When Mimi Csatlos lost her horse of a lifetime, Béla, over a year ago, she found herself in the place many amateurs like her do—horseless but still yearning to ride, all while juggling a full-time job and a family.

But through it all, she found support through her trainers, Kit Sydnor and Jenn Fessler of Steep Forest Farm, to carry on, and now she’s looking ahead.

“I know my next horse is not too far down the road,” said Csatlos. “I think without my horse people community helping to get me through that, there are times when it would be easy to let it slip. I just feel so fortunate that I have so many people who are helping me stick with it.”

Csatlos has worked as the Director of College Counseling at Virginia Episcopal School, a small boarding school in Lynchburg, Va., for 10 years.

Now 36 and mother to Sophie, 7, and Sawyer, 2, Csatlos began her riding career as a child in Woodbury, Conn. She dabbled in eventing and jumping before heading off to study English, literature and studio art at Hamilton College (N.Y.).

While Csatlos remained busy in school with sports and academics, when she graduated, she found she missed life with horses.

After an internship at Culver Academy (Ind.), Csatlos took a job with the school, partly because they had an Interscholastic Equestrian Association riding team. She met her husband, Erno, a native of Hungary, at Culver Academy and the couple married in 2001.

While helping out with the IEA team, Mimi soon decided she was ready to purchase her first horse and came across Béla at a rundown barn in the area.

“I didn’t know what I was getting into at all,” she said with a laugh. The 5-year-old Hungarian Thoroughbred (My Boy—Borgia), was a bit out of her price range, but considering her husband was from Hungary, Mimi decided it was meant to be.

Christened Flecktone, after the jazz band Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, the gelding turned a bit naughty as Mimi started riding him with plans for the adult equitation ring.

“In Indiana, I just didn’t have a trainer to rely on,” she said. “I really had to work things out with Béla on my own. He was so insanely athletic. I bought John Lyons books and started doing round pen stuff and people would sort of float in and help me here and there. A lot of it came down to his naughtiness being tied down to his turn-out situation. He just wasn’t getting enough turn-out, but he was also just a lot of horse.”

At times, Mimi thought about selling Béla, and after much perseverance, decided that maybe a change of scenery, both in her riding and professional life, would help.

Mimi and Erno decided on Virginia, where she thought she might be able to get more consistent training and have easy access to shows.

She had to sort out some rough spots, but  Béla became a fun and consistent mount for Mimi Csatlos.

The change did them good, as Mimi and Béla earned ribbons in the adult jumpers, low hunters and adult equitation at Southwest Virginia Hunter/Jumper Association shows while working with Sydnor and Fessler over several years.

When she came back to showing after taking a break to have her second child, Mimi found that her season with Béla was much less pressure-filled than before.

“I thought I would be more nervous about showing after I had kids, but it actually worked out the other way around,” she said. “I used to put a ton of pressure on myself, and I would take it really hard when I had a bad show.  But after I had kids, especially after Sawyer, the victory became just getting myself to the show with all my stuff, and on time!”

The riding part of showing became easier as well, and she found that she stopped making a big deal out of finding bad distances or missing lead changes.

“I was just lucky to have the chance to be at the show with my sweet horse, and to have family and barn friends who helped make it happen,” she said. “Since Jenn has a 4-year-old daughter herself, she totally gets where I am, and she is there to remind me that pretty much all parenting and work frustrations disappear when sitting on a horse.”

During his last season of showing, Béla began tripping occasionally and one day at age 17, rapidly began exhibiting serious neurological signs.

“It happened really suddenly—within a week,” she said. “We’re sure it was a neurological issue. It didn’t seem like EPM because he was so much himself through the whole thing. He never seemed like he was in pain, but he was losing control of his body and got to the point where he wasn’t able to step forward without nearly falling. It was terribly, terribly sad.”

Finding Strength To Carry On

After making the decision to put Béla down, Mimi struggled with finding the motivation to get out to the barn. Even taking her daughter to lessons there was difficult.

Even though she sadly lost Béla, Mimi Csatlos has taken the lessons he taught her to the barn every time she goes.

“Kit and Jenn were so amazing in helping me handle that situation. I was a disaster of course. I’ll always be indebted to them for that,” she said.

About a month after Béla died, Mimi got a text from Fessler asking her to come out to the barn and bring her boots.

“[She asked me to] help them ride because they had too many horses to get it all done,” Mimi recalled. “It was Thanksgiving break and she knew that I had time. I said, ‘OK, OK, I’ll just do it.’”

Mimi rode three horses that day and admitted she had fun, but not without some tears as she remembered her partner.

Now she tries to get out to the barn three times a week, “on a good week”, where she’s taken up offers from her trainer and fellow barnmates to ride.

“They got to know me so well and they just pushed all the right buttons at a time when it would have been easy for me to stop,” she said of her trainers. “I think they know how important it is for me to keep riding.

“Working at a boarding school is tough because it is pretty 24/7,” she continued. “But there’s a flexibility there too, which is good. Fortunately I have a tremendously supportive husband. He’s known from the beginning how important horses were to me and I’m just a better person when I’m riding regularly. It’s never easy. I just have to make it happen.”

While Mimi loves her job, horses give her an outlet.

“It’s different everyday. I teach one class along with being the head of college consoling,” she explained. “I think every day you just know you’re important to these teenagers, to your colleagues and to keeping this big school moving in the right direction. I don’t think there’s anything else I’d want to do.”

But, “it feels like I’m on vacation every time I’m [at the barn,]” she added. “I come home and I have the same feeling that another person who just took a long weekend vacation somewhere must have. My job includes so much constant communication with kids and parents, lots of putting out fires and filtering other people’s concerns, that to be able to just go and be with horses and people who understand horses and not have to deal with any of that is really important. It’s like pressing a reset button.”

Mimi has plans to lease a horse, Unique, that she’s been riding for Fessler and hopes to get back in the show ring soon, but she’s not in a rush.

“My initial goal when I got [Béla] was to do the adult eq and win a bunch of medals, but when I look back over my experience, I think what I accomplished with him and what I learned from him was so much bigger than that,” she said. “The people I met along the way who tried to help me with him, especially Kit and Jen, are like family to me now.

“I see myself, as my kids get older, getting back out there and making sure I’m getting to two horse shows a month and earning points,” she continued. “I still really want to do that someday, but I think right now where I am, I’m very OK with just taking what I can personally from my barn time and every time I can horse show, I just appreciate it that much more.”