Tom Jones might have been singing about My Lady when he belted out his iconic hit tune, “She’s a Lady.” The 15-year-old Danish Warmblood mare (Michellino—Marion, Ritterstern) owned by Janne Rumbough may be built like the proverbial brick house—measuring 17.3 hands and boasting a buff body—but she is every inch a girlie girl from her show braids to her pedicures.

Her groom of nearly two years, Emi Anderson, describes her charge as sassy, opinionated, spoiled and sensitive.

“She lets everyone know that this is her barn,” Anderson said. “If Lady needs something, everyone else has to get out of the way.”

She may be a diva, but she has earned the right. She and her Danish rider Mikala Münter Gundersen have rocked the dressage show scene in the U.S. as well as abroad. They represented Denmark at the 2014 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games in Normandy, France, and will be wearing the Danish flag at the 2015 Reem Acra World Cup Dressage Final in Las Vegas this week.

At the 2015 Adequan Global Dressage Festival in Wellington, Florida, they notched win after win—in the CDI3* Grand Prix freestyle (76.45%) and CDI3* Grand Prix (73.38%) in March and the CDI4* Grand Prix freestyle (75.62%) and CDI4* Grand Prix (71.60%) in February—and those are just their scores for blue.

What happens in Vegas may stay in Vegas, but we got the scoop on My Lady. Here’s what you need to know about the dressage superstar behind the glamour and glitz:

• She’s got more than one or two names. The “Lady” nickname is obvious from her full name of My Lady, but some other terms of affection include… Ladybug, Sorte (black in Danish) or Spækhugger (killer whale in Danish).
• She likes anything that makes her pretty. She loves the farrier, baths and braiding. Her groom said she naps when she is getting her mane braided for a show, calling it her pre-show meditation. She loves all forms of primping, except getting her ears clipped.

  “We can scratch and brush them, but we can’t even sneak scissors,” Gundersen said. “Even if you have it behind your back, she knows it. Even when you put something over her eyes, she still knows it.”

My Lady and Mikala playing dress-up: Besties always like to play dress-up and Mikala Münter Gundersen helps My Lady with her costume. 

• She loves food. Any food.

  “That’s her favorite thing in the world,” Anderson said. “She will do anything for food. She’ll even try to steal your sandwich if you’re standing there. You have to be careful what you give her.”

  “She stole a tuna sandwich from my daughter one time,” Gundersen added.

• My Lady may love her food but she has terrible table manners. She gets her hay in a slow feeder because she can finish two flakes of hay in 15 minutes flat. The feeder makes her angry and she’s destroyed quite a few of them.

  Every day at lunch, she is fed a mash. She eats a bite, puts her head up and lets it drool out of her mouth and onto the floor.

  “It’s like a pig,” Gundersen said. “It’s everywhere, including on the walls. We made rules that they can’t feed her in the normal feeder [in the corner]. She has to have it in the middle of the stall to make less mess on the walls.”

• In order to maintain her girlish figure, Lady likes to hit the gym. She loves her Horse Gym USA treadmill and is relaxed as it automatically shifts between the flat and an incline. In fact, she is so calm and focused, her groom can attend to other chores while making frequent checks to be sure Lady is alright.

  “She needs to work a lot because she has so much energy,” Gundersen said. “She loves to work. It makes her really mad if she has days off.”

  Anderson agreed, “If you give her more than one day off, she is terrible to handle.”

Lady on her Horse Gym USA treadmill.

• Although her groom said Lady doesn’t like very many horses near her, she does have a BFF with whom she shares show gossip and competition tips: Mariett, Lars Petersen’s superstar mare. When Lady is at a show and Mariett isn’t there, Lady looks for her.

  When My Lady is in the awards ceremony and Mariett is also along for the kudos, Lady is cool, calm and collected. When her buddy is not there, Anderson has to enter the arena to calm the mare.

  “They’re perfect together,” she said. “They relax each other.”

  There was one time at the Danish Championships when Gundersen couldn’t get My Lady to enter the ring and all Petersen had to do was walk up with her on Mariett, and Lady walked right in.

  She may be dedicated to her bestie, but she also has a small crush on the gelding in the stall next door to hers at Janne Rumbough’s MTICA (More Than I Can Afford) Farm in Wellington, Fla.

• My Lady is a consummate traveler. She travels abroad with ease and scurries onto the ramp when she knows she’s boarding a plane as if to say, “Now we are going somewhere.”

  “As long as she has food and water, she’ll do anything for us,” Gundersen said. “She’s the best flyer because that’s where she’s the happiest. She gets to eat and drink the whole time. When we take her out of the container, there will be no more hay. The other horses haven’t eaten all their food or drunk all their water, but Lady makes sure there is nothing left. “

• She insists she’s the center of attention. If she’s angry or displeased with anyone’s tempo when dealing with her, she makes raspberries with her mouth to voice her displeasure.

  “If she’s on the cross-ties, she wants us to do something, like scratch her back or groom her,” Gundersen said. “She’ll make noises or kick the wall if we don’t. She wants 100 percent attention, all the time. You have to be right with her.”

  Although she is not supposed to bite, she’s known for nipping in a most unladylike manner when she’s annoyed. She’s bitten her rider, her grooms, and people she just doesn’t like. She likes taller people more than short people and she instantly decides if she dislikes someone and then won’t allow that person to touch her. [Sidenote from the short author: she let me pet her.  Score!] 

Mikala Münter Gundersen, Janne Rumbough, Emi Anderson and My Lady at MTICA Farm.

• Gundersen is a fan of homeopathic and alternative medicine to keep My Lady happy and healthy. Her groom learned to massage her from the Danish team’s osteopath, and Lady receives daily massages to get the kinks out. Anderson is able to alert the rider if Lady has knots and sore spots so she can help work them out during daily rides.

  “If she is sore somewhere, she gets mad,” Gundersen said. “It’s like she says, ‘Take it away so we can continue to work.’ I’m always for any kind of massage, acupuncture, chiropractic and osteopathic work. I believe that if we can get the upper body, fit, trained and supple to feel good, then the legs will last longer.”

• Lady loves to look at herself in the mirror in the arena. “When I practice my halt, she will halt and look in the mirror,” Gundersen said. “She’s down there all the time, looking at herself. We should give her a mirror in her stall!”

• My Lady loves to dance. She knows her freestyle music and when she hears it, she focuses on the music and tunes out her surroundings.

  “It feels like she is dancing to the music,” Gundersen said, adding that she thinks My Lady senses her rider likes it as well. “I do know she loves her music, and the last couple of times I’ve ridden it, if I want to change things a little bit, she almost won’t let me. One time, I wasn’t ready for the walk but her walk music came on and she walked.”

Gundersen is excited about competing in the Reem Acra World Cup Final in Las Vegas, and one of the reasons is because their freestyle music is a burlesque-themed compilation with a bit of Cher thrown in for good measure.

“This music is so Vegas,” she said. “Everyone says the roof is going to come off. I hope we can pull it off!” (You can read more about Gundersen’s freestyle in the World Cup Preview issue of The Chronicle of the Horse, which is out now. And make sure to follow along with all the World Cup action at www.coth.com.)