On Dec. 1, hunter/jumper and top equitation trainer and USEF R judge Karen Healey will close her business, Karen Healey Stables.

Karen Healey Stables is currently based out of Whitethorne Ranch in Somis, Calif., and Healey said her decision to close is about her desire to re-focus her efforts. 

“To run the barn the way I want to run it—with the help and the care and the quality that I like to do, it is so prohibitive, and my overhead is huge,” said Healey, who was the Chronicle’s show hunter horseman of the year in 2007. “With my schedule now I’m so tied down with having a barn and trying to work in some of these other things.

“I just decided I love to teach—I think I’m pretty good at it,” she added with a laugh. “I love doing the clinics, and I’d like to judge a little bit more—not a lot, just a little bit more. If I did six to eight shows a year that would be plenty for me. So I just decided at this point in my life that I’d just like to maybe change things up a little bit and really just kind of enjoy what I really love to do.”

Her current assistant trainer and barn manager Melissa Jones will become a freelance trainer, available to anyone in the Southern California area for lessons and horse shows, while fellow assistant trainer Tasha Visokay will branch out with her own business at Shelburne Farms in Hidden Valley, Calif. 

Healey will continue to stay involved with Visokay in an advisory capacity and will also be more available for clinics and horse shows as well as lessons. She will continue producing and selling equitation horses with Georgy Maskrey-Segesman out of Whitethorne Ranch.

The Las Vegas National Horse Show, running from Nov. 10-15, will be the last horse show for Karen Healey Stables. Although Karen Healey Stables will be closed then, the George H. Morris Clinic scheduled at Whitethorne Ranch on Dec. 11-13 will continue as planned. It is Morris’ last clinic before he takes a sabbatical next year. 

“I try to teach as classically as I can and really stick to that system that’s served me well for many, many years,” said Healey, who worked with Morris at Hunterdon at the beginning of her career before moving to California in 1981. “I would like to continue to pass that on. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t have his voice in my head, so I’d like to try to continue that legacy a little bit whenever I can.”

Though Healey is still recovering from a surgery she underwent in October to remove hardware in her neck from a previous surgery, and then a subsequent incision site infection she suffered while in Kentucky for the CP National Horse Show, she said she is doing well now, and that those issues didn’t affect her decision to close Karen Healey Stables.

“I’m scared, and I’m excited, and I’m sad,” she said. “But I think it’s the right thing at this time in my life.”