he has scars on one of his hips, these big lines that run back. And it looks like a bad body clip job, but it’s where he ran in and out,” Liz explained. “They didn’t lead him anywhere; they would open a door and he would run in and out and bang his hip.”

When she got on him, even with his overgrown hooves, he picked up the left lead and she kicked him to swap, and he did not only one clean flying change, but another, followed by a fourth change, and that was the selling point, along with his impressive pop over a small jump. She figured the canter would come along.

“When I brought him home, he struck at me a couple times, he cow-kicked me; he was a butthead. He had no manners and did not understand personal space. He’s 17.2 hands and he couldn’t canter in my indoor!” said Liz, who thought she had made a mistake when she began his training, finding that he moved into her leg rather than away from it. 

“I remember taking off my spur and teaching him how to move off my leg. So he just did stuff like that because he could, and once he figured out he had to get with the program, he did,” she said.

Now, Liz’s daughter Beth is able to hop on Apollo for fun, and the only naughty trick he has is jumping the 5’ fence to be with his best friend—Liz’s 12-hand pony mare, Blaze.

After Messaglia worked on Apollo’s ground manners for a few months, Liz’s friend, an eventer named Kassidy Dipierro, offered to take Apollo to Aiken with her for some conditioning, as the limiting indoor clearly wasn’t expediting his training. When he showed some talent in eventing, Liz decided to give that discipline a try, too, in 2010, beginning with a few beginner novice events. 

“After cross-country, I thought, ‘That was the biggest adrenaline high of all time!’ I didn’t look back,” she said.

Multi-Talented

They won the American Eventing Championships at novice in 2011 and by the end of 2012 they had completed two preliminary events. They spent 2013 and 2014 moving up and down between training level and preliminary until Messaglia figured out that Apollo didn’t like being unsure of his footing out on cross-country.

“All day long he does anything I ask, unless it’s cross-country at speed. The faster we went, the more spooky he got, and I really think it’s because he’s so careful,” she said. So, she decided to make another career change—into pure show jumping in 2013, starting in the 1.10-meter adult amateur division. This January, they were jumping around in the 1.20-meter amateur-owner division.

“I could take him to any discipline and be competitive; it’s really kind of freaky,” she said. “He’s my once in a lifetime horse. I wouldn’t be doing anything that I’m doing if it wasn’t for that fabulous white horse I’ve got. I’m such a better rider than I was when I bought him. The doors he’s opened, the people I’ve met—lessons with Leslie Law, the amazing things I’ve learned, are priceless.”

Her interests in eventing and show jumping, though, meant finding a new trainer. “I really like to get good instruction, and I really like to ride with people that are going to teach me something,” she said. “So I saw [Mendoza] win the Welcome Stake at Trader’s Point [Ind.] in 2013 and I was showing Apollo in the 3’6” jumpers. I was just watching him on his horse Clyde, who looked so happy.

“It was just a lovely round compared to the other people, whose horses were throwing their heads in the air. And I said, ‘I want my horse to go like that, and I want to ride like that.’ I didn’t know him, and he didn’t know me, and I went up and introduced myself. He probably thought I was crazy; I said, ‘Well, I Googled you, and I think you live about an hour and a half away. Would you be interested in coming up and teaching lessons? Because I really like the way you ride.’ ”

Liz’s go-getting attitude has brought her onto many new horizons, but she’s not done yet. Her goal is to get her USDF bronze medal this year by going to some recognized dressage shows. She’d only done schooling shows due to Apollo’s head shaking, which requires a special noseband that got approved by the USEF this spring.

“I just knew there was hope that he would be something someday,” she said. “I’ve never owned the horse that when you’re in warm-up, people are looking at you.”