When George Morris speaks, riders listen. So when the legend recommended his student, Tori Colvin, try her hand at a new discipline to improve her skills in the hunter and jumper rings, she did just that. 

“[George Morris] thought it would be a good idea to have me take a real dressage lesson, on a top dressage horse,” said Colvin, 18, who won the ASPCA Maclay Finals in 2014 and the USEF Show Jumping Talent Search Finals-East (N.J.) and Washington International Equitation Classic Final (D.C.) in 2015 and amassed innumerable junior hunter and jumper accolades before turning professional at the start of this year.

“I always grew up having supplementary dressage lessons; my whole life, I was fascinated by it,” Morris said. “And I realized how beneficial it was to my riding and my horses’ training.”

Dressage professionals Lisa Wilcox and Ernst Hoyos gave Colvin a lesson (which Morris audited) aboard Denzello, a 13-year-old Hanoverian who competed at Grand Prix with Wilcox. Wilcox and Denzello served as an alternate for the U.S. team at the 2014 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games (France). 

A video Colvin shared on Facebook has been making the rounds, showing her grinning ear to ear as she passages around the ring with “Dino.”  

“It was an amazing time, and it was funny because on my horses, you ask for changes and you have to actually ask for it,” Colvin said. “But this one, they wanted me to come across the diagonal and just do two lead changes on the diagonal, and I just touched him with my leg and he just started doing tempis, I think he did 20 tempis, I couldn’t stop him!”

Wilcox appreciated Colvin’s can-do attitude when faced with a new challenge. “She had a smile on her face the entire time, and I think she thought she looked like an idiot up there, but I said ‘no, its amazing, you didn’t,’” Wilcox said. “She kind of got up there and just took everything in. It was fun to work with her.”

“It was a beautiful lesson because she started with the most basic things, shoulder-fore, and then really did almost everything in the [Grand Prix], so it was great for Tori, and it’s only going to add to her riding ability,” Morris said. “I wish many more people would do that.” 

Colvin was able to transfer some of her natural ability and feel for the horse that has gained her so much attention in the hunter ring to her dressage lesson with Dino. “It was of course a brand new situation for her, but I was impressed by her ability to feel through things relatively quickly,” Wilcox said.

“She has a lot of feeling for the horse, not just getting up there and finding all the buttons,” Wilcox said. “He felt comfortable with her. It was nice to watch her settle in and feel her way through the horse and at the same time listen to what I had to say as far as explaining to her how to ride the different movements.”

Morris would like Colvin to continue lessoning with Wilcox, and Wilcox said she is all for continuing to teach the young professional, but Colvin isn’t planning on trotting down the center line for a competition any time soon.

“I think George would like me to be to be like an Olympic dressage person, but, I mean, it wasn’t pretty,” Colvin said of the lesson with a laugh. “It wasn’t that bad, but I would definitely like to take more lessons. I have to work on my position—they kept telling me to bring my shoulders back. I was in my hunter position a bit and that doesn’t work!”

“It was just an overall amazing experience,” Colvin continued. “To get to be able to do that at the age I am—to be on a horse like that—that’s amazing.” 

Morris is hoping Colvin can use her star status in the world of show hunters to encourage other young riders to cross over into the world of dressage. “Tori is a representative example for the world of young people, because she rides so beautifully and wins everything over fences, if she works her horses like this a bit it sets an example,” Morris said. “That’s why I’m so involved in Tori’s career, because she is possibly the next Beezie.

“Beezie Madden would love to have that lesson every day,” Morris continued. “It’s just her attitude about riding.”